Oversexualizaton in Cyberpunk

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having now read through the game manual CP2020 and a bunch of surrounding lore, along with comparisons to other portions of the genre, the game is going to be hypersexualized, and with good reason. it fits the setting. as stated above, if it was made available to people to "perfect" their outward image to society, then why wouldn't they?

not to mention how much emphasis CP2020 puts on appearance. For those who aren't going to read through this thread or do some research on CP2020, there's whole skill subsets around attractiveness (with specific skills for personal grooming, style, and seduction). There's gear lists for all sorts of clothing that serves no purpose other than to look cool Then there's the cyberware that has a whole subset for cybernetic enhancements that are specifically for fashion (synth/chem skins and light tattoos and techhair). Mix all of that with the ability to add to yourself with the ability to sculpt your body into the "ideal form" of the time, throw in the general cyberpunk genre that generally has legalized and even promotes prostitution and the like, and you're going to end up with a game that is going to get called hypersexualized and even sexist (judging by current popular trends in media).

I mean in the PNPRPG there's a cyberware implant called Mr. Studd[SUP]TM[/SUP] Sexual Implant with the description All night, every night, and she'll never know. Use your imagination and add +1 to your Seduction checks. Available also in the Midnight Lady version for the distaff side. There's also the Contraceptive Implant, which per the manual apparently prevents pregnancy for up to 5 years for either sex. This is part of the universe, and if CDPR is following CP2020 for CP2077, then this stuff could very easily make it into 2077.

So, if you're going to get all up in arms about the game being "over sexualized," then you really need to think to yourself how much that matters to you. Because in order to stay true to the source material and the genre, it's going to be a part of the game.
 
having now read through the game manual CP2020 and a bunch of surrounding lore, along with comparisons to other portions of the genre, the game is going to be hypersexualized, and with good reason. it fits the setting. as stated above, if it was made available to people to "perfect" their outward image to society, then why wouldn't they?.

I don't think it will be hypersexualized. That suggests an above-media focus on sex in the game. I doubt it - there's lots of stuff going to be in this game. I would say that sexual imagery and relations have no PnP-based reason to be sub-media or de-emphasized from the context, unlike in most modern fiction.

Sex is a huge part of human relationships and it plays a big part in 2020. On the other hand, the actual game mechanics and supporting material for suh interaction is still pretty minimal, compared to the more advanced social gameplay of, say, Exalted or Nobilis.
 
Well, Cyberpunk was very upfront about sex, as a lot of people would like those kinda upgrades (enter gutter here) for appearance and other odds and ends. Cyberpunk clubs are part bacchanal anyway if Blade runner if to be believed. everything from the tasteful to the tawdry would not be out of line. Just dpends if you characters hang out in strip joints or corp environments really
 
I hope for intentional, conscious and deliberate oversexualization in CP2077. In suitable proportions and in appropriate context. Also, (which is very important) female and male oversexualization in equal proportions.

I've always imagined that future society will have very pragmatic attitude towards sex. In other words sex and sexuality will be far more separate from love and affection that it is now.
 
I hope for intentional, conscious and deliberate oversexualization in CP2077. In suitable proportions and in appropriate context. Also, (which is very important) female and male oversexualization in equal proportions.

I've always imagined that future society will have very pragmatic attitude towards sex. In other words sex and sexuality will be far more separate from love and affection that it is now.
I must disagree with this stance, for two reasons:

1. Oversexualization of women is a by-product of men having wealth and power. Let's be frank - female is oversexualized because men like such images. Men are very visual-oriented. It'd be wrong to assume that females have same view as male species. They think differently. They find other things more attractive. For them it's not so much about seeing an oversexualized men all over the place. That's very man-like view of things and that's why this is incorrect. So you probably won't see female and male oversexualization in equal proportions.

2. Society has very hypocritical attitude towards sex. It's a double thinking: people claim to follow rules like having "only one" and then have lovers on the sides. Both men and women. For this to change the whole mentality of modern societies has to fall apart towards liberalism (or idonotcarism). With religions all around us and becoming pretty big topic (in fact - trying to push back hard to regain lost space) pragmatic attitude towards sex is much less likely than one would anticipate. Despite all claims to religion failing it's still pretty strong and I expect for it to survive another 63 years.
 

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It'd be wrong to assume that females have same view as male species. They think differently. They find other things more attractive. For them it's not so much about seeing an oversexualized men all over the place. That's very man-like view of things and that's why this is incorrect. So you probably won't see female and male oversexualization in equal proportions..


Actually, it'd be wrong to speak for an entire gender, like you just did. Wrong in the sense of, "take care lest you give offense to members of that gender for whom you are speaking."

We must be careful when making generalizations, but on these boards, be especially careful when the subject of such generalizations are sorted by race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc.

Hot button topics, the lot.

So, avoid making sweeping judgements about how members of an entire gender see things. Or don't see them.


Edit: Suhiira, above, would be on example. Providing she's, you know, a she. I'VE ALWAYS WONDERED.
 
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Actually, it'd be wrong to speak for an entire gender, like you just did. Wrong in the sense of, "take care lest you give offense to members of that gender for whom you are speaking."
...

How is that offensive in the first place?

There is a lot of scientific evidence that men and women as genders think differently. This is a fact. Suhiira actually reinforces the point I am making - if she finds the female form more pleasing (which correlates with what I heard from other women as well) then there is no basis for oversexualization being equal in proportions for both genders in the future, even if women manage to get equal amount of wealth and power.
 
Well, demonstrate some of these studies and facts that, "Men are very visual-oriented. It'd be wrong to assume that females have same view as male species. They think differently. They find other things more attractive. For them it's not so much about seeing an oversexualized men all over the place. That's very man-like view of things and that's why this is incorrect." Use examples, if you're going to choose to speak for an entire - two, actually - gender groups and then claim it's fact.

Those are a a lot of very definite statements about some not-so-definite subjects, (perhaps for some women it is about seeing oversexualized men, perhaps men aren't always very visual oriented and perhaps the views espoused aren't necessarily "man-like" at all, although they may be accurate or inaccurate).

Mostly, though, it's that when people start speaking on behalf of whole groups of other people, "Americans are overweight and compared to Europeans, poorly educated," "Canadians are polite and, compared to Americans, passive on the whole, ", "men are very visual-orientated and like to look at emphasized sexual organs" or whatever the subject is, it has a tendency to encourage people to come out of the woodwork with all sorts of issues.

And so I advise caution when speaking on behalf of other people.

As for Poet's point, there isn't any historical precedent for Kerenzikov speedware or netrunners, and yet CP2020 has both of those. Things change.
 
Well, demonstrate some of these studies and facts that, "Men are very visual-oriented. It'd be wrong to assume that females have same view as male species. They think differently. They find other things more attractive. For them it's not so much about seeing an oversexualized men all over the place. That's very man-like view of things and that's why this is incorrect." Use examples, if you're going to choose to speak for an entire - two, actually - gender groups and then claim it's fact.
This should be proof enough.

It also backs up my point that oversexualization of men is not desired by women. Apparently sexuality of men does not sell that well as sexuality of women on ads. If it does not sell well then there should be less of it, because poor advertisements are not economically justified as they are not as effective. Thus thesis that female and male oversexualization should be displayed in equal proportions is not in accordiance with reality. Which is all what I am saying. And I want to underline that I don't care personally - as a man - if there will be a lot of sexualized men all over the place. Just I don't find that to be an accurate prediction of reality in the future.
 
Nope. One study is hardly convincing. It hasn't convinced the very profitable ad industry, for example, to change their ways. And, more importantly, it makes it clear that these are tendencies - from one study - not facts. Again, sweeping generalizations are to be avoided.

As for you guys referring to history - what has that got to do with Cyberpunk 2077? It's a loong ways from now in a science fiction future. Hell, they could make a case for extra organs, if they wanted to. Fashion!
 
You asked me to demonstrate studies. I have shown them to you. You say "one study is hardly convincing". I ask you "how many studies would be convincing"? You missed important parts of the whole message where it was stated that: "This isn’t the first study to show women dislike over-sexualised adverts [...] According to a study in 2012, by Tom Reichert, a professor of advertising and public relations at the University of Georgia, 22 percent of ads included sexualised women while only 6 percent featured men in a prone position [...] research presented at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication convention in 2006, showed that the more seductive the model in an advert , the more it left the women bored and uninterested".

So we have three separate, consistent researches. At least. That we know of. Is that enough? Or should I link all studies in history? Because I have no idea on what basis you claim that "one study is hardly convincing". Since when this comes down to numbers? Imagine saying that "On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres" is "one study", meaning it's "hardly convincing" thus not being accepted as truth. Or reverse this situation. Will 10 studies claiming that Sun orbits around Earth will suddenly make universe Earth-centric?

You want to disregard all proof to what I am saying? So be it then. But you should know what this means. By your logic we are not allowed to say a lot of things that are commonly accepted as proven, because it'd be considered "sweeping generalization" as any proof can be easily classified as "hardly convincing" or not enough, or something. In all honestly I fail to see a point in discussion - any discussion - punched into such frame.
 
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Well, demonstrate some of these studies and facts that, "Men are very visual-oriented. It'd be wrong to assume that females have same view as male species. They think differently. They find other things more attractive. For them it's not so much about seeing an oversexualized men all over the place. That's very man-like view of things and that's why this is incorrect." Use examples, if you're going to choose to speak for an entire - two, actually - gender groups and then claim it's fact.
Seriously Sard??

How come then female strip clubs out male ones on a ratio of oh-I-dunno 20 to one. Same thing for pornography et al? And no, I'm not going to jump through the ridiculous hoop of finding a study to what is plainly obvious to any adult except fat bitter feminists in academia (and our resident megalomaniac). Why would this trend reverse itself?

To not allow for culture is to seriously seriously restrict one's own understanding of the world at large.

Mostly, though, it's that when people start speaking on behalf of whole groups of other people, "Americans are overweight and compared to Europeans, poorly educated," "Canadians are polite and, compared to Americans, passive on the whole, ", "men are very visual-orientated and like to look at emphasized sexual organs" or whatever the subject is, it has a tendency to encourage people to come out of the woodwork with all sorts of issues.

And so I advise caution when speaking on behalf of other people.

it's a bit of a scarecrow you're putting up.

I doubt that Safe-r literally means statement like "ALL women are not blah blah blah". I interpreted is as being more along the lines of "MOST xyz are blah blah blah." Only the most dimwitted individual would claim no exceptions.

Beside, we all know that english canadians live in igloos and that they eat beavers for breakfast. Plus they club baby seals as a national sport.

As for Poet's point, there isn't any historical precedent for Kerenzikov speedware or netrunners, and yet CP2020 has both of those. Things change.

Yep, but even sci-fi has to be believable. There's only so much suspension of disbelief to go around. When you talk about equal soft subjects like economics, gender, etc. there has to be a point where it hooks back to reality. Simply put, because while tech changes, people's follies tend to remain the same.

After all, that is a major theme of cyberpunk: that there are common themes of corruption and decadence regardless of the tech.

When you talk about equal sexualization for the two sexes, think about what it implies. It implies people like the Village people walking around. I could buy a much subtler sexualization like for example a bunch of HUmphrey Bogart lookalike, but female sexualization being so in-your-face it would never be truly equal. Beside, in a multi-cultural society not everyone adhere to the same decadent ideology of most westerners.

The argument has to stand on its own two feet. Fallout 3 never explained bottle cap as currency, and it seriously hurt its otherwise tragic setting.Question is: can you? I can't think of a criminal subculture which doesn't have a conservative hypermasculine culture. This means not looking like the Village People.

It's not for us to prove that equal sexualization would be a possible thing.It's up to the writers making the extraordinary claims to do so.
 
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Oh, I hardly saw bottlecaps as jarring in any way, and didn't see Fallout as a tragic setting. Certainly it wasn't written that way. Satire, sure. Tragicomedy in places, sure. But tragedy? Not too much. And bottlecaps weren't particularly jarring compared to, I dunno, supermutants. Or nearly immortal Ghouls.

You make an excellent point that it's the writer's job vis-a-vis equal sexualization...but again, that seems pretty minor in terms of suspensions of disbelief against a backdrop of Cyberpunk's world setting in the next 50 years. Maybe you find that impossible - I would hardly notice it. You seem to think people remain the same, whereas a major theme of Cyberpunk is that tech will change you - and not in a good way, necessarily. Corruption and decadence are -not- equivalent to equal sexualization between genders.

I also don't think equal sexualization means the Village people walking around. Or..I'm actually not sure I understand that whole idea. I suspect if you explain it, it'll look kind of prejudiced, so...don't.


@Safe-r

I did read the article, including the reference to other cases, and remained unconvinced. These seem few and far between, and again, unconvincing to the very people making lots of money while ignoring these results. Science always comes down to numbers. Prove it, prove it, test it and prove it again.

As for my logic, let me be clear - you are not allowed to say lots of things on these boards. You can check my sig for the forum rules, but if what you say comes across as racist, sexist, discriminatory, or offensive, it's not allowed. Whether the mods - me, in this case - do something about it is up to us, but those are the ground rules.
 
I also don't think equal sexualization means the Village people walking around. Or..I'm actually not sure I understand that whole idea. I suspect if you explain it, it'll look kind of prejudiced, so...don't.

Guys have strippers, Gals have chippendales, everyone is happy.
No problem with that.


Honnestly, girls are as much interested in porn and sex as guys, they just show it less, and aren't "turned on" by the same things.
Teenage boys look at playboy
Teenage girls look at the backstreet boys.

The idea behind is the same "I'd love to hit that", you'll not tell me they were all found of those guys because they were good musicians....
At least, that's how I see it.

And, on the CP77 topic, I'd find actually funny if they'd "reverse" the cliché in some way.
Like, they'll put naked chicks on an ads to sell you ice cream, here, it would be fun to have a few ads using the male body as an object, as nasty and degradating as they use the female body in medias.
Just "be here, shut up and be a cute boy".

Like in some games for example, where the female characters are just an random excuses to show some boobs and flesh.
Or Dead Or Alive, those guys have a graphic engine dedicated to the womens breast, think about the oposite, a graphic engine just to animate male's crotch or whatever, it's just so stupid.

This is what would be a good way of having an equal sexualisation, putting both sex in the same awkward situation where they're just an object without soul or whatever.
 
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Oh, I hardly saw bottlecaps as jarring in any way, and didn't see Fallout as a tragic setting. Certainly it wasn't written that way. Satire, sure. Tragicomedy in places, sure. But tragedy? Not too much. And bottlecaps weren't particularly jarring compared to, I dunno, supermutants. Or nearly immortal Ghouls.

For Fallout 1 and 2 no. These were dark comedies. I didn't find it jarring then beside the fact that it was unbelievable,
Untruths are not jarring, or shocking, they're simply false. I would have bought cigarettes, or whiskey as currency instead.

But Fallout 3 was far darker in tone and light in comedy, I never laughed once while playing Fallout 3. There were rare tongue and cheek moments, e.g. Moria Brown, but as a whole, Beth - to their eternal discredit- tried to play it as straight as possible.

Perhaps it has to do with the clumsy post-Morrowind storytelling rather then the writing itself, but still.

You make an excellent point that it's the writer's job vis-a-vis equal sexualization...but again, that seems pretty minor in terms of suspensions of disbelief against a backdrop of Cyberpunk's world setting in the next 50 years.Maybe you find that impossible - I would hardly notice it.

Perhaps it's a minor point, but it's actually easier on disbelief to write about entirely fantastic things e.g. zombies then to write about slightly unrealistic things that people are familiar with. e.g. it's easier to write about an extra-terrestrial kidnapping the US president then it is say, the US president farting during the state of the union and then having a belly laugh about it.

As Goebbels said, the bigger the lie...

It even has a name for it, but I completely forgot which one it was. It's similar to the concept that what is truly horrific is the familiar being twisted in only a slight way.

Usually, it's not the truly fantastic things that people get hung up upon, it's often the characterization,plot or visuals or something else.

You seem to think people remain the same, whereas a major theme of Cyberpunk is that tech will change you - and not in a good way, necessarily.

Pretty sure that Crassus would have been well at home with Don King.

Cicero with Alan Dershowitz.

George Patton with Hannibal.

And so on and so forth.

Corruption and decadence are -not- equivalent to equal sexualization between genders.
Sexualization period is usually synonymous with decadence. or perhaps not sexualization per se but rather the byproduct of it.

If you see a prostitute flashing her breasts at traffic, it's generally seen as a sign of social decay. Doubly so if you see a woman AND a man flashing their wares.

I did read the article, including the reference to other cases, and remained unconvinced. These seem few and far between, and again, unconvincing to the very people making lots of money while ignoring these results. Science always comes down to numbers. Prove it, prove it, test it and prove it again.

Safe-r has been nice enough to go dig up studies, but really, you're the one that should be producing the evidence.

I would be skeptical about ad results. The people sending you junk mail have a much better grasp on the market then the big ad agencies because they usually have very direct ways to measure return on investments. Not so in big agencies. Usually the more "artsy" the product, the more compounded the problem is.

I would say the porn market is a better gauge of human sexuality. You know, because they actually ask people for money to jack off as opposed to buying detergent.
The fact remains that the major market for male pornography is gay men.
 
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For Fallout 1 and 2 no. These were dark comedies. I didn't find it jarring then beside the fact that it was unbelievable,
Untruths are not jarring, or shocking, they're simply false. I would have bought cigarettes, or whiskey as currency instead.

But Fallout 3 was far darker in tone and light in comedy, I never laughed once while playing Fallout 3. .

Wait, wait. Aside from this thoroughly boring topic....you never laughed ONCE playing FO3? With the President's radio shows? WIth the deranged Mr. Gutsy's dialogue? Those silly vampires? I dunno. I remember laughing a fair bit.

Anyway.

I don't feel any need to produce evidence because I'm not the person making sweeping statements about someone else's (or even my own) gender. And I recommend anyone doing so find evidence when they do these things because that way, if someone OF that gender or age group or whatever takes offense, at least there will be some kind of evidence to stand on. Which...might...reduce the trouble? Maybe?

I'd also never use the porn market as a better gauge of human sexuality. Any more than Hollywood action movies would be a gauge of shooting enthusiasts. Or soldiers. Or cops. Or whatever.

Hmm. I wonder if there will be a porn market in CP2077? I wonder if CDPR has yet to consider that as an economic factor?
 
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