Re: Thinking/Feeling

My husband & I both find the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator stuff fascinating. In fact, learning about our respective types has helped us understand each other better & made our marriage smoother. It's cool, I recommend it. But anyway, that's a huge big broad topic, & today I just want to vent some thoughts on one bit in particular (as you may have guessed by the title). I may need to establish some context for you, though. To put it simply... your brain (& your friend's brain, your first grade teacher's brain, your favorite singer's brain, any brain) has a favorite mode by which it processes information, both incoming & internal. Its favorite is either 'thinking' (y'know, logic & reasons & facts) or 'feeling' (emotions, everything is emotions & has emotions & causes emotions). With me so far? (I'm sure people who already know things about MBTI are shaking their heads at me right now, but whatever.) You are driven more by emotions or facts. You may be somewhere toward the middle perhaps, & that's fascinating, but I just want to make sure you get what I'm talking about.

I am severely on the 'thinking' side of the spectrum. (Which is apparently more rare for women.) My husband is a feeler. (...which is apparently more rare for men.)

Husband & I were watching an episode of a television show, & I was agonizing with one of the characters. The character was right. He was trying to convince the others of what should be done for the best interests of all involved. He had solid reasoning, & he explained things in easy-to-understand terms. He wasn't even being mean about it. But still, no one listened-- they were angry, they didn't want to get past their differences, & they abandoned the whole endeavor. It made me sad that someone could be so clearly right, & yet so ignored! Husband looked at me with a smirk, understanding how I related to that situation, & said "it is more important to be liked than to be right". To which I replied "People should like you because you're right!"
I try to be aware of the feelings of others & if I may be producing negative ones in them, but it is of lesser importance to me than whatever it is that I feel I need to be communicating/doing, & I just can't shake the belief that that is the best & most respectable way for me to live. On the other hand, I love my husband & admire the way that he says things which are nonsense to my brain, but make other people feel good. We're just different, & work better at different sorts of situations.
I say things, in what I feel in the most clear & concise way possible. & then someone takes it the wrong way & gets offended. All I meant was what I said, the exact way that I said it! I had no idea you could be hurt by it! Please just take me literally.

Also, I had a thought on Sunday that I shared on twitter. I was wondering why we teach babies/toddlers animal sounds with such priority. My brain thinks that surely there are other more important things to teach at that age. My best guess was that it's to help develop speech, y'know, practicing sounds. That makes sense.
But then a friend was pointing out that babies are really cute when they make animal sounds, plus many little kids just love animals.
That makes perfect sense, from a feeler standpoint. Those are legitimate reasons. But I never would have come up with that on my own.
& it really made me think... I feel like it could be rather rough for me & any offspring I may have. What perfectly good & healthy things are my brain going to dismiss, just because I find them illogical? What behaviors will my instinct be to squash? Will I be able to find a balance?
I'm not actually all that worried that I'll raise kids who turn into terrible adults. Any kids I ever have will have more influences in their life than just me, & that's a very good thing. I just feel like healthy emotional processing is very important to learn at a young age, & I'm not sure how well I'd be able to handle that, especially if the child is a feeler instead of a thinker.

Re: Female Protaganists in Video Games

It's not that I don't understand things like "if all people were truly viewed as equal, they'd get equal exposure in things like video games & movies". That makes sense. But to get upset each time a video game comes out that doesn't at least offer the option to be female? That feels so foreign to me. Some people start acting like it's unhealthy for video games to feature males. To me, that seems backwards; the world isn't getting messed up because video games are that way, the video games are that way because the wo-- no, video games are that way for reasons involving the consumers, the market, lots of factors. So far, this marketing has worked for them. Anyway, I'm not going too far down that line of thought. Let's travel a different way. Video games have always been predominately featuring males. (That is, when they aren't about lizards or mammals or stars or marbles or... stuff like that.) & guess what. We turned out pretty much okay. I never gave a second thought to why the video games we had weren't about women. I'm not sure I even had a first thought about it. It really didn't matter. I'm not sure how much it ever matters. It's not like the video game is meant to be about ME. I was more interested in whether or not the controls would let me move diagonally, or getting frustrated by scrolling levels with tricky jumps, or laughing at The Cactus Dance. I don't start reading a book & thinking "well gosh, that character isn't at all like me, that makes me really upset". I don't walk out of a theater because a white guy gets the most lines. It's merely a story-telling choice when I come across it. The best characters do tend to be ones that I feel I can relate to in some way or another... but it is both more FUN & more MEANINGFUL when I can relate to them yet be different from them in many ways. When I play a video game, it's like I'm making friends. & what good would my world be if populated with people just like me? I get more excited to see exotic beings like Gorons than when I see a fellow female in a game, to be honest. I want to see creativity. I want to discover. I want my world & my mind to be expanded. I'd rather play a game as a weird androgynous naked fish-person than as a woman.

I'm all for better-written females. I would love to see more females. I also would like to see more people who like they're descended from, like, y'know, maybe Africa or Asia or something. A little more diversity would be awesome. (Even age-diversity. I want to play as an old person, that would rock my socks.) I just can't bring myself to take it personally.

That said, I've also never been persecuted for being a gaming female. I grew up playing video games with my brother, my mom, & our friends (guy friends, just to clarify that, in case it matters in any way). Nowadays I mostly play single-player. I'll play with my husband. Sometimes I play with my d&d group (yes, all those are guys too). I can't remember a single instance where my being a girl was ever even mentioned. Maybe if it ever had been an issue, I'd be more frustrated. I'd wish that more of those gamer jerk guys out there could see a female protagonist of awesome. As it is, I'm comfortable with me being a woman & most video games being about a guy. Most video games coming out these days don't interest me much anyway, because the big thing right now seems to be to make realistic shooter games. (&, to be realistic, most shooters are male. Just thought of that.)

To be honest... most of the modern games I own/play feature a female or the option. Portal 2... the Mass Effect series... the Dragon Age series... the Fable series... Rock Band & Guitar Hero series... Harvest Moon: Magical Melody... Pokémon LeafGreen... I would recommend any of those games. Admire the long hair of those females &, I don't know, do whatever else makes you happy. For bonus points, how about maybe supporting women in the gaming industry? Go make a change yourself, or support people who are trying. Really, just be you, the very best you you can be, whether you're a lady, a guy, or a weird androgynous naked fish-person, & I'll try that too.

I'm sorry if anyone feels judged by this opinion. It's really not about my opinion of you (I still rather respect all the ladies I know who have inspired this blog post!), merely my opinion of the issue.