Legend of Zelda - Accessing female spaces by deception

[LonginesPrime]

DD just explained to me the latest mission she had to solve in Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - she is playing as Link, a male character, and the objective is to get into Garuda, a town that's exclusively female.

The female inhabitants are fiercely protective of their home and are vigilant about visitors. Only females are allowed in. Link needs to gain access but is refused by the guards.

You (as Link) hear about a man who managed to get in there so you have to go and find him.

When you find him, he's dressed as a woman and you have the option of studying his face and asking him if he's a man, etc. The only way to progress the game is to tell him that he's beautiful - when you do this, he offers to sell you some women's clothing and explains that everyone will see you differently when you wear women's clothing.

When you wear the women's clothes, the guards of Garuda think you're female and let you in, so you can go around the shops completing the necessary tasks and interacting with the female inhabitants disguised as a woman.

I know it's 'only a game' and that there's an unreal amount of misogyny in the gaming industry anyway, so I'm not surprised that the female perspective of this issue has been overlooked. But it's still so disheartening that a new generation of young gamers (male and female) is being sent the message that it's ok for men to completely disregard women's rights and boundaries if they conflict with what men want.

Thanks for this. My nearly 11 year old son is very, very much a Zelda fan (he's got a tendency to be a little bit obsessive about his interests, though usually just in phases). I knew about the village and did talk to him about the school room scene - the lesson on men for the female children was quite creepy and inappropriate I thought - but I missed having to tell the man he was beautiful as the only way to successfully complete the mission - that's also creepy and inappropriate for pre teens (having to essentially flirt? especially when they character is a child or teen interacting with an adult NPC) IMO

Need to keep a closer eye again and keep the conversations going.

@LonginesPrime

She's 15 - my post wasn't about her specifically as she's pretty alive to sexism and misogyny in the media anyway.

I don't think the gaming industry sits and thinks of ways to undermine women

I wasn't suggesting this storyline was deliberately crafted to undermine women, it was more the fact that they hadn't thought about women at all that was disappointing.

I should imagine most of the real-life scenarios where women-only spaces are repurposed as accessible to all don't arise from a desire to actively undermine women either - it usually starts as a means to accommodate others and the women's perspectives are merely forgotten about. I accept that any messages about women/girls are inadvertent, but children might still receive them, regardless of the intent.

I appreciate that, like all the other non-player characters, the women are merely props in this game. But whereas moblins are make-believe and any in-game abuse of their boundaries isn't going to damage real-world human-moblin relations, women are real, and there are plenty of examples of their boundaries being pushed in real-life.

I guess it's reassuring to know this scene was taken from the original game and that it's likely that no thought went into the storyline at all, rather than someone having come up with it from scratch recently during the development of Breath of the Wild and people actively having agreed it sounded fine.

And obviously this is a very mild example compared to lots of games!

Actually, there are women who are strong characters in Zelda - and one of them is the one my daughter and her friends call me - Urbosa who has her fury as a powerful weapon as well as a cool scimitar. Link isn't sneaking into the women's town to integrate himself and pretend he is a woman forevermore. Our kids think this scene is just funny because Link has to dress like a girl. Just like they think that the soldiers dressing as women in Mulan are comical. There is no deliberate social message in this until now where dressing up jokes have been weaponised (not by you OP) but by people who push the agenda of saying that putting on a skirt magically makes you a woman.

And then the queen sees right through it but because she needs you to save her City, she lets you do your thing 😅

I went off the Zelda games the minute I realised the person you play is not Zelda but in fact Link who has to go and rescue Zelda. Bugger that! I'm sure Zelda can manage quite sufficiently on her own!

C'mon, that has always been the premise, since the NES version!
As others have pointed out, there are plenty of strong female characters in the game nowadays.

The whole male/female cross dressing thing is quite a big thing in Japanese manga/game culture. It features in many manga and games (I'm not arguing for or against, just stating).

Zelda has been trapped in a castle keeping Calamity Ganon at bay ALL BY HERSELF for one hundred years while Link had a century long nap cause he got a bit of an ouchie. So Zelda was doing it all by herself without Link or the other four champions - damn impressive, if you ask me!

Also throughout the game it is revealed that Zelda was far from a helpless princess, but an absolute science nerd, studying everything from plants to ancient technologies 😍 Zelda is kickass

It’s all fantasy so can’t get worked up about it at all.
Zelda isn’t teaching boys to dress like women to access women’s spaces any more than Assassins Creed is teaching boys/girls to knife people in the street or Animal Crossing is teaching boys/girls to be slave owners because you bid on and buy NPC characters to populate your island paradise.

I'm more worried about Roblox where our seven year old joined an LGBT group (see the Guardian article about "Hannah") www.theguardian.com/games/2021/apr/24/in-the-game-i-knew-myself-as-hannah-the-trans-gamers-finding-freedom-on-roblox and kids spamming signs in the group areas of the game Splatoon pushing the ideology at other kids.

@Dragonpox

I went off the Zelda games the minute I realised the person you play is not Zelda but in fact Link who has to go and rescue Zelda. Bugger that! I'm sure Zelda can manage quite sufficiently on her own!

How many games did you play before you realised that?

This thread was started over a year ago, btw. The 'reviving' post from today has been deleted, for repeating a previously deleted post. (?!)