Women insurgents.

I know, I know. A lot of people are not going to like that. I'll pre-face that I am no ally of sjw's nor feminazis.

BUT.

What arguments against women insurgents can you have that's not just racism and/or sexism?

Let me address some of would-be arguments in advance:

They are islamist terrorists, they hate women!
No they are not. They are insurgents. The good guys. At least when I play them. And I find it harder to paint them as good guys without any women in their ranks. This is fictitious conflict between fictitious people in fictitious places. That means that the developers are making a political statement by adding women to one faction and not the other. And it's not a statement that can be viewed as positive anywhere outside outback Alabama. I in fact think that it would be very good for NWI to add women to insurgents simply to distance themselves from the image of "terrorist trainer/simulator" AND to symbolically support the struggle that women suffer in the middle east. When and where will they gain their freedoms if they can't even gain them in our western fantasies? That's a little sick, isn't it? Not to mention our own daughters, nieces and friends who see this and figure that's just how the world works. Women always get the short end of a stick, and only if they fight for it.

There's no women terrorists irl!
See point above and pics below.

Everyone would play as women!
Not everyone would. And how's that a bad thing? Sexist/racist much?

If you add burkas I'll stop playing.
Sexist/racist A LOT? Maybe the community will be better off without you!

I don't want to be shooting women.
You only play as security and are sexist af?

People will be sexist and stupid in-game.
When are they not? And should we let them intimidate us, affect our lives, lives of our daughters and nieces who ask "Why's there no women?" Or should we put them in an environment where they can be exposed, ridiculed and punished for their shitty behavior as to make that behavior less likely to occur again?

No women play this game. We, men, don't need this!
Many of us men do want it. And why do women not play video games, military video games especially? Is it because of biology? Because of our culture at large? Or the way they were raised, the fact that these games were never accommodating to women and girls nor advertised to them? It's a damn high time to start accommodating and advertising. NWI could add an entire new generation of girls raised in a finally equal society into the flock of us gamers.

It's a game. Devs have no business getting in politics.
They already have, and they do whever they want to or not because games are part of our culture, and the way we choose to make our games is the way we choose our culture to be shaped.

Devs have better things to do.
Ok, fair enough. Then the question is "when", not "if", correct?

Security can wear all the same clothing. Male insurgents can't wear burkas!
Then either don't add burkas or make a system that limits clothing to gender. Adding women to insurgents will be a lot of extra work for NWI, that's for sure.

Below I'll add a couple of pictures of Arab women with guns, to spark imagination.

***=PICTURES***

click to show

last edited by Pakislav

I really don't care if they are added or not. For me the game is believable without them, so it's completely fine if they are not added at all.

I just wonder why it would be so important for someone to demand and require that such feature would be added. I don't understand it. I would like to know.

And if it is a lot of extra work for the devs, it would probably not be a good decision to use resources for a feature like that, when there are lot of other things that could use improving. Now this is the reason why I would say "don't even think about this feature, before everything else is working well".

But that's not really arguing against female insurgents specifically, it's an argument against "working on a feature that doesn't improve the gameplay, at the cost of working on something that would improve gameplay".

This is getting out of hand. Weren't you saying that Insurgents were fundamentalists allied with Chechens and even though Chechens were not really present on the battlefield you'd still want them to be added ingame through slavic accent ? Didn't you agree with some other dude that insurgents needed to use arabic for most of their lines and make more religious prayers to be a closer representation of ISIS troops because they wore head wraps and used IEDs ? Didn't you push those arguments against me when I told you that they were not necessarily religious fanatics ?

You don't seem to have a vision for the game at all. You just want everything to be included even when it doesn't make much sense. Bad guys and good guys with females, on the same team, even though bad guys are mysoginistic af... Just because something exists in middle east doesn't mean it has to be integrated ingame in the most historically inaccurate way.

Indeed, the game is not made to be 100% identical to actual confilcts in middle east, but it doesn't mean it has to totally abandon any kind of credibility. One day you want extreme social realism, talking about making insurgents ISIS and Chechens, and another day you talk about making insurgents maoist freedom fighters of all genders (yup, women fighters are mostly from the PKK - or other similar groups -, that are originally communists against ISIS). Make up your mind, dude...

This has nothing to do with sexism... It's just unnecessary and unrealistic. It would make Security forces irrelevent by making them on the same side as insurgents. Why would they fight each other, then ?

Plus, burkas would be a pain in the ass for the devs. Loose clothing have to be physically simulated, which would be a huge waste of performance... In addition to being stupid in the context the game was set in.

The devs try not to be too specific about the reality of the conflicts, mostly to keep as much neutrality as possible, and you ask them to be either VERY specific, or purely imaginative to the point that even Battlefield 5 would be less ridiculous...

last edited by Grumf

I dont see any need to add more women in the insurgent side , and neither insist in this useless feature when the game is far to be complete. Besides the voice is annoying as hell i dont really like more woman screaming in game thanks.

@fraguc
same here. I'm already annoyed enough having female characters in my team while playing security. all the whining and high pitched screaming is just annoying. The male voices are slightly whiny too, but not as much.
I'm not a women hater or anything, I respect all the same, but it's just something I don't need while playing my super manly (exaggeration) war game, shooting guns and blowing stuff up .

They should totally add female insurgents. it will make the game so much better, because as you said @Pakislav, when I'm playing the insurgents they're the good guys. Who said that the insurgents have to be the bad guys? I don't want to have to play ISIS because f**k those retards.
Also, I don't get all the hate devs get for adding women into games, what's with that? You've done a nice job outlining and rebutting certain points of view. What most people forget is that this is, by the end of the day, a video game. Made primarily for FUN. This isn't supposed to be an ultra-realistic battlefield simulator. When it even got close, everyone was moaning about the "recoil being too high", so lets just drop that line shall we? We're beyond realism here.

@rover Yup. Adding females was a good and realistic decision. However, it means that insurgents were intended to be talibans/ISIS/something else fictional that would be similar. Female fighters in middle-east are mainly Kurdish in groups such as PKK. They are a progressive marker of that side. This is why adding females on the insurgents' side would make no sense. It would be two sides fighting each other when they have no reason to, since the insurgents in that situation wouldn't have female soldiers by their sides.

That is, unless you consider security to be the bad guys. They would then no longer represent forces against terrorism, but solely an imperialist army invading the insurgents' country (according to the voices of security side, that would be the USA + a local ally) for their ressources/political control over the country/whatever. Insurgents would then be rebels trying to defend themselves with female resistance too.

This is why I like the situation as it is now. When I play security, I get to play the "good guys". When I play the insurgents, I get to pretend it's a bunch of rebels against an imperilistic army, that happens not to have women by their side for whatever reason (talking about the insurgents). It's a win/win situation. Adding women to the insurgents' side would make no sense at best, or make security the bad guys at worse. It's a semi-win/lose situation.

It can't be a civil war, since security clearly is a foreign professional armed force, and insurgents clearly are guerilla fighters with makeshift explosives and no high end equipment...

EDIT : It's indeed a videogame, but let's not be fools and make it too inaccurate. It's a semi-realistic FPS, as the devs put it. It needs to be coherent and somewhat realistic. If you really want equality everywhere, Battlefield 5 is out with female fighters on each side.

last edited by Grumf

@grumf I understand where you're coming from, I just don't agree entirely. I want to be able to imagine that the insurgents are the good guys too when I play them. Why can't they be? Why can't they be rebels defending themselves from an invading imperialist army? Adding female insurgents would make this a really confusing conflict. Security wouldn't be the "good guys" beyond the shadow of a doubt. I would like that very much. That way we can choose who my good guys are, and who my bad guys are depending on which faction I'm playing.

Also, as I said earlier, I do not want to play as ISIS or the Taliban. I'm from a part of the world that has suffered a lot by the actions of these monsters and I want nothing to do with them. I do NOT want ISI and/or the Taliban in my video games.

Secondly, that Battlefield V jab is a bit uncalled for don't you think? I am not talking about Battlefield, I have no interest in it and I do not intend to play it, so please don't suggest that I go and play it. Let's just talk about Insurgency: Sandstorm, shall we? Else, I might as well point out that those calling for ultra-realism should play ARMA III, where there isn't a woman in sight.

With that out of the way, the term "semi-realistic" can be interpreted in many ways. If we're cutting corners on the very core of the game i.e the gunplay, I'm sure we can add a gender (that has no bearing on the actual gameplay whatsoever).

And finally, as far as accuracy goes, what are we aiming for? This is clearly a fictional conflict in a fictional middle-east. What are we aiming for with our accuracy? As I said, I don't want this to be a rendition of the war on ISIS or the Taliban, I don't want the insurgents to be the bad guys in every circumstance, I want to be able to consider them the good guys. I see nothing "foolish" about it.

last edited by Rover

Women do play this game and are damn good at it. Just saying.

@Grumf

"I'm not sexist. Realism is sexist."

@rover

I want to be able to imagine that the insurgents are the good guys too when I play them.

That's what I'm saying. You already can ! Just because there aren't females in their team doesn't mean they're eveil, you know.

Listen carefully :

An imperialistic army has to come from a very strong and powerful capitalistic State. This is a condition to imperialism. In such a State, society is technologically and socially advanced (well... I would have things to say about that but that's not the point... More advanced than most countries anyway). There is absolutely nothing that forbids such an imperialistic power to have females in their army. In fact, the more agressive the government of such a country is, the more they need every citizen to take part in war, including females.

As of right now, you can totally imagine the security faction to be either :

A- Like it was probably intended by the devs, an alliance between occidental powers (mostly USA, from the voices we have for the moment) and Kurdish fighters who happen to have the same ennemy.

B- An imperialistic army composed of both men and women. The imperialist State behind that army has what we call a semi-colonial, semi-feudal State at their service : that would be why some of them have an arabic accent.

Now, for the insurgents, you can imagine that :

A- They're ISIS fighters. They use suicide bombers, that's quite an hint. When you play as security, you can then imagine that you're in the alliance of occidental powers/local resistance anti-terrorist forces.

B- They're rebels trying to defend themselves with with everything that can make them win, including suicide bombers, from an imperialistic army that tries to control their politics and ressources, but don't particularly have fundamentalist religious motivations. The fact that they're all males shouldn't matter. If you focalize yourself on the genders of people and rant about that, you're the one who's being sexist.

Why does it ruin everything that insurgents have female fighters ?
Answer : it totally eliminates the possibility that insurgents are part of ISIS. They don't fight with women. So what's you're left with is a good rebel force VS an imperialistic army. You basically lose all possibility of seeing yourself as a good guy when playing on security's side. What's even worse is that it's probably not what the devs intended. You're asking the devs to change how they conceived theur games just because you'd like women to enter the army. That's not right.

Human kind has something universal. That's why it doesn't matter if a female plays as a male character, or a male plays as a female character. This should not be an issue. It wasn't an issue in all the games ever, including Insurgency 2, so why does it matter so much now ?

As things are right now, you can decide each time you play if you wanna be the good or bad guys, whatever the faction you're in.

And finally, as far as accuracy goes, what are we aiming for? This is clearly a fictional conflict in a fictional middle-east. What are we aiming for with our accuracy?

It's inspired from a real conflict, that's why it matters. That's why it would be just as stupid as in Battlefield 5. You can't rewrite history. It could make a lot of sense, if and only if the devs imagined a fictional conflict and created it from scratch without taking inspiration from real world powers and factions. That's why accuracy matters, and that's why Insurgency Sandstorm is indeed semi-realistic.

Thanks for having taken the time to read all this. I appriciate debating with people who aren't afraid of reading ^^

@pakislav I never said that. The fact that there are just a few women in burkas (that would look ridiculous in-engine) in real life does not matter. They are such a tiny minority you can't and shouldn't make it a rule to include them. With that logic, what about other minorities ? There are transgender soldiers, too. They exist. Should we make it possible for women to have male voices and for male soldiers to have female voices ?

You remind me of those people who lost their mind because Kingdom Come : Deliverance didn't have black characters. Yes, it was possible to meet a black guy in XVth century Bohemia, but it was so rare it didn't make sense to include them, as it was not something the people experienced day to day. Just like in Sandstorm's middle-east inspired conflict : women terrorists are so rare that it doesn't make sense to include them. Exceptions don't make rules.

Don't be ridiculous.

You gotta be kidding me... Bad enough we have to hear or read that bs everywhere else but we can't even play a video game anymore without someone crying racism/sexism... No.. just no.. Put your big boy pants on and get over it.

last edited by Hossfxr

Give us a break and focus the content in what is important and put aside the politics please , im here to play and have a good time with friends, no to think what will be good if we include x and x because x. I have pic of my dog playing Sandstorm , so to not be a zoophobic lets add some dogs in game. Like the dude with doom picture says. Exceptions dont make rules.

I showed your post to my wife, and both my teenage daughters. They all said you're acting like a puss..

I think you've stumbled on that elusive point that would make this game perfect: injecting identity politics! Kudos, great job.

😐

PS: Now that I think about it, how do you know with which gender any player model identifies during a particular match? Get out of here with your cysnormative homo-transphobia.

😡

PPS: Poe's Law requires that I make clear that this post is 100% sarcastic.

last edited by skillet

@grumf said in Women insurgents.:

it totally eliminates the possibility that insurgents are part of ISIS.

That is precisely what I want.

Listen carefully:

  1. I don't want ISIS in my game. Clear enough?

  2. Your lecture on imperialism is well received but unnecessary, and quite frankly, entirely pointless because I'm not even arguing against including women in the Security faction. Also, you failed to note that said women are not American or foreign as of yet. They all have local voices, so they can't be "part of the imperialist army". They are part of the local government militia, so your point is moot.

  3. So what's you're left with is a good rebel force VS an imperialistic army. You basically lose all possibility of seeing yourself as a good guy when playing on security's side.

That is completely untrue. You could imagine the security as the US supporting the government in a civil war while the rebels are trying to topple the government. Kind of like an LTTE conflict. The LTTE used female suicide bombers, this could be a Sri Lanka style conflict, in which the government is supported by a foreign power (for good or bad, you decide) against a local insurgency.

  1. Again, your call to "semi-realism" is as baseless as it was before. In fact, during the war against the LTTE, the government did not have women in frontline combat while the insurgents did. Adding female insurgents will not harm the "semi-realism" of the game, whatever it even means at this point is anyone's guess.

  2. What's even worse is that it's probably not what the devs intended. You're asking the devs to change how they conceived theur games just because you'd like women to enter the army. That's not right.

Please don't presume to know what the devs did and did not want. Also, if I wish for the game to take a different path than the one it has currently taken, then that is my wish to make, and the devs are free to take it up or discard it as they see fit. You may neither lecture me on whether it is "right" or not, nor put words in the mouths of developers whom you do not represent.

It wasn't an issue in all the games ever, including Insurgency 2, so why does it matter so much now ?

Free-look wasn't included in games before either. Neither was a gore system, neither were certain movements, neither were various esthetic and graphics options. Shall we only start asking for things that were included in earlier titles? I think I can ask for character models whether or not they existed in earlier games or not. That isn't even an argument.

Finally,

If you focalize yourself on the genders of people and rant about that, you're the one who's being sexist.

I did not call you a sexist, and I do not intend to debase myself by throwing around slurs and calling names. If you plan on it kindly let me know, in which case I will promptly stop responding.

I too enjoy talking with people who take their time reading and understanding opposing arguments. It is fine by me that we don't see eye to eye on this or any other issue, as long as we're civil towards each other.

last edited by Rover

So if you're going to use these pictures as evidence first why don't we go through them to see if your claim has any factual basis.

Here's a break down of each picture.

  1. That's a picture posted by the daughter of Olfa Hamrouni in 2016. Was propaganda. No women were fighting at this time.

  2. That's a picture of female fighters for the YPG. They aren't fighting against Americans, they're allied with them. You can see the YPG patch on the girl in the middles' left shoulder.

  3. This is a propaganda photo for women who were raising funds for ISIS in 2015. They weren't combatants just a fundraising op. It was published in an article by a Hindi newspaper. https://www.jagran.com/news/world-women-raising-money-for-isis-13347267.html

  4. This is a photo of Slaleh Raiyshi. She was Hezbollah a suicide bomber who died in Israel, not a combatant in the sense that you're referring to.

  5. this was a photo of the all female group Al Khansa in Anbar province. They weren't combatants, they were a police/religious enforcement group.

  6. This is from a photo session of female ISIS members. receiving combat training in Syria in 2015. However: no women were fighting at this time.

Now, since you're using real life examples as evidence, I assume your appealing to the argument that female islamic Jihadis are "realistic". Not really. They're extremely rare. The photos you shared above are propaganda shoots mixed in out complete inaccuracies (specifically the YPG and Hezbollah one). Suicide bombers are far more common.

That being said, since April, there have been some reports of female combatants in ISIS. This is not because it's normal ; but because they ran out of options. ISIS actively forbade it up to this point: this has been stated by women who were there: see this article https://nationalpost.com/news/world/isis-brides-returning-home-and-raising-the-next-generation-of-jihadist-martyrs).

So yes, in very extreme cases when absolutely forced to, ISIS has let women fight. This is becoming more common as the group weakens. Technically, you could add them to the game and not be committing a mortal sin. But just because a picture has someone holding an AK-47 in it (man or woman), does not mean they are actually combatants. Don't assume that. A good number of the foreign volunteers for Kurdish militias (both men and women), for example who show up in articles with AK's in hand are actually just used as propaganda pawns and spend little to no time on the front line.

https://institute.global/insight/co-existence/female-fighters-show-isiss-changing-nature

last edited by Dark1202

Going to lock this thread as it isn't going anywhere constructive. Women are currently not planned for the Insurgent forces, and will be fighting with the Security team.