(keep in mind this is just my feelings on the matter. i type very passionately so i oftentimes come off more aggressive or self assured than i actually am lol, i am 100% open to hearing other opinions especially from other women!!)

this isn't the most egregious example, not anywhere near, but it did remind me of something that's been bugging me for a long time: i am absolutely tired of female characters in every medium—real and fictional—being seen as bodies first and characters second

it's especially bad when it comes to games with male/female variants of the same concept, like the modern fire emblems, where the female character loses all the aura the male character has—whether it be the muscle, the armor, or even something simple like the poses being changed to be "womanly". especially when it comes to anime, where the female variants of male characters often end up with childlike traits, being massive eyes and an incredibly small, rounded jaw

while i don't like objectification in general (different to sexualisation—i think sexy female characters are fine and good), i can at least excuse an objectified side or background character as the artist or development team creating them with one hand. i really have no defense for the bad changes they make to female characters that are meant to be the same as a male counterpart

sure, this picture for example isn't as wild as something like the Terry Bogard genderswap, and you can change their clothing styles during gameplay (thankfully), but even these small changes are still done with intent. sure, the body might change with a genderswap depending on the artist. this is understandable. but what is truly the rhetoric behind making the fem version of a male character reveal more skin, become more dainty, have a complete personality change into something more submissive, or even lighten skin tone (some of these don't have to do with the picture above, they're just examples of my point. fe avatars don't even really have personalities lol)?

I know the answer for a lot of people is just "it's hot", but I still even then don't really understand that reasoning when it comes to genderswap characters. again, I can be somewhat more lax with sexualised or even objectified characters that are like that by themselves. but there is absolutely patriarchal conditioning involved in the mindset of "the female version of this buff, fully armored, and self assured male character has to be skinny, showing skin in all the right places and shy/submissive"

it was—and still is—just... hard seeing this trope everywhere in gaming spaces especially. seeing people make representation of your identity, but completely strip all their former intrigue in exchange for something objectifiable, always felt so degrading. honestly, idk how other women feel abt these sorts of things but constantly engaging with medias that perform these philosophies really started making me feel 'less than' for being a woman, like our body was the single greatest asset of our characterization in fiction. even the tiniest of changes start standing out, and they start becoming hard to look past. whether it's something relatively small but still very noticable like this, or if it's something actively and openly egregious, i feel like both contribute to the larger threat of misogynistic thinking

not that sexualisation alone is misogynistic. sexy female characters, sexy women, all fantastic! i don't agree with the demonising of attraction or anything of the sort. i just always felt there was something much more misogynistic about genderbent male characters being made more objectifiable or more sexualised, rather than just outright making an original sexualised female character 

this design philosophy that i wish would die out