Concern about racism and sexism in Supertuxkart 0.9

To: debian-women@lists.debian.org

Subject: Concern about racism and sexism in Supertuxkart 0.9

From: Vincent Lejeune <vljn.ovi@gmail.com>

Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2015 18:56:24 +0200

Message-id: <[🔎] CAJYD9f9af2bLspsXSZJEoU7sue8u4Cf4nT1t1y6k4FRNy=5=CQ@mail.gmail.com>

Hi, I contribued to Supertuxkart (a kart game) new engine featured in the version (0.9). However I left the project 2 months ago because in my opinion some offending materials were included. One of the new track being showcased takes place in a "aztec like" fictionnal environment and has several instance of Native American cultural appropriation ; the poster associated for the release speaks for itself : a white woman is wearing an outfit that can be depicted as a mix of Native american clothes from different nation and a halo of feathers. In game Quetzacoalt (according to Wikipedia, it is an aztec god) figure is used in several places without any concern about its religious meaning ; the track also features an "aztec village" but half of its inhabitant are monkeys. It's Suzanne, the icon from Blender, but her over representation (around 8 models over the 15 models in the village) is in my humble opinion offending, especially since in the second other track, Suzanne is only present twice. On the other hand the new track which takes place in an island with a big airport has 8 models of Sara (the white woman in the poster) in a bikini swim suit, even in the hall of the airport. There are something like 2 Suzanne, 4 GNU (who is still wearing is T shirt) and 4 "aztec" women also featured from the other new track. In my opinion it's privileging a male gaze position. It's not the first time the game do that : 2 years ago when Sara was introduced there was a controversy. She was the first female human character in the game, and one of her animation is making her skirt reveals her pants while jumping. The team didn't remove the animation though. While there are probably free gaming software projects doing worse, the family nature of the game makes its representations appear less harmfull that they really. Debian still packages STK 0.8 (which doesnt have Sara iirc) but it will eventually package 0.9. IMHO the offending materials should be stripped off from the tracks if possible (the tracks are specified as xml file so removing mark should works in most case). Regards, Vincent Lejeune