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Why? Because what currently goes as “video games” – meaning the games themselves and the culture around them – is actually a system of marginalization and encouraged resentful behavior and memes. Actually I still have other more design oriented articles in the pipeline, but there was already so much shit going down in just one month, I kinda can’t let that just pass by. It’s not okay and it needs to addressed. Hard.
Today I would like to walk you through that system and would kindly ask you to either help break that thing or step the fuck aside. Please. Thank you.
+++ TRIGGER WARNING!: Even though this article aims to be sound and thoughtful, it’s also emotionally honest. So you can expect some harsch language and seriously triggery images (including actual real world violence).+++
It’s Not Even February, Dammit!
2012 was a year when the tolerance of many regarding sexism in games boiled over. We had many rather big so called “controversies” – fake geek girls bullshit, sexual assault surviver Lara, Hitman ninja nuns and way more. I put “controversies” in quotation marks, because I find this label very unfitting for most incidents. The controversy was about, if it’s legit to complain, to be outraged, offended and to voice your feelings or if those incidents were all non-issues and video games were just suffering an unjustified attack.
Because the inexperience in debating sexism for example and lack of understanding what those isms are and when they apply is one of the big problems we have here. The other one is the fact that – independent from the subject – it is in dispute if one should be allowed to criticize games at all for anything regarding social or political issues.
Anyway, publishers, devs, many writers and other game related outlets had to deal with quite some backlash for many of their releases, especially after the attacks (no, not just words, literal attacks) on Sarkeesian made the systemic sexism in games so drastically visible. And what did they learn? How did they decide to go out and confront the sexism charges in 2013? They fucking doubled down.
They tried to tease a future noir RPG with the image of a female prostitute about to be executed, they segregated same-sex players of Star Wars Old Republic away on their own gay-ghetto planet, they tried to push the sales of a zombie game with a mutilated bikini model statue, posted a tits and ass focused game review to increase visits of their game hub site and launched an ad where a guy offers to replace you in all sorts of pesky social interactions with women, so you can finally play more Call of Duty. (I’m pretty sure, I’m missing something) And it’s not even one month in.
And of course those incidents started so called “controversies” again, where people who actually care about this stuff voiced their concerns and a big chunk of the gaming public did not just disagree, but doubled down on their bigoted behavior as well.
Systemic Marginalization
When critics publicly call out sexism, racism, homophobia, ableism or any other form of discrimination and hateful messaging in the games culture sphere, there are many – dare I say most – gamers and game professionals who are quick to react as if they are unfairly attacked, as if they are discriminated against or even going as far as feeling their rights threatened.
They don’t see the resentment in their culture. They don’t feel angry or hate filled, so how could their behavior be resentful, right? They surely would recognize if they would have any sort of internalized resentment, right? And to accuse games to suffer from systemic hate would be a bit far fetched, right?
To them the hateful content is either not there or caused by invisible hand of the market, a result simply of the interplay of supply and demand. Nobody is at fault here, it’s just how it goes, right? And since non of the hateful content is there on purpose, nobody actually wants to say or do something hateful, it is unfair to call it hate, right? If everyone considers themselves to be respectful towards women, how could there be sexism? If every white guy has a couple of black friends, there cannot possibly be racism, right?
Well, it’s not that easy. Unfortunately behavior speaks louder than thoughts and nobody can define their own internalized isms out of existence and expect the offended groups to play along.
First let’s look at a simplified market system, where supply and demand influence each other:
And here is the actual fuck pool we are swimming in:
You see those two extra bubble spot things? Yeah, that’s something really special to game culture. But nothing to be proud of. This is where the shit hits the fan.
When industry output gets criticized for hateful content (mostly sexist, racist or generally exclusionary stuff), gamers get defensive. But only very few objections to the criticism are actually aimed at whatever the critical person has said. The strongest and most commonly used rebuttals are kitchen sink attacks aimed at the critical persons themselves. The games culture deals with criticism by discrediting the person who uttered it.
Instead of going after the substance of the critique – “I don’t think it’s sexist because it does not meet any criteria of sexism.” or “I see how this appears sexist to you, but there is more to this picture, here is a link for context.” – , most rebuttals go like this:
“It’s not sexist. You just say it is because you don’t understand games.”
“It’s not sexist. You just say it is because you are oversensitive.”
“It’s not sexist. You just say it is because you just want clicks for your blog.”
“It’s not sexist. You just say it is because you want to find something to complain about.”
“It’s not sexist. You just say it is because you don’t like games.”
“It’s not sexist. You just say it is because you hate men.”
“It’s not sexist. You just say it is because you only want games to be how you would like them.”
“It’s not sexist. You just say it is because you are stupid.”
“It’s not sexist. You just say it is because you are sex negative.”
“It’s not sexist. You just say it is because you want some pussy, white knight.”
Don’t tell me you have not read this shit a thousand times already. This is what happens to people who voice criticism, they get marginalized. They get labelled as either mentally incapable, as emotionally unstable, as being an outsider or as having an evil agenda. “You say this game is sexist? Sure, honey, GTFO, you don’t belong here.”
A core which is a super easy and super low-risk target to market to.
And how does the industry get you there? They confirm the discrimination, glorify the dominant demographic while actively devaluing all others. They feed their audience narratives of how games are under siege by feminists, forge superoffensive content only to then demand that players pick a side and foster an environment, where disagreeing with them means you are an enemy.
The problem is not, that the industry is mostly tailoring their output for white able heterosexual men and boys. The problem is that they are specifically crafting messages to resonate with their favorite audience’s internalized or expressed resentment for all otherness. They sell male on female violence. They sell sexual dominance over women, ranging from omnisexual irresistibility fantasies to worlds populated by hookers to rape fantasies. They sell homophobia. They sell stupid girlfriend can’t game memes. They sell white guys are the hero and have black friends memes. They sell foreigners are the enemy memes.
The industry puts out all this vile messages and when someone points at this shit and sais “Uhm, that’s some vile shit!”, this someone can expect to have even more vile shit piled onto him or her for daring to speak up.
Even from a business standpoint it’s super stupid. Every now and then the industry will put out vile shit, where even the easy-going loyalists can’t go along with and then those people get pushed aside as well. Every now and then, a loyalists core player will no longer marvel at boob physics. And every now and then a member of the core will get what a feminists is arguing and recognize how fucked up everything is. This former customer will be lost, because he wont be able to voice his demands, wont be able to say what he would be willing spend money on without becoming a target for ridicule, insults and ignorance. The self-selecting process also makes sure that the hard core slowly but surely erodes.
Yeah, that’s the loyal bro-verload demographic, an eroding lump of super easy low-risk marketing targets, bound by groupthink and peer pressure to buy and defend whatever appalling crap the industry puts out as long as it confirms their internalized resentment, devoid of any agency as a consumer.
Core Concerns
Now in discussions with loyalists many legitimate concerns come up, which I’d like to adress here one by one. I understand how you can feel threatened/attacked by having games you like getting accused of containing sexism, problematic violence, racism, homophobia and whatnot and then to top it all of have people demand changing this stuff. But I hope that with time you will understand how completely unnecessary that reaction is and stop being a pawn of the games industry.
Concern 1: Criticism is an attack on video games.
This depends who launches that criticism, who is addressed and why? We all know that games as a medium are easily scapegoated for societal ills mainly surrounding misbehaving youth and or violence. What are games teaching our kids? Do they train us to be killers? These accusations even lead to legislative actions in many countries, law suits and all that jazz. In 2012 accusations of rape culture and misogyny also drew a connection between societal ills and games and what can we now expect to come out of this? Does this not confirm the Jack Thompson’s of the world?
No. And here is why:
An attack on games goes as follows: You have someone who is not into games trying to convince other people who are not into games that games have a negative impact. A politician is stirring up the votes of concerned parents. A lawyer is trying to convince a judge to decide in his favor. A conservative TV show host is trying to increase his ratings by appealing to gun owners. You see the pattern here?
Sarkeesian for example, who is targeted by loyalists because she is thought of as having her own agenda (getting money, getting attention, feminist coup d’état or something) and abusing video games to reach her sinister goals. Now, why is that bullshit? Because she is involved in games and other popculture media and is addressing an audience who is involved in games and other popculture media. Even if you don’t accept the premis of her being a game fan (she must be one of those fake geek girls, right fellas?), she is still addressing us. She is addressing the community.
To say that criticism coming from the community addressed at the community is hurting the community, is like saying your doctor telling you to work out more and change your diet is hurting your health.
Concern 2: I don’t want certain content censored or my games taken away.
Yeah, that would be fucked up, wouldn’t it?. I’m so against any form of censorship, you have no idea. Here in germany we have the USK, which is similar to the Comics Code Authority in the US. They check games for content that might get rejected by the BPjM (Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons), which has the power to simply take products down.
The recent Mortal Kombat is one of those products. It practically impossible to get the game here in germany. Publicly displaying the game or parts of it is basically a felony (with a few exceptions). The game disappeared. I was lucky enough to be an early buyer and got my copy before the BPjM took the game down. Still, none of the DLCs are available to me, only multiplayer is now available either and I as a public game critic researcher teacher whatever am not allowed to show any content of the game here on my site. And the list is long. But even longer is the list of changes to games before release in germany, so they would not be taken down for “youth protection reasons”. Blood gets deleted out of games, game features get cut, sometimes full missions get barred to make sure a game is legally allowed to be advertised and publicly sold here in ye olde germany.
This sucks. And is in my opinion an unconscionable infringement of freedoms. But censorship does not come from parts of the community demanding to be treated with respect and be recognized. Nobody is going to take your guns away, you know. Even if you just fear that what you like will dwindle in popularity and you will therefor be left in the dust with your desires, don’t worry. There will always be a market for sex and violence and even celebration of masculinity… always.
The advent of the Sundance Festival or the fact that Catherine Bigelow gets award nominations will not make Michael Bay go away. You will get your fix of whatever content you crave, you just have to be vocal about what you want. And NO, being vocal about your demands is not the same as discrediting anyone who has different demands from your’s.
The worst thing that will happen? Diversification. If that scares you, I cannot help you.
The sexism and racism in this otherwise well made spot is really a shame, because I so dig Peter Stormare and the mail box in the shredder shot is such nice throwback to his part in Fargo.
Concern 3: I don’t want to be shamed for what I like.
Batman – Arkham City is a game with a lot of sexist content. In two of my most prominent articles on the subject I added screenshots of the game to illustrate how crass and widespread sexism is in games. And lookie here; I accused the game to have sexism in it again!
This 3 times example of sexism is my publicly praised game of the year 2011. And Gears Of War 3, a game I harshly criticized for glorifying genocide managed to get on the number 5 spot. Even Mortal Kombat which is sexist as hell landed in the top 3.
Now how the fuck does this work? Don’t I hate the games? Don’t I want them to go away? Well, no. In contrast to the dogma-bound loyalist core, I am able to have a nuanced opinion about something as massive, complex, multilayered and interdisciplinary as an AAA game. Maybe you should look into that too.
A few aspects of a game don’t necessarily ruin the whole game for me. And even just looking a the sexist aspect, you can be nuanced. I appreciate a well sculpted and animated female character model in a game. Sexy ladies appeal to me. Still, I’m conscious about the fact, that the sexy characters presented to me, as much as I enjoy the visuals, might be offensive, might be instances of sexualization and objectification of women. There are many ways to present sexuality in games, sexy people, without being disrespectful towards women and without feeding into harmful narratives. Chill out.
Don’t you realize how weak it looks when you need to resort to Ad Hominem attacks when someone criticizes an aspect of a game you enjoy? If you don’t want to be viewed as a sexist for enjoying Arkham City for example, do you really think saying women who care are stupid or oversensitive or “the enemy” will create the right impression?
Admitting that you enjoy sexist content from time to time, does not make you an asshole. But pretending that the sexist scenarios in your games are not sexist, pretending that they are in fact acceptable to everyone except to people who are inferior to you, DOES!
Critics Ruin Video Games… …Good!
Maybe you as a gamer don’t want to think about what you consume and what it does to the community. Maybe you are comfortably ignorant. Maybe you want games to be predominantly sexist, but just don’t want people to bitch about it. Maybe you want to go to conventions and shamelessly stare at booth babe asses and take photos of their tits without having to go through the motions of asking her first. Maybe you want games to go all out with the girlfriend memes, because you have a girlfriend and the jokes about her make her know her place. And maybe you enjoy that XBOX Live is a place where you can ask female players to suck your dick without feeling out of place. Boys will be boys, right? And where when not in games culture can we be boys and not feel ashamed for it, right? Right, fellas?
And maybe you as a publisher, marketer, outlet or journalist don’t care about who you throw under the bus, as long as your risk-aversion calculations add up. Maybe you are comfortably fine with not having to address female players, do more for ethnic minority players, because that shit is hard. Maybe you appreciate that for every female job applicant there are 9 male ones you can hire instead, so you can ensure your development teams and editorial staff understand your carefully filtered loyalist core audience.
If this is what video games are to you. Yes, then I’m afraid I’m here to ruin that. You will be kicking and screaming, but video game criticism will drag your precious video games into the fucking 21st century. Maybe not this year, maybe next year. But eventually, you will have to make some fucking room for other demographics, for other ideas. You are welcome.
Good thing I’m not a “gamer”. What a terrible way to identify oneself.
Once again the writer of this blog grasps at straws to make his point (shocking images, over blown examples, or nonsensical charts). And whenever anyone comes in to debate while bullet pointing their rebuttals (as in a few responses seen here) they are met with snark and a wall of text with no real debate. Your blog is not helping the debate on sexism in the gaming industry, it only detracts from the debate with sensationalism while waxing your own ego.
Time and time again I ask you to explain why you are so fascinated on this topic and why you won’t allow a real debate to go on, just what you believe is the way to see things.
Yeah, time and time you accuse me of stuff and then ask me why… and time and time you wont get an answer from me. Whatever you think my debating habits are, the treatment I give you is your’s alone. Because your comments are moronic, Frank. Seriously.
Please continue, I grab my popcorn. But don’t expect to be treated seriously here.
Ah so the truth finally comes out. This is all about your ego. And when confronted about explaining yourself you revert to a childlike reference to the popcorn meme. This is proof enough. Thank you for inadvertently finally clearing things up. Some honest friendly advice. You are not helping propel the conversation about women in video games, or in anything. Do yourself and everyone else a favor and stop. Or at the very least, take a big step back and look at all that you, your commentators, and the rest of the web have said on the subject. If after that you still don’t see the issue with what & how you write on your blog on the subject, then I pity you.
OH NO! He stared into my soul and exposed me. He pities me. I’M crushed to my very core. What am I doing with my life?
Oh my god, you ARE PURE GOLD! Please, c’mon, another one! Go, Frank, go!
Wow, seriously grow up.
Wow, you’re a douchebag.
Chiao, bitch.
I would just like to say how happy I am to see this issue being addressed more and more by the gaming community. Kudos to you for a great article.
I’ve recently started my own blog and am currently covering sexism in video games – though I’m doing it from a different angle. I’m taking comments left on forums by people who are support the continuing marginalization and sexualization of women and refuting (to the best of my ability) them intellectually. The first article in the series went up last week. I’ll be posting the second one tomorrow. I encourage you and other’s here to check it out! http://www.levelthirteen.org/lvl1-sexuality-video-games-sexism/
Spread the word! And keep up the great work!
“Admitting that you enjoy sexist content from time to time, does not make you an asshole. But pretending that the sexist scenarios in your games are not sexist, pretending that they are in fact acceptable to everyone except to people who are inferior to you, DOES!”
THIS!!! A thousand times this!
Really enjoyed this article. Keep up the great work!
Glad you dig and I will. :)
While you do make some good points in your article, it’s unfortunate that the tone of the piece is that of an emotional rant. In essence you’ve made it too easy for those that your piece it targeted at to disregard it as the bemoanings of ‘another overly emotional feminist misandrist.’ You’ll game more traction with the content if the piece keeps a more emotionally controlled tone.
I agree with Mizahn-X in that it’s a matter of economics that has shaped the media we consume, and we, as consumers, need to take responsibility for our role this mess. It’s too dismissive to entirely put the onus back on those responsible for creating, marketing and producing/publishing the media you abhor whether that be the latest Bieber single, Michael Bay movie, or installment in the CoD franchise. The reason these types of products exist is because they are profitable. They are profitable because we show up in droves to consume each and every shiny new iteration. It’s a difficult situation, as a person may fancy herself as a high brow consumer of games pointing out sexism and racism at every turn and then on the way home from work stop off for some junk food at McDonald’s. We need to realize that as consumers we speak with our money, and each time we make a purchase we are essentially casting another vote for the perpetuation of that product/service.
I’m not sure that I follow your last section regarding censorship. It almost seems that as you were writing it you realized that if a game could be banned simply on the basis that it offended and individual or group of individuals there wouldn’t be any games left. It seems to let the wind out of your sails as you close on a message of: “some sexism is okay, but I’m still gonna complain about it so shut up and take what I dish out.” I also can’t help but point out the irony here in an article about sexism as you demand the target of the article/rant to ‘take it like a man’ as implied in your statement: “Grow some fucking backbone, bro!”
To wrap up, remember we are all able to make our own choices and so long as our actions don’t infringe on another’s rights and freedoms we should be free to behave in this manner. By analogy, if I don’t like the content/narrative of CoD the appropriate action is to not purchase the game and even voice my opinion of why I don’t like it, not to have it banned and thus take away another’s choice to play.
-A.A.
Uhm.. I really don’t feel like correcting your totally skewed view on what rights, and infringement is and how little understanding you have of the damage sexism does to many people’s right and well being, so I will just let your comment stand here as a readers second opinion or something.
Cheers.
I’m very much open to a discussion of the complexities of individual choice or free will. As there isn’t a definitive right answer, the discussion provides a chance to expand our own perspective on the subject.
You noted that you disagree with censorship denying your access to violent videos games such as Mortal Kombat. From this I would infer that you would not agree with claims that a person who plays violent video games is more likely to act out violently. By extension, do you feel a person who plays games with sexist and racist content more likely to act out in a sexist or racist manner in real life? I suspect that your answer would be no, and this is what has me confused with your stance on sexist/racist content in video games.
Hey… that’s a great question!
The thing you point to would actually be logically inconsistent, the way you phrased it. Of course it’s weird to just wave away the negative influence of violent images and write rants about the supposed negative influence of sexist images. So it’s great that yopu posed that questions and allow me to clear up misconceptions about it.
And you infer wrong, I do not consider depictions of violence in media harmless and I would heavily object against any attempt at regulating sexist content in any media… so no matter how much I disapprove of content I would never demand actual restrictions on the creation or even distribution of said content. I would just demand a conscious approach at creating and consuming said content and would demand to be able to debate it.
Anyway back to the actual difference in objecting to violent and sexist content:
Though your phrasing is commonly used, I really think everybody needs to be way more nuanced about dealing with this question.
Pop culture media (including games of course), news media, education, the way people interact with their peers, all that contributes to a person’s norms and values. And norms and values inform actions. Everything we consume or experience gets kinda processed in relation to the norms and values we already have in us. The things we already consider normal or right defnie how much influence a message has on us.
When it comes to killing for example, most people have a very strong opinion about it: namely “Killing is evil unless it is in self defense” (it’s more nuanced like that, yes)… so whenever we play games or watch movies where a person kills for no good reason, most people would reject that depicted concept – at least for the real life – and it is very very unlikely that Call of Duty will make them even a bit more homicidal.
Violence against women on the other hand does not have this firewall of already established norms and values to overcome. Rape is still an issue where women severly have to suffer from established norms and values, that make it hard to report rape (only 54% of cases get reported) and drag victims to immese emotional stress and public humiliation for her supposed part in the rape incident. Domestic violence is amongst the biggest health concerns for women.
So when we have sexual violence, like the Cyberpunk execution scene or the Dead Island torso it is much more problematic (meaning it needs to be dealt with consciously. I’m not calling for kneejerk removal) because it can confirm the norms and values in our society that inform actions like rape or domestic violence or the obstruction of prosecution of those two things. And due to the fact that the threat of becoming a victim of gendered violence is much more realistic and sometimes even already became a reality for women… those images and especially the casual “Oh that’s fun!” from the community are scary, insulting and super insensitive.
That’s why violence and sexism in media do not have the same weight, do not have the same impact. And that is why it may appear sometimes, that feminists apply a double standard when it comes to violence and sexism. They (which includes me) actually apply the same standards but recognize that violence and games actually are different when it comes to the issues of media impact.
Cheers.
BTW: kudos for coming back after my dismissive response with a much more subject oriented question. Seriously.
Perhaps we have very different cultural backgrounds, but from my experience I cannot agree with your premise that ‘violence against women does not have a firewall of established norms and values to overcome.’ Violence against women is so socially unacceptable that movies and games often use it to manipulate an audience’s emotions. A scene showing an antagonist mistreating a women, whether it be verbal abuse, physical abuse, or trying to force himself on her sexually is so often used because the result is always the same: the audience will have strong negative emotions toward the antagonist. The irony here is that some viewers will call the scene sexist, not for the violence against women, but for the fact that the female character is being portrayed as weak/helpless and needs rescuing in the first place.
I agree with you that murder and rape are two extremely heinous acts. I disagree with your assertation that rape or violence against women more palatable to society. The Call of Duty franchise is an example where gamers switch off the concept of killing entirely to have fun. Is there an example of a game or movie that portrays rape for enjoyment?
If nothing else, it should restore some of your faith back in humanity the Dead Island torso was a complete and utter failure. As it relates to sexism I propose a thought exercise:
Image if that mutilated female torso was never created, and instead Deep Silver had created a mutilated male torso. Of course we can only speculate, but how would you envision consumers reacting? Would you expect to see the same level of outrage?
Hey AcmeAnvil…
Thanks for your reply. Let’s go a bit deeper.
1.
“Perhaps we have very different cultural backgrounds, but from my experience I cannot agree with your premise that ‘violence against women does not have a firewall of established norms and values to overcome.’ Violence against women is so socially unacceptable that movies and games often use it to manipulate an audience’s emotions. A scene showing an antagonist mistreating a women, whether it be verbal abuse, physical abuse, or trying to force himself on her sexually is so often used because the result is always the same: the audience will have strong negative emotions toward the antagonist. The irony here is that some viewers will call the scene sexist, not for the violence against women, but for the fact that the female character is being portrayed as weak/helpless and needs rescuing in the first place.”
I totally agree with your observations here. Now of course the concept of violence against women is socially unaaceptable, but unfortunately when it comes to actual incidents, – once people need to decide if they maintain how unacceptable violence against women is, when it means having to punish a man for doing it – it’s not so clean cut.
Here is some statistics for you:
http://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/reporting-rates
You wont find a similar treatment of incidents of gun violence for example.
Regarding sexism of those scenes you described, yeah the are sexist, and I’m not being ironic about it. Of course it would be massively more sexist if the man who hurts a women in a film would be treated like role model character or hero, but using violence against women to establish a bad guy is also pretty sexist.
The thing with this kind of plot device is a play with power dynamics. The villain is a villain because he was violent against someone who he had power over. These kinds of establishing scene can use varios kinds of underpowered victims, depending on story context: a man or woman hurting a child, a man or woman hurting an animal, a man or woman hurting a mentally or physically handycapped person, a man or woman hurting a captive victim and so on. A man hurting a woman is just used in the same power dynamic contexts as the other examples above. The scene only succeeds in establishing a bad guy under the premis that the woman is much weaker and helpless and he is abusing his position of power.
2.
“The Call of Duty franchise is an example where gamers switch off the concept of killing entirely to have fun. Is there an example of a game or movie that portrays rape for enjoyment?”
Well, yeah, there is, but I consider games who do that to be very very fringe and niche products, which I would not see as representative for the current state of video games. If you wanna satisfy your curiosity:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RapeLay and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Custer%27s_Revenge
Okay, not much in the way of rape simulators on the market, compared to gun kill simulators at least. So where is the problem then? As I said above the concept of violence against women for most people is not something that is acceptable. Well there is a HUGE industry selling rape fatasies, porn that is, but they are literally selling “the forbidden”, so that’s a whole different story.
What do games do? They do not directly sell violence against women, but the mix violence against women with sexual stimuli. That’s why there are so many complaints about the default skimpy clothing and large breasts and ass shots in most games. Sexuality in a sexual context is very much okay, but it get’s tricky once the player is asked to gain enjoyment from hurting a female character which at the same time is presented to be sexual desirable. In Soul Calibur, Ivy for example is basically fighting wearing a bikini, being well sculpted and endowed with impressive breast physics… and then we are supposed to enjoy seeing her getting beaten up or enjoy beating her up ourselves. (Of course that’s just part of the presentation, the nice animations and great combat systems do their part in motivating the player as well.) Some games go even as far as making the female characters get more naked the more you beat them (example).
This is violence against women for entertainment. And while there is admittedly even more violence against men for entertainment out there, the violence against men doesn’t get conflated with sexual dominance.
3.”If nothing else, it should restore some of your faith back in humanity the Dead Island torso was a complete and utter failure.”
Oh yes, absolutely. It did. I consider the general outcry over this torso thing to be a very positive outcome and am happy that the attacks on feminism from defenders of the torso where rather minor this time.
4.”As it relates to sexism I propose a thought exercise: Image if that mutilated female torso was never created, and instead Deep Silver had created a mutilated male torso. Of course we can only speculate, but how would you envision consumers reacting? Would you expect to see the same level of outrage?”
No. Not at all. At least not the torso. But I guess we would have a solid level of outrage, when the statue focussed on representing a ripped apart male body wearing a string tanga with the crotch and ass section intact. If we would have basically mixed sexual presentation of a male body with mutilation of said body, we would have violently reduced an image of a man as a sexual interest into a sexual object. This would be an issue for concern, at least for me and most feminists I know. It would not gather as much anger as the female torso, since there is not much precedent, there isn’t an already open wound, so to speak.
Cheers.
Lets address this point by point, shall we?
1. You led with a shocking, nonsense image in order to draw in readers. That was in horribly poor taste and is begging for animosity. You’re trolling. You are asking for people to come in here and get emotionally charged at you with that as your lead in. Then you’d probably have the audacity to act shocked when they were angry with you. I had half a mind not even bother reading the article when it’s led off with sensationalist tripe like that. But I already gave you the site hit, so I might as well be able to debate with while knowing your position I guess.
2. Drop the f-bomb then warn there will be cursing in the article. Classy. That’s like spoiling something, then cheekily saying “By the way, spoiler alert” while smirking.
3. Nobody with a sound mind thought the Dead Island thing getting shut down was an attack on gaming. You can find anyone to support a position anywhere, but as someone who frequents video game forums, I didn’t find a single person who saw that getting pulled as an attack on gaming. You created a strawman then attacked it within your first argument. You created these ‘gaming loyalists’ as your enemy. When really, by and large they don’t exist. But lets not forget you’ve already tried to draw an emotional response from people, to anger them with your photoshop skills to start. So you’re asking for attacks.
4. Literal attacks? Someone ran up and hit her? No, I think it was just words.
5. Female prostitute? So you assume anyone flaunting themselves is a prostitute? Sex-positive feminism doesn’t exist in your mind? I think if you want to see a real sexist you need only look into the mirror. (Also if you’d have bothered to watch the trailer you’d know she wasn’t even executed. Spoiler alert.)
6. As your photoshop image is showing, you are unfairly attacking the gaming public. Considering a majority of people who play video games aren’t like that.
7. And people who try to defend the hobby get drowned by people like you parroting the 3 dickheads who are responding in the worst way. Toot that vocal minority horn, sir!
8. “Any business model which is based on the progressive exclusion of audience members, will eventually run out of customers.” We’ll get to this one at the end.
9. Have you watched any of Sarkeesian’s videos before? She goes in with a pre-drawn conclusion and only picks and chooses evidence that supports her. She doesn’t even acknowledge opposing viewpoints. And anyone who actually tries to have a debate with her gets shut down.
10. What does this have to do with gun control? Completely unrelated strawman argument again. Get that out of here.
11. I’d love to see more female game designers. Nobody is arguing against that. And way to equate current games to Michael Bay. There you go again with the attacks, trying to inflame people.
12. So you’re willing to write articles about it but you won’t stop buying or praising the game? So…you’re a Facebook activist? Anything beyond words is just…ugh…too difficult.
13. “Don’t you realize how weak it looks when you need to resort to Ad Hominem attacks” Much like half the content of this article? Much like that image that leads this article off?
14. I forgot where ‘fake geek girls’ was in this article. But that was horribly overblown by the media and people like that. Hilariously so. I saw articles all over The Escapist about it, but never saw it actually happen.
15. Your last paragraph contains a lot of maybes, because you don’t know who you’re actually addressing. You’re addressing video game playing dudes as a whole, and therefore have to resort to horrible straw manning and ad hominem attacks left and right.
Sincerely,
A game playing girl who thinks you’re a jackass.
Hello, Elizabeth…
Before you read on. My answers to your points are a bit snarky, I think it’s appropriate considering your comments, but would understand if you find it offensive and apologize in advance. I have a very important and serious question though:
Why do you go through the motions of examining my article for points to rebut? What is the negative consequence of what I am doing and why do you therefore feel the need to correct me? Going through your points it got very clear to me, that there is some serious anger in your comments and some serious desire to fight me… and I seriously do not understand why.
I think it could be very productive and I would really appreciate if you would take the time to answer that. Thanks.
––– snarky replies to your points ahead –––
Ooh, sound s like fun. Let’s go!
Yeah, the image is shocking and kinda silly. And yeah, since I have something to say I create headlines and lead in images that are designed to draw readers. And yes, this post is also designed to agitate a certain kind of audience, though I’m not shocked if people are angry at me for what I write, I get that often. And with this post I would be really confused if it did not piss some people off.
I’m glad you did. What you consider “debate” is the regular kitchen sink reply stuff I get for my articles and it is super comfortable to address this in one sweep with one comment reply. I’m sorry that you as a single commenter now have to bear the brunt of my replies.
I apologize to everyone who would have appreciated the trigger waring before I use any offensive language. I hope you managed to power through the 1 shit-bomb and the 1 fuck-bomb, even if you have not been prepared by a proper warning. Okay, I know it’s kinda silly to have been cursing before I wrote the warning, but is this really a problem we need to discuss here.
And if someone thinks the Dead Island thing getting shut down was an attack on gaming, I still would see them as people with a sound mind. I just would think, we would have a disagreement. The whole article kinda was about how Ad Hominem sucks and it would be kinda hypocritical to go and do that myself, you know. So far, you are behaving like a one of my straw gaming loyalists, especially with that “sound mind” comment. So if I would frequent the same forums as you do, I would find you. And the torso thing is an example, don’t pretend like you don’t understand that one of my supposed non-existant loyalist must adhere to each and every example.
Hm, regarding straw men arguments: Uing my anger inducing photoshop skills (there are people getting angry over someone’s photoshop skills? WTF?) to paste in heaps of straw into the opener image was too subtle, wasn’t it?
Alright, alright. I’m starting to see a pattern here. You hate homework. Here is something for you: http://www.feministfrequency.com/2012/07/image-based-harassment-and-visual-misogyny/
Na, I don’t assume anything. I just apply common ways of reading images, these do not necessarily reflect my own interpretations and count in multiple perspectives in evaluating the connotations of images. I don’t need to think that she is a hooker to point to the fact that her appearance is that of a hooker. I also have no problem with hookers, as long as the women owns her situation, sex work is very much okay with me. I have the utmost respect for women who own their sexuality and therefore have full respect whatever they decide to do with their sexuality.
About the ending to the trailer: I explicitly write that the trailer does not follow through on having the charcter killed… I do this in bold letters. That’s the thing with your kitchen sink approach – or what you call “point by point” – you are bound to fall victim to your own confirmation bias in an attempt at collecting points to rebut.
Ah, okay, yeah. “Straw man” and “they don’t exist”.. you already said that. Another point for your list, I guess.
You get drowned? What does this even mean? Do you feel like your opinions don’t get the attention they deserve? I don’t even…? What do I do to you, that makes you pick fatalistic metaphors like “drowning”? Seriously.
Allright,.. Then I will pretend like there is no number 8, since there is no point here, and will address number 8 later as well. I guess.
Yeah, I saw all of her videos actually. I sometimes think she is trying too hard to hammer home the point how annoying sexism is to her. I think, her emphasized disapproval of sexist content kinda clouds her messaging and runs counter to the idea of educating people. I can totally understand, if her videos feel patronizing and agenda driven. Heck, I can totally understand, if my articles feel patronizing and agenda driven. Still, her reasoning and arguments are intellectually sound and she does proper research. As there are as much opinions about how to approach making educational videos as there are stars in the sky, her approach of course has it’s problems. And I don’t share some of her conclusions. But ingeneral, I would say she does a good job overall and I’m looking forward to her video series on games.
I never was able to observe her shutting opposing viewpoints down, though. I’m interested what kinds of situations you are referring to. If you got links, please share.
You are right. I used the gun control argument to ridicule the idea of “game control”. I did draw a comparison of to similar ways of easoning, even though the two subjects are not related that much. Nope, will stay in there, though I understand how this can come of bad.
You would see that as an unjustified comparison? I think it is very very valid. When it comes to political themes, aesthetics, narrative themes, social themes, the use of stereotyping and such… current AAA are very similar to the average Michael Bay movie. But hey, feel free to disagree.
See, the kitchen sink again. First you question me for being kinda too radical and now you question me for being kinda not radical enough. Now you trapped yourself again and contradicted yourself. What is your point? I mean in general what do you have to say? Just going through a long text and finding rebuts is what you call “goes in with a pre-drawn conclusion and only picks and chooses evidence that supports” and then you don’t even care about consistent messaging or get hung up on formalities like, that I wrote fuck before I warned people about it.
What is it you want me to understand? Do you want me to understand that I should follow up on my criticism and actually work against the games you are defending here, so I’m not a hypocrite or something? You make no sense. That kitchen sink is really a bad strategy to solve anything.
What drives you so mad, that you spend all that effort in pushing me back by literally scouting my article for things to rebut, independent from if they have any relevance to any debate about sexism or even up to the point of sacrificing your own positions in favor of just finding the one extra point to correct me about?
Well, I don’t see my article doing that, but with the opening image you are totally right. I really hoped me using the Westboro Baptist Church and literally putting straw on every person there would make it more obvious that this is a straw man caricature. But again, I guess the straw is too subtle.
Ha, yeah, the media. Sure. I guess you can be lucky to not have tro suffer through the same ugly situations and share the same observations as other females in the community. Good for you, bad for your understanding about the shit that is going down around here.
The “maybe” is a question for the reader and allows the reader to decide for himself if he associates with the ideas there. So it is explicitly specified that I do not address a group defined by anything other then their opinions. So, kinda the opposite of what you said, but hey, another point for your list, right?
Sincerely,
a game playing game critic dude who thought for a second he would understand why but the had to deal with so much either unrelated or conflicting complaints from you, that he really has no tools left whatsoever to understand why you think he is a jackass.
Cheers.
I’ll just address a couple of things here.
Firstly the whole “What is the negative consequence of what I am doing and why do you therefore feel the need to correct me?” thing. The negative consequence is, arguably, spreading misinformation. Though you may have good intentions, that isn’t all that counts. The ends don’t justify the means sort of thing.
As an example, the Cyberpunk 2077 or W/E trailer. Please tell me why you have targeted that as being misogynist and sexist. It is showing a mass murderer being arrested for mass murder, with a gun against their head so that they don’t continue to mass murder. They happen to be a girl.
This is a problem many people have with criticism regarding sexism in games. You pick something that has a girl in it in a non-positive light and suddenly its sexism, or at least that’s what it looks like to a lot of people. Given context on said image, the image is hardly sexist. On one of the forums I frequent someone who had seen this argument went ahead and argued that the woman was being executed for being a slut, simply because she was a woman in skimpy clothing and had a gun against her head. Its still not certain whether or not they actually watched the trailer, or saw an image like the one you have without context and assumed that there was blatant sexism going on.
Misrepresentation of things does harm. Under-representing sexism isn’t going to help, but neither is over-representing it.
Secondly, the “Drowned” thing. It comes across as you being deliberately argumentative and obtuse here. Having your own voice drowned out by other people’s voices is a common turn of phrase. Basically it means that you’ll put down your reply, and then 20-30 people will quote that one person who said “Lol Ur all stoopid XPSD”, and suddenly any legitimate argument is completely covered and hidden – or drowned out – by troll responses.
I’m pretty sure you said in your own article how rare it is to get actual arguments on the topic, and this is the prime reason why. People with legitimate arguments are ignored in favour of those who post crap in response, and any legitimate argument is lost underneath a sea of hate. Its as much the fault of so called “Loyalist Gamers” as it is those who argue against them.
TBH, yes, sexism does exist in the games industry. It exists in every industry really. A lot of the problem people have with the arguments on it are that people either won’t acknowledge it at all, or they’ll call sexism at the slightest provocation – a woman in a game having big breasts and being skimpily dressed, ignoring all context simply because she’s a skimpily dressed woman. Yeah, there are of course exceptions, but its both sides that have the issues and that need to fix things. People need to acknowledge that sexism does exist in gaming, and others need to acknowledge that not everything is sexist, and that they should concentrate on the actually sexist occurrences, and not every game that does and doesn’t involve a woman.
Consequently this is also a lot of the problems I hear about from people who have watched Sarkeesian’s videos. Not going to comment on them myself, as I’m not interested in watching them right now, but a lot of people were attacking her methods, rather than her, as just picking on anything that had a girl in it, or didn’t as the case may be, rather than targeting sexism.
Some notes on Anna Sarkeesian’s videos:
- she hasn’t released a single video from her kickstarter project yet, how can people criticize her ‘methods’? She did a single piece on Bayonetta that wasn’t even about Bayonetta at all, but about a marketing campaign in japanese subway stations.
- her viewpoint is a feminist one. I don’t hear people argue against Yatzee or Errantsignal for taking specific viewpints and making entertaining videos about it. You can talk about Half Life 2′s narrative structure without writing a double-lenght essay on physic engines first to keep things ‘balanced’.
I asked her a personal question about her motivations and I don’t think you are in a position to answer for her. So I treat your answers as your’s.
1:
The image is sexist and that is factual statement not an opinion. There is science behind that: semiotics and sociology. The story of the trailer or author’s intentions do not offset the sexist connotations the selected imagery entails. Once sexist images are outthere, they cannot be explained away, they have their sexist impact on large portions of the viewing audience. And just because you have a non-sexist rationalization it does not erase the sexist ideas the images did perpetuate. If you do not recognize it as sexist, this is because you do not understand how images work and how societies deal with images.
Here is reading material if you are interested in preparing yourself to be able to make an actual contribution to debates about sexism in media:
Pragmatics, a subset of semiotics which deals with the effect of messages independent from author’s intent or original context:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatics
Or the article about sexism, with this nice snippet from the definition “behavior, conditions, or attitudes that foster stereotypes of social roles based on sex.”, wich also has nothing to do with author’s intend or original context, just with what effect it has in the common viewer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexism
2:
I’m not drowning anyone with anything, her comment was left unedited and is presented for everybody to be read. So, I’m not aplace to complain about drowning anything.
3:
As much as you are correct in pointing out that it occurs that people cry sexism where there is none, you have a severly limited understanding of sexism and drastically need to expand it. Also you need to start looking at bigger contexts. When you complain about people complaining about naked women in games ignoring the context, you are right. That is because the context of the game, it’s story or the game maker’s intended message are not relevant enough. Most people complaining about tits in games use a much bigger context, than you do: the context of the whole industry and the culture around it.
You are actually the one who is missing out on the big picture.
4. Sarkeesian was severly target as a women. The attackers either picked on her because she is a women or even if they got aggressive because of her practices used sexist attackes, gendered attacks to hurt her. What ever objective base there was to oppose her making that video is only a tiny fraction of the genderbased opposition she received.
Do your homework.
It’s a woman with two-foot scythe blades growing out of her arms, covered in blood, surrounded by hacked up bodies of apparently innocent victims, and is shown to be completely resistant to assault rifle fire. Putting two in her ten spot seems perfectly logical. This is why I despise internet feminists; anything that shows a woman in a negative light is automatically an attack on all women. I ask, “how is that not prejudicial?” When a guy acts stupid, or evil, or as some kind of sexual predator (essentially a gender inverted femme fatale), then it’s just a guy who is evil/stupid/deviate/etc. When a woman is portrayed the same, suddenly it’s a big deal. The key goal of feminism is gender equality, that means being treated no different that men in media, warts and all. Speaking of which, there needs to be more sexualized males in games. Games need to show they can appeal to vaginas, just as much as penises.
That’s my rational arguments out of the way, here’s my irrational stream of bile:
So basically any one who disagrees with you is wrong because reasons? I guess an accurate summary would be “WAAAH! Someone called me out on my hyperbolic, sensationalism!” It’s all about context. You took one image out of a two minute trailer, completely ignored the context of the scene, and then decried it as sexist. That’s the kind of shit I expect from FOX News. And while I’m at it, Anita Sarkeesian got trolled on the internet. It happens. She needs to grow a thicker skin, stop playing the victim card, and for fucks sake, stop pretending that 4chan being a wall of dicks is somehow new.
“here’s my irrational stream of bile:”
Next comment you really need to put that at the top.
Wow, just wow. You are so terribly misinformed about the things you talk about and your conclusions are based on such terribly false premisses. You commit so many horrible logical fallacies… ..I really don’t know where to start.
You are so far off, when it comes to issues of equality and where media plays into it and why negative depictions of women have a so much more profound and damaging impact on societies compared to negative depictions of men… it’s mind boggling.
Take some gender studies courses, seriously, I mean it. You would be a much more calm and productive guy and would have less reason to hate anyone…
Holy crap.
I’m on the internet. Being a callous asshole is half the reason I come here.
Also, you don’t know jack shit about me, what I do, or who I associate with. You don’t get to tell me to be calm and productive.
You’re tilting at windmills here, accusing random shit of sexism, with nary a consideration of context in sight.
Alright. Whatever.
I will leave your comment here as a readers second opinion then.
Bye.
Well the Manbear’s got a point here, even if I find it’s kindda poorly-argued and sadly your answer really reminds me of that kitchen sink attack you hate so much.
Like “I know everything better than you, so piss off”. Kindda kills the debate.
You are absolutely right, it kills the debate. And my admittedly very dismissive statement was designed to kill it.
The thing is, not every kind of debate is worth having. Sometimes people just simply do not have the necessary knowledge or understanding on a subject to actually add much to a debate. This of course includes me as well on many many subjects. Those people can either decide to go into a debate with an open mind and the desire to learn more about the subject or – like the person above – can decide to form a strong opinion without the proper base of knowledge and then aggressively state it.
The latter unfortunately never ever leads to any sort of productive discourse. And BTW it is super disrespectful. The articles I write take days of work, the article here literally took 17 work hours to complete. That is because I do my research, gather my material, plan and structure my argument, then write and then revisit revisit revisit my article until I am confident enough to publish it… which is exactly once I feel my argument is waterproof. To then come here and start aggressively opposing me, only bringing superficial information, that led to wrong conclusions and then expect me to clean up after you… nah. I don’t have time for this.
You either are respectful enough to actually educate yourself on a subject before forming an opinion or you bring an attitude which is that of a person willing to learn. Otherwise you just have wasted everyones time. Sometimes my careful approach to articles leads to me after many hours of work deciding to simply not post it, because I learned something that changed my opinion or because I found that my point is weak and maybe I need to rethink stuff…
…Manbear should have done the same with his comment.
See the thread with AcmeAnvil for example. He made a comment which I replied in a similarly dismissive manner to – maybe I was to quick on that – and he came back with a serious attempt at understanding my point. He asked a question where he directly pointed at a weakness in my argument and gave me the chance to address it – a productive and respectful debate ensued. This is what happens when your objections actually are based on something and not on ignorance and when you engage a conversation in a manner that is reflective of that.
More like “I know everything better than you, so piss off, do some homework, come back and let’s engage.”
Cheers.
2 quick points:
a) Is the presentation of misogyny in a game still a bad thing, if it’s presented as a bad thing? Just from looking at the still image, my assumption was this was a shot of a ‘bad guy’ doing ‘bad things’. The apparently helpless pose of the victim, and the faceless mask he wears is shorthand for ‘minor thug’ in games. However, if this looked like the protagonist, I would totally understand.
b) After watching the trailer for cyberpunk there I have a hard time seeing the same misogyny that even that interpretation of the still image would imply.The trailer is shows a bulletproof robot with blades for arms kneeling in a pool of blood and bodies, keeping a swat team at bay single-handed, well except for the one guy who, I suppose is trying to sneek up behind her. The whole thing reads to me as a ‘I’m surrendering because I choose to’, not an ‘I inexplicably find pistols more intimidating than those demonstrably harmless assault rifles` type situation. Gotta say, after watching the trailer I’d much rather play as the robot.
Before I get to a and b: The presentation of misogyny in any fictional media is not a bad thing in and out of itself. Misogyny in real life of course is. And when evaluating how problematic misogyny in a game is, you have to look at how the real life people – those who made it and those who play it – relate the fictional misogyny with IRL misogyny.
That’s why depictions Nazis (yeah, I know I directly jumped to it) are rarely any problem in fictional media. In real life almost everyone agrees nazis = evil ideology = horrible history and Nazis are easy to spot. Sexism on the other hand, in real life is super tricky, it’s sometimes hard to spot and many forms of sexism are still widely spread and not recognized as problematic at all.
And that’s what makes depictions of misogyny in games tricky as well. Some people don’t recognize it and even if they do, they have or have not a problem with it.
a) Your reading of the images in the trailers is totally legit. But I would argue that – especially since the female sex bot just slaughtered innocent pedestrians – you could read it as well in the sense, that the cop guy is a force for justice. So the misogyny could either be viewed as a positive action or a negative one (or see it ambiguos, grey area), depending how you read the presented images.
But in both cases, the images are shown in a way that try to make the hot character (her dress, her body, the camera work and the super slo-mo) appealing to the viewer. We are supposed to enjoy that sexy character model. So, independent from the question, if she is a victim or a villain, independent from the story, we get presented with a scene in which sexual desire for a female and violence against that female are mixed up, and this is where the problem lies.
It’s male-on-female sexual violence and it is partly not just in the story but in the way the designers want us to see the female character… The audience is meant to feel sexually attracted to a female character in the very moment when she is subject to violence coming from a man. This is where the fictional misogyny morphs into real life misogyny, independent from the question if the story says it’s good or bad.
b) Yeah, she is impressively powerful. And I rather play her as well. I played enough Sam Fisher’s and Solid Snakes and Master Chiefs for my taste and properly written female characters are always something filled with interesting surprises and perspectives for me. I’m also – even in scifi settings – a guy who dig close combat, so blade it is. And also, here again your reading and judgement over the trailer is totally valid.
That all being said, in the end of the day, she still is a female character that is being presented as a sexual interest in the very moment when she is subject to male violence and dominance (either by surrendering or by being overpowered).
Thanks for the comments and as it is with teaser trailer thingies, let’s see how the actual game is.
No I’m sorry with respect I disagree with your views on not portraying something because it is ‘super tricky’, that is cowardly and completely disrespects the conversation at hand. Media in all forms is a powerful tool and I agree that a degree of care is needed but completely removing a subject from said media is akin to burying our heads in the sand. These conversations about sexism need to happen but they will not happen unless the issues involved are portrayed onscreen but ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. There needs to be missteps because for, say, every 10 of those one interesting insight or portrayal is made; for example how many terrible female characters did we get before Alyx from Half Life 2 was created and how many times was a stereotypical black man a supporting squad mate in shooters before we got Lee from the Walking Dead, an amazingly deep character whose race never came in to the story.
We need portrayals of sexism, potentially challenging portrayals (Bayonetta) or hell just straight misogyny ala the Catwoman bitch scandal because without those we wouldn’t be having these very important conversations.
PS sorry if this post is inelegant, it is very late here.
Yeah, maybe you get some sleep and read my comment again with a fresh and rested eye. I never ever argued for “not portraying something because it is ‘super tricky’”… I actual don’t argue for “not portaying” anything.
I don’t complain about the existence of any sort of content. I complain about a poor culture examining and debating content. And I never argue for the removal or restriction of any content. That would be super stupid.
Where did you read anything that would suggest otherwise?
Cheers.
GODWINS LAW, END OF THREAD!
Hey, what do you think you are doing? I didn’t even get one Hitler in!
It should also be noted that said “robot” is not, in fact, a robot. but rather somebody undergoing cyberpsychosis – and in-universe side-effect of having too many cybernetic implants which often causes one to fly into a berserk rage at “Meatbags” (That is, not-augmented individuals). The man holding the “psycho” at gunpoint is, in fact, a member of Night City’s Max Tac “Psycho Squad”, a subdivision of SWAT with special training in containing “Psychos”.
Interesting article, I enjoyed the read. It and your comments bring to mind a common debate I see on the internet, actually.
Bayonetta – sexist or empowering?
Lots of people believe it to be sexist for the obvious sexualisation of the title character – to the extent that her clothes, for explained reasons, fly off for her finishing moves – which they argue is entirely for the benefit of the males it’s aimed at – pandering, in a word. I’ve been pondering it for a while, and I’m not certain it’s that simple – the game seems to go out of its way to glorify the female sexuality; every time she does something sexy (i.e the clothes thing) it’s because she’s doing something awesome, or badass, or perhaps both at the same time (badsome? awesomeass?). She’s a very strong woman – there’s no fetishized violence against her, or any other women, of the kind you found in that Cyberpunk ad.
I’ve played it, and it’s certainly a great game – perhaps this (or, more likely, my status as a heterosexual male) is making me biased. Your thoughts?
To make a generalizing statement about something as complex and multi layered as a full game is kinda silly.
Bayonetta has a lot of empowering stuff in and a lot of sexist stuff in it. Which is okay for me. Total package, something stylish and hot to look at, cheesy fun and female empowerment fantasies all at once. For some the sexist content is too much to enjoy the rest.
You –as someone who approves of the game and enjoys the empowerment bits – also have to keep in mind the rest of the games out there, when talking with people who focus more on the sexist aspects. There really is not much of non-sexist female empowerment stories out there, so it can be extra frustrating to have Bayonetta – a game that could have been just plain non-sexist female badassery – being spiced up with amle gaze boob shots and butt shots.
Is it possible that the boob and butt isn’t only there for men?
I wish people would start admitting that that not only men like to look at pretty ladies. And the desire to look at pretty ladies is not a bad thing. Especially pretty naked ladies totally kicking ass, which – as a feminist, by the way – I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of.
I strongly agree with your article, especially you views on “cheapening”. I really do wonder how people ( I know a few individuals) can be so ignorant as to keep buying games in a series of declining quality. At the same time, blatantly shut out and personally criticize others for liking a game not considered “Mainstream” or from a “AAA” studio. I would consider this individual(s), as you put it, “comfortably ignorant”.
Interesting! I liked the piece a lot. I’m not actually sure what to say, but I did want to ask a question about the Cyberpunk trailer shot (I realise you’ve edited the caption). While I appreciate the reaction to the initial setup, and the sexbot angle is certainly not great, do you have an issue with the man executing the woman? As a bare concept?
To me, while I can see problems in the short term, presumably we hope to eventually reach a point where society is at a point that it can support everyone shooting everyone, yes? I can certainly see issues with it in the current climate, and the reasons why it might have been included, and yet… I wouldn’t want fewer female villains, or player characters, and so on. I wouldn’t want gender-matched plots on their own. It seems like a weak example.
Great piece though. Nice points strongly made, and I agree with the central premise. Breaking stuff down lets you rebuild it in a better way. but, of course, nothing’s really in danger at all. What we’re doing is the bare minimum, and people claiming games are being ruined are massively exaggerating the small impact we’ve had so far. More must be done, really.
HEy, Michael… thanks for your question.
To get to the point: A man executing a woman as a bare concept has no intrinsic value. Neither positive or negative. Context is everything. Context adds values to images and the context in with the observer interprets the image is what defines the impact of an image.
If we want to have as much control over our messaging as a designers, we have to be careful to add as much of our preferred context into the publication as possible to guide our diverse viewing audience. Well, you could be all artsy and mysterious and demand the viewer to fill in the blanks, but that’s a spectrum.
Anyway, to reject “violence against women in media” as a naked concept is pointless and I dare say never happens ever. It never happens because nobody ever looks at an image without evaluating it in their own context. Though I understand that people tend to make generalizing statements.
The violence in the trailer has a very much disturbing context because of all the included images. For example is the female character clearly styled and presented to be sexually desirable, to mix that with a man executing here starts to create a more problematic context. Also the fact that she is on her knees not interacting with him and his is calmly standing adds another layer of power dynamics to it. The violence is not a result of combat or equal opponents. It’s a sexy woman at a man’s mercy. You see how the images add up?
We can abstract “violence against women” into a naked concept, like you did in your question, but we cannot apply that abstract concept anywhere without getting concrete. And once we are concrete, once we have an occurrence of that violence or an depiction of that violence, there is no way for us to judge it without context.
Yeah, I like the reading of it. As you say, it’s all about context, and the context here is not great.
One thing I have wondered is what proportion of the backlash against this sort of thing comes from people who don’t actively perpetrate sexism and so on, but are terrified that they might be doing it without realising. I’ve been told this is quite an English thing to do – to be so worried that you’re being racist/sexist/prejudiced in some way that you overcorrect and end up screwing yourself over the other way.
One thing I’ve learnt during the last 12 months is that when people make sweeping statements about the state of ‘gamers’ or ‘the industry’ or ‘white dudes’ and so on, that they are not necessarily including me personally, but are referring to a general culture or a group. I do wonder sometimes if a lot of people feel like I used to, which is irrationally panicked that they are doing something wrong, which leads to them ultimately… doing something wrong.
I wish I was sufficiently cogent and literate that I could write at the sort of length you do to explain it a bit better! Ah well.
I hope it becomes evident I tried to draw a circle around the problematic group gamers not by their demographic properties (race, age, sexual orientation) but by there behavior. So any reader can decide for himself how much he or she identifies with that behavior. (Do not for a second think that the attacks on feminism just come from male opponents.)
The problem with talking about the problematic audience is, that they are all or most white-male-heteros but that does not mean, that all or most white-male-heteros are part of the problematic demographic. It’s a logical fallaci to either accuse all white-male-heteros to be the problem or to feel accused as a white-male-hetero whenever the problematic demographic is addressed.
If you no longer feel panicked by criticism, congrats. Seriously. The people I talk to in the “concerns” section all in my opinion fall victim to self-defeating defense mechanisms because “you like sexist stuff” feels like a super nasty accusation, something that attacks your character and something that really cannot stand.
The way I point to sexism in media is first and foremost a call for people to be critical of what they consume.
Definitely, it wasn’t a particular response to your piece, just a general observation that I hadn’t voiced before. I’m no longer panicked, but I’m not complacent either. I’ve just had a lot of alarming eye-opening experiences over the last 12 years, both in terms of the games industry, and the scientific community (which really shocked me – http://gawker.com/5945227/even-scientists-are-sexist-as-hell). I’ve been reading Anna Anthropy’s Rise of the Videogame Zinesters lately and seeing her point to an intersection between gaming and computer science therefore makes for interesting reading.
Thanks for replying!
Thanks for the talk. :)
Concern 2 seems to be rather common, and I’ve been suffering a bit from it. I’m glad you addressed it, I don’t see it that often, honestly
Hey, thanks for chiming in.
It is even a concern I have, since we actually have real censorship here in germany. And since games are not publicly valued as an artform or are they publicly viewed as “for children”, they really get extra restricted in comparison to movies for example. The way games are behaving right now, it is pretty hard to make the case that games are in fact art and are in fact also media for adults. A healthy culture of self-criticism would help a lot.
Great post. I don’t think there was anything here that didn’t need saying. I have to admit I gave up on the AAA industry years ago and as you said, it is slowly destroying itself. In all likelihood the system will collapse by itself because marketing companies are too greedy and cowardly to adapt to the playing field and publishers are too complacent and gullible to realize they are digging away the ground they are standing on.
It is my hope that the indie game industry continues to grow. While it is clearly true that indie games have their fair share of issues with social awareness but at least they don’t actively exploit that as a selling point.
The Zombie Bait Edition bust is just so shamelessly a shout out to all the misogynist assholes holed up in game culture. It’s practically crying out “Hey guys, we’re your mates! We hate those feminist whores as much as you do! I bet they’ll HATE this little trinket.”. Fucking despicable. The sooner we see that die the better.
You see it as sexism because of the strong ideological push of radical feminists. I won’t argue that all those things in conjunction, are bad for the gaming community. I’m not saying isn’t sexism, it is, i am convinced of it. But all those incidents are part of a bigger whole that have been cooking around the gaming industry recently, is the idea of ‘cheapening’.
Cheapening means to appeal to the least common factor in order to satisfy only known customers and demographics. Cheapening is the hypocrisy of not being able to sell truly erotic games to teenagers and opt instead to convert any game in a surreal oddyssey of supermodels. Cheapening is sequelitis. Cheapening is the fear of creating new gameplay mechanics, plot devices, and IPs. That is what most developers are doing now, in order to avoid risks now than the future of AAA games is uncertain. And yes, they will use dirty tactics, get extra unpaid advertising via controversies. As radical feminists tend to be so controversial, they are a sure win for this effort. In that point i agree with you.
I agree that gaming should be inclusive of all minorities and have variety. I agree that criticizing the state of the media could enhance it. I agree that fellow female gamers deserve respect.
I don’t agree with the feminist agenda of eradicating any trace of sex from games, society and media.
Try to stop seeing the issue from a feminist viewpoint, and look at it from an economic viewpoint.
“feminist agenda of eradicating any trace of sex from games, society and media” –
There is no such thing. Feminism is not anti-sex. Anti-sex is anti-sex.
Feminism is anti-sexualization and anti-sexual-objectification, which is NOT against sexuality, it IS against the ABUSE of sexuality leading to gender inequality.
A repression of sexuality is a centuries old method of holding women down and feminism is an ideology where the sexual liberation is a big part of the set of goals.
You are misinformed about what feminism means. And you need to severely question sources (including self-proclaimed feminists), who twist the term “feminism” into anything more than this: “Feminism is a collection of movements and ideologies aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights for women.”
Do your homework. There is a wikipedia page. Still, thanks for the polite and lengthy comment, I very much appreciate it.
I have been reading feminist blogs to document myself about the issues at hand. Yes, there are many feminist that want a balance and to end any sort of inequality in treatment and life not only for women but for all minorities, that recognize modern societies as permeated by power-maintaining structures that undermine the dignity of sectors of the population traditionally being devoid of rights in past times. Even as I’m not totally in favour of a 100% egalitarian society (A genocide having right to life? really? an internet troll that encourages depressed people to suicide having right to freedom of speech? really?), I think those ‘humanist feminists’ have lots of valid points.
The problem is that there are other kinds of feminists that encourage all sorts of hate speech against men. Do you really want every girl of your country to hate men? They DON’T want equality, they want revenge. That’s why I’m being very vocal about my views on gender and gaming issues, because I don’t want this trend to be derailed by people with genocidal thoughts that look at the annihilation of half of the world population as the solution to all gender problems. And no, I’m not part of the men’s right activists or something alike.
And yes, those radical feminists are being USED by the game publishers as unpaid advertisers. How ironic. But with the advent of the new generation of Android-based cheap consoles, indie studios will have platforms to express more diverse ideas, and then, maybe, we can break with many of the current trends and tropes.
Let me ask you, what do you consider to be a ‘radical’ feminist?
I’ve had my share of feminist blogs and feminist texts (gender studies and feminist theory are academic subjects. There is science involved, lots of science) and ‘radical’ ones were the minority, by far. And even ‘radical’ points were often well argued, supported by theory, data or extreme personal experiences (mostly about rape or rape victims).
There are feminists that call for a revolution. Overthrowing society and removing all men in charge, by force, not by talking. THIS is ‘radical’… but you can really see their point when you think of human history as a 5000 year long tale of oppression and abuse.
Btw. where did you get that genocide-thing? And more importantly, what part of the feminist community takes this seriously? There are theoretical posts on all sorts of things, a what-if scenario isn’t a political agenda. Germany recently had nazi group exposed, they murdered immigrants for years without anyone really caring. Huge scandal. I’ve never heard of a feminist terror cell killing men.
Back to video games: No one participating in the games and sexism discussion ever demanded a bloody revolution. No one at all. No one talks about genocide or revenge or even about banning Gears or all JRPGs for their stupid portrayal of gender stereotypes. No one demands ‘sex’ or ‘sexy’ images removed from all video games.
- They talk about the strong presence of sexist stereotypes in games being acknowledged as a problem.
- They demand more games with female protagonists, more games that don’t rely on big breasts, big guns and (male) violence fantasies. They demand more diversity. They demand better games.
- They point out that males are dominant in the video game industry, there is a lack of female developers, advertisers, critics that doesn’t reflect the audience
- They demand sexist behaviour in gaming communities to stop.
(oh, and and most of them know that ‘sex’, ‘sexy’ and ‘sexism’ are very different things.)
But people don’t even get the to the first point. They can’t acknowledge that their beloved games are full of sexist tropes, full of damsels, stupid armor (for women only, of course. I’d love to see a all male warriors wearing nothing but oversized penis protection) etc. There is a definition of sexism. It’s not that hard.
Does a sexist trope and a male protagonist mean that Super Mario Bros. is a worthless piece of crap? No. It means that not all games have to copy Super Mario’s over and over and over. I love the shit out of Bioshock but I wouldn’t make another game that portraits all females as either helpless girls (good) or ruthless nazi scientists (bad).
We can talk about ‘radical feminists’ in context of feminist theory, but you should really talk WITH the women and men that study that sort of thing. In the context of the video games talking about ‘radical feminists’ is just what it is derailing. And you said you didn’t wanna derail.
Ok, lets stop talking about radicals.
Just extra 2 points:
As said earlier, all this imagery is really a desperate move by AAA publishers to get extra advertising. They are who were historically in charge of the gaming industry, who want no change at all both in the spirit of the gaming community and the themes/tropes of games.
But now that smaller/indie studios are creating new IPs, we see better depictions of women in games. By example, League of Legends, that have a cast of female champions that go from tanks to casters to supports to bruisers. League of Legends did the right thing and instead of consulting hatemongers they consulted true social scientists, and then creating the ‘honor’ system that reduced the hate speech amongst players and transformed one of the worst gaming communities in a pretty decent one.
In conclusion: As indie and smaller studios begin to take momentum, we will see more and more original games, and less of the same tropes and character clichés. True end of any hate or derogatory speech in gaming communities is achieved by social engineering, not by listening to another kind of hate mongers.
Oh and the second chapter “Systemic Marginalization” concludes on a very business oriented point, I think that covers the economic angle quite okay.