E3 2014: "Rainbow Six: Sexism"? Far from it.

My first year of game development at college has come to an end and, although I haven't yet received my grades for the entire year, they're expected to be first-rate (although I don't wish to sound as if I'm bragging; if they're good, it's because I agonised over the work every day rather than because I'm necessarily more intelligent than the other students. I noticed that an insane level of commitment seemed to be a trend with the mature students). I can't say that I'm any closer to entering the games industry than when I started but it's only one year of college, so it isn't unexpected that I haven't come out of it "industry-ready".

Enrolling on a game development course also didn't give me the opportunity to discuss sexism as much as I had hoped. I think I had around three conversations about it in the entire year but other than that, as you'd probably expect, most people -- male and female -- didn't care about gender issues in games. Which is fine and completely understandable; in spite of all the articles about gender issues in games online, it has to be said that it is not an issue that the majority of gamers care about. A few people did seem interested in how Wil Wheaton spearheaded a movement that ended with Destructoid writer Ryan Perez being fired though, so that's something.

E3 took place last week and I really enjoyed it. I didn't have much interest in any of the current-gen consoles but with Bloodborne, Mortal Kombat X and No Man's Sky being the games that made a big impression on me, I suspect I'll buy a PS4 at some point (probably next year). Oh, and the Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain trailer blew me away.

Anyway, speaking of E3 and articles about gender issues, I suppose it was too much to hope for to think that E3 might pass without an accusation of sexism being aimed at someone or something. Off the top of my head, "scandals" I can recall include a lack of female presenters, a lack of games featuring female characters and, in case anyone has forgotten, the "rape" joke during the Killer Instinct presentation last year.

I followed the conferences on Gamespot and on June 10th, before the event was even finished, Tom McShea took it upon himself to write an editorial called "The Disturbing Representation of Women in the Rainbow Six: Siege E3 Demo". Tom's big problem? In the stage demo for Rainbow Six: Siege, a female character was a hostage. That's it. That's the entire issue. You can watch the demo at the link above but here's a Youtube version if you prefer:

Before I go into Tom McShea's article, what I took away from E3 with regards to gender issues was how many positive portrayals of female characters there were. All of them got their share of the spotlight. I'm sure I'm going to forget some but we had Bayonetta 2. Mirror's Edge 2. Alien: Isolation. Infamous: First Light. Rise of the Tomb Raider. Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris. Plus, think of the games that had a mix of male and female characters, like Mortal Kombat X. Fable Legends. The Sims 4. Hyrule Warriors. If the predecessors of Bloodborne, Dragon Age: Inquisition and Mass Effect 4 are anything to go by, they'll all have the option to play as male or female characters too. Hell, it seemed like most games had a choice of male and female characters, from Broforce to the Dead Rising 3 DLC. In fact, would you like to know another game that had a positive female portrayal in the stage demo? Rainbow Six: Siege!

In case you didn't watch the video above, the demo -- which features the disclaimer "the following is pre-alpha footage captured from a multiplayer match" but is very blatantly staged -- features five online players trying to rescue the female hostage from their five opponents. Of the five players whose voices we hear, one of them -- playing as a sniper -- is female. She is portrayed as being just as capable as the male players on her team.

The point is that E3's representations of female characters should've been cause for celebration (or, if you're part of the "they shouldn't be praised for doing what's expected of them" crowd, at least it shouldn't have been cause for criticism). Yet Tom McShea, being a glass half-empty kind of chap, focused on the one example from the show that featured a woman in a damsel-in-distress role and argued:

"It was their decision to have a woman presented as an object, something to be fought over--to be won--so that's the message that was hammered home. So I can only look at the reality of this demonstration and wonder why it's once again a woman placed in such a sad position."

The main reasons I still visit Gamespot are (A) habit and (B) the majority of people who post comments seem to be sensible and rational. In this case, I was impressed with how this excerpt from a comment by "tonkins22" got to the heart of the matter:

"Sexism in games needs to be tackled, and deserves a billion-word discussion. But you can't use a non-example as your launchpad into that point, or it makes the argument itself look thin, which is bad for the cause. The author is writing an article about a serious forest fire and tries to get your attention by panicking about a lit match."

This is the central problem with McShea's article. It's a perfect example of making a mountain out of a molehill. McShea refers to women in games as "prizes", "rewards", "objects", "plot points" and "second-class citizens" throughout his editorial but the main thrust of his argument is based on this lone female hostage from Rainbow Six: Siege. There is no evidence that she is any of those things and the rescue team in the video are intending to rescue this hostage, not claim her in any way. That's McShea's own interpretation. He's the only one seeing her as an object rather than a human being. It's little wonder that the Gamespot members collectively roll their eyes at this when there is a positive female portrayal in the same video, many positive female portrayals in other games at E3 and there will be male hostages in Rainbow Six: Siege too.

Speaking of male hostages, McShea notably didn't mention Huey Emmerich being taken hostage and tortured in the Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain trailer (from 2:20 to 2:40 in that video). Both the protagonist and his "plus one" are taken hostage in the Far Cry 4 villain trailer (from 4:45 until the very end in that video). None of those three male characters are shown as being anything other than helpless, much like the female hostage in the Rainbow Six: Siege demo. However, McShea insists that "it's once again a woman placed in such a sad position". He even mentions Far Cry 4 in the final paragraph, using it as an example of "white male protagonists [being] placed front and center" (which is wrong because ... ?) without mentioning that the white male protagonist in question gets a bag placed over his head before being taken captive.

It's disappointing that this type of blatant misrepresentation of the facts has become so commonplace but that's what happens when people are desperate to promote an agenda that doesn't have any grounding in reality. There are gender issues that should be talked about and the portrayal of women in games is by no means perfect -- as tonkins22 said, "sexism in games needs to be tackled, and deserves a billion-word discussion" -- but McShea took what should've been a success for women in games and turned it into a failure.

Then again, this is the same person who wrote "The Santa Barbara Killer Is a Product of Our Culture, and We Shouldn't Hide From That Fact".

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(When I began writing this part, I didn't plan on it being as long as it became. If you just care about gaming, you can stop reading now because this is related to real life.)

Hopefully, I won't go into this too much because it seems like I've discussed nothing else since it happened at the end of May. For those who don't know, on May 23rd a college student named Elliot Rodger murdered four men and two women and injured thirteen others. There were many reasons behind it; Rodger was a misanthrope. He loathed men, describing them as "obnoxious brutes" and left forum comments fantasising about a virus wiping out every man on earth except him so he could have his pick of the women. He loathed women too, referring to "blonde sluts" and fantasising about wiping all of them out too while sitting in a tower and watching at all. Rodger was also a racist, recoiling at interracial couples and showing disgust towards full-Asian men (Rodger himself was half-white, half-Asian and referred to himself as Eurasian several times. Three of the six victims were also Asian and, given that they were the three who were stabbed in his apartment rather than shot, these were apparently the predetermined murders).

It should also be mentioned that Rodger suffered from a mental illness. At times online, I've seen people react to that point with aggression, thinking that just pointing it out means he's being held up as an example of all sufferers of mental illness but that isn't the case any more than he's an example of all virgins or half-Asians. The point is that without acknowledging that Rodger suffered from a mental illness, the severity and significance of mental illness cannot be understood.

The reason I'm bringing this up isn't just because of Tom McShea's article on the subject. In fact, if Tom's editorial is the first you've read about the Isla Vista killings, you might be confused about why he's focusing so much on misogyny and violence against women. The fact is that in this case, McShea was just following in the footsteps of over a dozen other, more mainstream news sites that ignored every single motivating factor in the murders ... except for Rodger's hatred of women (although the blog itself was about how misinformation can be spread and perpetuated, the women of Honey Badger Radio have a decent list of around fifteen sites that focused specifically on violence against women. As they mention at the end, they're only a fraction of the total number).

Without wanting this to turn into a rant, the most disgusting aspect of the Santa Barbara killings if you followed the coverage was how it instantly and blatantly it became an event to promote an agenda ... and it wasn't just to raise awareness about violence against women. Men's rights activists were blamed, even though Elliot Rodger wasn't an MRA. White men were blamed, even though Elliot Rodger wasn't white. In the Huffington Post article I just linked to, feminist blogger Anne Theriault actually states:

"We have no evidence yet that he suffered from any kind of mental illness or was under any sort of treatment. Immediately claiming that with no proof to back that fact up leads to the further stigmatization of the mentally ill, and contributes to the (incorrect) assumption that mental illness equals violence, and vice versa."

This is in spite of the fact that the day before, Rodger's own father (speaking through an attorney) stated, "the 22-year-old was being treated by multiple therapists and was a student at Santa Barbara City College".

Phrases like "male entitlement", "male privilege" and "male rage" all became commonplace, effectively painting all men with the same Elliot Rodger-shaped brush. If you have the time, you can go through the Honey Badger Radio list of articles and find the number of pieces that use the phrase "six people were killed" before launching into a rant about Rodger's misogyny, entitlement and violence against women rather than say "four men and two women". That isn't a coincidence. Feminist bloggers and journalists leapt on the opportunity to use the deaths of a tragedy where more men were killed than women to promote awareness about an unrelated viewpoint.

I want to make it clear that I'm not just disappointed about the deaths of the four young men being used (or, more accurately, ignored) to further an agenda that attacked men on a regular basis. None of the six, including the two women, deserved to have their deaths used in this manner. They were people. Their deaths were not something to be politicised for personal gain. It's safe to say that over the last month, feminism reached full Jack Thompson territory.

Credit to Europa-Phoenix. This comparison went through my mind over the course of the last month too.

One reason I'm bringing this up is because mass shootings in the U.S. have affected me in a few different ways. When the 2012 Aurora cinema shooting happened, I was so unbelievably shaken that I intentionally (and probably selfishly) avoided reading anything about the Sandy Hook shooting when it occurred in case it affected me in a similar way.

Something that I've tried to keep up on this blog -- which I've admittedly been back and forth on at different times -- is avoiding using "feminists" as a blanket term. Sometimes I haven't used it at all, other times I've tried to soften the blow by saying "some feminists" or "the feminist argument", to try to communicate that I'm not blaming the movement as a whole. I've always been swayed by the "not all feminists are like that" (NAFALT) argument that comes up repeatedly when men's rights activists point out some of the ways that feminism has had a hand in the poor treatment of men.

Now? Well, as you might've noticed over the last half-dozen paragraphs or so, I'm not particularly concerned about sparing the feelings of the NAFALT crowd any more. While I reacted to the Aurora shooting with horror, I ended up reacting to the Isla Vista killings with anger and not just directed at Rodger. Some of the most despicable people -- making the most unpleasant, untruthful arguments -- came crawling out of the woodwork and every one of them was a feminist ... and too few feminists responded to these articles with anger, disappointment or disgust. The quiet, half-hearted opposition on forums and in comments sections doesn't do much to combat the loud dogmatism of feminist journalists like Laurie Penny, dismissing violence against men while telling me that I'm "part of the problem" ... for saying that not all men are like Elliot Rodger because that dismisses violence against women. Somehow.

On the plus side, she makes Tom McShea look like a saint.

Okay, so I had a lot more to say on this issue than I thought but it's probably better that I got all of this off my chest here and not just in the comments section of a news article. This may be primarily a games blog but a few occasions have been set aside to talk about men's issues in general. It annoys me that this shouldn't have been a men's rights issue -- Rodger wasn't even remotely related to the men's rights movement but that didn't stop Anne Theriault and others from branding him one -- but it became one, so it's worth being brought up.

Hope you all had a happy Father's Day! Feel free to comment or e-mail me at themalesofgames@gmail.com.

Three Recommendations

With college sapping most of my time lately, I feel like I've been neglecting this blog. I'm still aiming for three posts a month but I don't bother checking back every day, like I used to, and any hope of playing games to analyse gender issues has practically gone out of the window. Plus, except for some ongoing GTAV stuff, it feels like a slow news month for gender issues but that could be because I haven't had the opportunity to research as much as I used to. The few things I have found have been little things; the irritating, everyday branding of male-dominated industries as "problematic" and hypocritical articles wanting greater analysis of gender issues in games while branding huge chunks of the gaming audience as "abusers", refusing to acknowledge the lack of focus on one sexes' issues, etc.

We're used to that kind of thing by now and it's obviously important but game journalists aren't going to change their ways because of one critical blog post. So for once, let's focus on some people who are doing things right.

Do Videogame Stereotypes Hurt Men? - PBS Game/Show

In spite of the fact that this is the same Youtuber who compared Anita Sarkeesian to Rosa Parks, he released this video, which I think has a lot of good points to it. I saw this linked in Youtube's sidebar about half a month ago but didn't have time to watch it. I forgot about it until I checked my e-mail today and someone kindly provided a link to it.

Basically, I think the host -- Jamin Warren -- accurately sums up several points about male issues that we very rarely see reported by other game journalists (or, if they are, they're often dismissed or attempts are made to justify them). As well as portrayals, he talks about the two issues that concern me most of all; body image issues and male disposability/violence against men. He handles them well.

Having said that, if I have a criticism, it's that Jamin's arguments seem to be at odds with his previous video, "Do Gamers Need Anita Sarkeesian's Feminism?" If we want to define different kinds of feminism, "Anita Sarkeesian's Feminism" is one that is actually dismissive of male issues while Jamin seems to be in full support of them. They chime on more emotional male portrayals but clash on points about body image and disposability (or seem to; again, we find ourselves in the frustrating situation where we don't have enough information about Anita's views to say for sure. So I apologise if my assumptions are inaccurate but I'm going solely by her dismissal of the Chippendale-esque male damsel in Spelunky and glossing over important details like the final boss of Primal being the female protagonist's boyfriend, who she has to kill).

Anita's response to this video was quite interesting:

I'm not really sure what to say about this. I suppose disliking male disposability and unrealistic standards of beauty for men are "MRA type arguments" ... but the fact is that they're also equality arguments. Common-sense arguments. As far as I know, Jamin Warren isn't a men's rights activist but he was, at the very least, open-minded enough to read a Warren Farrell book -- a man who I suspect understands how "patriarchy" functions a bit better than Anita does -- and be objective enough to examine the issue fairly.

The thing is, harmful issues are harmful issues and it's a good thing that they're examined and given a spotlight in a well-made Youtube video. As far as I can tell, Anita cares less about the issues being given the spotlight and more than Jamin didn't blame them on patriarchy. I think that says a lot.

Vicsor's Opinion: Damsel In Distress

I've been following Vicsor's Opinion ever since he posted a blog featuring side-by-side comparisons of all the videos Anita took footage from a few months ago. Vicsor's most recent post is a thorough examination of the damsel in distress plot device in games and I'm astounded by how much depth he goes into.

Here it is, if you want to read it. I highly recommend that you do. It's all excellent but if I had to choose my favourite parts, I'd pick 2.1 Flat Narrative and 3.2 Damsel Saves Herself through to 3.4 Character Building and Narrative Twists. These parts, as well as perfectly stating points that we've all considered at some point, excellently deconstruct several of Anita's arguments, particularly about the high number of female characters who actually manage to escape their own . I also have to give a lot of praise for going out of his way to create a small RPG Maker game featuring a damsel who can't escape her predicament. I'd really like to play that, actually, so I hope Vicsor provides a link at some point.

There's lots to praise about the blog so I don't want to focus on too many specifics. I'm sure if you read it, you'll probably praise the same points I did. Although Vicsor's post on Anita's sources will certainly be his most significant contribution to the gender issues debate, I think his analysis of damsels in distress is his most satisfying. I look forward to seeing more from him in the future.

Jill Murray - The Trouble With Trying To Write Positive Female Characters

I don't have a lot of praise for GamesIndustry.biz when it comes to gender issues. It seems to take the same stance on feminism and gender issues as other game journalism sites, so it's hard to feel hopeful when an article about female portrayals shows up. Having said that, this interview with Jill Murray, Ubisoft Quebec's director of narrative design, is surprisingly good. She gets across all the flaws with writing female characters that have bothered me over the years, specifically that they're too often pidgeonholed into a "strong, independent woman" archetype rather than being a character in their own right. Jill doesn't cast blame on anyone, whether it's fans or other developers, so it comes across more about how writers can do things right rather than a list of what everyone is doing wrong.

When it comes to articles and interviews on gender issues, this is what I would like to see more of in future. Constructive points rather than a list of complaints. If that happened, I'd probably complain a bit less myself.

Anyway, feel free to leave a comment or send me an e-mail at themalesofgames@gmail.com.

Damsel in Distress: Part 3 - Tropes Vs Women in Video Games

I've noticed a spike in viewers today because Dragon's Crown has been released. I'd like to get around to making another blog about that but, unfortunately, I live in Europe and our release date for the game is "Q3/Q4 2013". Amazon's estimate is October. Still, it's my birthday soon so I'll probably import it for that.

Of the three damsel in distress videos that Anita Sarkeesian has planned, this is the one I've been looking forward to the most. To me, this is the one that could make or break her arguments. As this is the video that concerns male damsels in distress -- or the "dude in distress" as she calls them -- how Anita treats this issue could be what sets the tone for the whole series.

At least to Anita's critics, this video could be the turning point. Maybe she'll try to justify the existence of male captives and attempt to dismiss it as an issue entirely. If that's the case, it's nothing particularly new and her critics have been justified in calling her arguments and examples cherry-picked and biased. On the other hand, maybe she'll treat male captives with the analytical eye they deserve; maybe she'll notice that they're not that different from female captives and perhaps she'll notice that men are tortured more often to create sympathy. If that's the case, maybe Anita can win over a few cynics. Maybe her videos won't be seen as a propaganda piece anymore and instead a more reasonable, if deeply flawed, analysis of sexism in video games for both men and women. When writing about part two of Anita's damsels in distress series, I stated, "when it comes to gender stereotypes, her heart is in the right place". That opinion has wavered a bit since then but who knows? Maybe Anita can come good at last and her silencing of others, her plagiarism of other people's videos and her misquoting of studies will just be stumbling blocks along the way.

I just hope that Anita has kept her own tweet in mind while making this video:

As of this writing, I haven't seen the video. So let's see what Anita has for us ...

Before I watched this video, I wanted Anita to say one of two things in this video; the first would be, "the dude in distress is a horrible, damaging trope because male damsels often have to go through torture and unsympathetic treatment that female damsels often don't". That's not quite my position -- I don't particularly mind damsels in distress if it makes sense in terms of the story but I do question why male characters have to be tortured to gain player sympathy -- but that would be something. The other thing I was hoping Anita might say would be, "I think having male damsels in distress is great because it's a deconstruction of gender roles and shows that the damsel plot device isn't gender-specific. It's a sensible and progressive attitude for developers to take regarding kidnapped characters".

Anita didn't take either of these stances on the subject. In fact, she didn't say much on it at all; only a third of the twenty-three-and-a-half minute video focused on the "dude in distress" and it was sharply dismissed with nothing more than a, "it's sexist when it's a woman. It's fine when it's a man". The rest of the video focused on more damsels in distress, with some focus on the use of "ironic sexism" in games.

So it looks like Anita has, in fact, chosen to be sexist by denying and dismissing the sexism against men that permeates our culture. You'd think she'd know better.

The funny thing is just how few games featuring "dudes in distress" Anita listed. She mentioned a grand total of six. I'd also like to point out that this was the first time I was made aware of the fact that, in Anita's eyes, the "distressed" character has to be the opposite sex of the hero character. Before now, I was operating under the assumption that the sex of the "damsel" was important but the sex of the hero was completely irrelevant. Even so, six games is still an incredibly small number to highlight. There was no mention of any of the games with male damsels listed in KiteTales' response to Anita's first video, all of which did feature female characters saving male ones. She didn't go into, say, Onimusha, a series that featured women saving men in all three games of the original trilogy. She didn't mention Raiden in Metal Gear Solid 2, having to be released from his torture device by a woman. Oh, and she didn't bring up this blog's favourite go-to game for sexism; Heavenly Sword. It wasn't long after she mentioned these six games that she rattled off a lengthy list of indie and mobile games featuring damsels in distress, as if to lessen the significance of the six games featuring "dudes in distress" that she brought up.

Still, let's focus on Spelunky, a game that Anita focused on because she believed it highlighted the difference between the "dudes" and the "damsels". Here's a couple of points Anita made beforehand:

"First there’s been no shortage of men in leading or heroic roles in video games or in any other creative medium for that matter. In fact one recent study found that only about 4% of modern titles are exclusively designed around a woman in the leading role. Since men are still largely the default for protagonists, the rare dude in distress plotline does not add to any longstanding gendered tradition in storytelling."

It's worth mentioning that the 4% statistic doesn't mean the other 96% of modern titles are exclusively designed around a male leading character; that 96% includes sports games and games where your character's sex is optional, bear in mind.

"Second, and perhaps more importantly, damsel’ed female characters tend to reinforce pre-existing regressive notions about women as a group being weak or in need of protection because of their gender, while stories with the occasional helpless male character do NOT perpetuate anything negative about men as a group since there is no long-standing stereotype of men being weak or incapable because of their gender."

First of all, there's nothing to suggest that damseled female characters reinforce any stereotypes about women as a whole; individual damsels do not represent women as a whole. They're also not necessarily weak or in need of protection because of their gender (and I'd be surprised if there were any games out there that outright stated that). Those are both stigmas that Anita herself has attached to female damsels. Much like her declaration that damsels in distress are more like property than people, it's a conclusion that Anita has arrived at without evidence. The stereotype may exist but a damsel in distress doesn't perpetuate it simply by existing.

Anyway, Spelunky was singled-out by Anita because the 2012 HD remake of the game featured the ability to switch out the large-chested female damsel with a "Chippendales-style hunk" or even a dog. So it was the perfect game to focus on the differences between male and female damsels. In Anita's own words:

"Setting aside the fact that – if a female character is easily interchangeable with a dog then its probably a pretty good indication that something is wrong – Merely providing an optional gender-swap is not a quick and easy fix, especially where stock character style damsels are concerned.

The two may appear the same, but they don’t mean the same thing in our culture.  This [damsel] is still a problem while this [dude] is not. Again because one reinforces pre-existing stereotypes about women, while the other does not re-enforce any pre-existing stereotypes about men."

Anita's argument is "these types of token role reversals do absolutely nothing to diminish the issues inherent in using the trope in the first place" but this is nothing more than her opinion. If anything, I think the fact that a female character being interchangeable with a man or a dog is a good indication that the gender (or even species) of the damsel isn't an issue; it is an easy fix, in that the damsel isn't particularly relevant to the story, nor is her gender and the fact is that she can't reinforce a pre-existing regressive notion about women as a group if she doesn't necessarily have to be a woman.

Not to mention that the hero doesn't have to be male, something that Anita failed to mention; even in the original game, the player could unlock a mode to play as a damsel and save spelunkers, rather than the other way around. The HD remake added playable female characters too.

This is another case of creating an unwinnable situation for developers. Regardless of the effort put in by the developer to create a more progressive game -- removing the gender issue entirely by providing the option of female playable characters and male (and animal) damsels in distress -- it's dismissed for its progressiveness and derided for its perceived sexism; when talking about "ironic sexism", Anita had no problem stating:

"In Spelunky the damsel can be knocked out, picked up, carried around and thrown at enemies before rewarding the player with an extra heart via a smooch of victory (if you manage to get her limp unconscious body to the end of each level while still alive that is)."

However, doesn't this completely ignore the facts that Anita provided above? The damsel doesn't have to be female but Anita still uses the game as an example of "ironic sexism" (in this case, parodying the uselessness typically displayed by damsels in distress). Again, I have to ask why isn't the issue removed when the genders are switched? In fact, if Anita can hold up the female Spelunky damsel as an example of a character reinforcing stereotypes about being weak and incapable, couldn't I do the same for the male Spelunky damsel and say that being thrown at enemies is an example of male disposability and reinforces the fact that we don't care about men in games? Which wouldn't make any sense because the gender of both the protagonist and damsels can be picked by the player.

Putting aside all the specifics, I can't help but call this what it is; hypocrisy. An attempt to rid gaming of female damsels while coming up with flimsy justifications -- or excuses, more accurately -- to keep male ones. We have to go back to the tweet at the beginning of this blog post; she's denying and dismissing the sexism that permeates our culture. It's Anita wanting to have her cake and eat it too. To plant her flag on the moon of victimhood and claim it for womankind, if I may use a horrible metaphor.

While that might sound like a snarky and grandiose thing to accuse Anita of, here's a couple of examples that I think will clarify it; one of the six (six!) games that featured a male damsel was a game called Primal, featuring the female protagonist's boyfriend, Lewis, being kidnapped by evil forces. The protagonist, Jen, develops some powers and goes to get him back. That's a very simplified version of the game's events but it sums up the basics. What Anita didn't mention is that Lewis, in addition to being a damsel in distress, is also the final boss of the game, having been brainwashed (again, an oversimplification), and he dies shortly after his defeat. There's a hint that he could return after his death but, if the after-credits scene is anything to go by -- Jen reading to Lewis while he is comatose -- it isn't a certainty. There isn't any movement in Lewis to hint that he'll awaken.

My big problem with Anita's coverage of this is that, while there's a hint in her video that Lewis dies, there's no mention of him being the final boss. There's no mention of Jen being the one who kills him. Given that the meat of Anita's second damsels in distress video was about the implications of domestic violence when a male protagonist attacks his brainwashed (or otherwise coerced) girlfriend in a video game, mentioning these facts would be the minimum I'd expect her to do.

Also, it really does have to be said that the lack of focus on protagonists saving damsels of their own sex damages Anita's point; like I said earlier, up until this video I was under the impression that the sex of the damsel was the only important thing, rather than the sex of the damsel and the protagonist. I'm willing to wager that more men are in need of rescue in games starring male protagonists than in games starring female protagonists. Yes, I understand that's due to a lack of female protagonists -- and more varied protagonists is something I'm entirely in favour of -- but there's a plethora of male captives to be found in games with male protagonists and by refusing to include them, Anita isn't painting a complete picture. It makes the "dude in distress" out to be rarer than it actually is.

Even worse is one of the links Anita provided as a source on her website. It's a link to a PDF file called "Spelunky & Sexism", archived from a site called "How To Not Suck At Game Design". It brings up the option to switch sexes (and species) of the protagonist and damsels in Spelunky and states "this is very progressive and forward-thinking. Great concept". After that, it quickly goes downhill (excuse the few spelling and grammatical errors. They were present in the original source):

"But in a concrete manner, it makes everything even worse. Since saving is not an option, you get to choose not who to save, but who to exploit and abuse. Since we do not have as much problems in pop culture and society with abuse of men for being men, the buff guy is not that much problematic as a damsel style. It still is kinda ugly to witness, but at least it does not endorse common real-life abuse.

Animal abuse on the other hand is quite real, so smacking a dog around and using the dog as shuriken, maybe accidentally killing him, really does not feel any better, then doing it with another human being."

If you've read some of my previous posts, you might know that concern over domestic violence against men was the "main" issue that caused me to identify as a men's rights activist. To say that the paragraphs quoted above make me uncomfortable is an understatement. In fact, I don't think I've ever read anything quite as ignorant about gender issues in the many years I've followed video game websites. This is stating the obvious but domestic violence against men is also "quite real" -- without wanting to be especially preachy about the issue, hopefully this article can shine a small spotlight on an incredibly widespread issue -- and not only is the writer of the paragraphs not above treating the abuse of men as secondary to the abuse of women but also the abuse of dogs.

None of the scenarios outlined endorse any kind of abuse -- whether the damsel is a man, a woman or a dog -- but it's quite despicable that the writer treats male victims of abuse as non-existent. I would've thought it'd be worse that the abuse of men in popular culture wasn't considered an issue and that's why it should be criticised, rather than swept under the rug as "not that much problematic". Unfortunately, the writer of the paragraphs above takes an attitude of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" or "if the masses don't consider it an issue, I won't make it one". How a site can completely unironically be titled "How To Not Suck At Game Design" and then provide such a blatant double standard, I'll never know.

So both Anita and her sources are determined to dismiss the poor treatment of men to perpetuate the victimhood of women. Even so, this may be the first time I've been more irritated by Anita's sources than her videos. Having said that, in spite of the speech I've written above, there wasn't very much in Anita's videos to feel annoyed by. Oh, it was bad; if you thought Anita was judgmental of Shigeru Miyamoto, wait until you see how she treats indie developers. Although apart from that, the rest of the content was just there and aside from Spelunky, I'm mostly critical of what wasn't in Anita's videos rather than what was. So her sources bother me a lot; there aren't any misquoted studies this time around (as far as I'm aware) but a couple of the sites linked to are just complaints about Fat Princess.

Which leads us to the content that makes up the second two-thirds of the video and honestly, I don't have much to say about it. There are only three things I want to write about regarding Anita's commentary on "ironic sexism".

One. Personally, I've always thought that no topic should be off-limits for comedy. I hope I'm not the only one who wonders how Anita would react if she watched a controversial stand-up comedian. It's certainly within an indie developer's right to portray the damsel in distress -- or anyone else -- satirically. It doesn't have to fall within the bounds of Anita Sarkeesian's narrow view of satire; "There is a clear difference between sexist parody and parody of sexism. Sexist parody encourages the players to mock and trivialize gender issues while parody of sexism disrupts the status quo and undermines regressive gender conventions."

Some of the games listed certainly deconstructed and parodied the damsel in distress more than Anita gave them credit for but earned criticism because they didn't fit her definition of "parody". More on that in a second. This really is a case of "if you don't like it, don't play it" though. Satire is not Anita's to dictate and trying to do so just makes her seem entitled.

Two. When talking about indie games, Anita falls into the same traps as she did in her first episode when discussing retro games; rather than simply accepting that developers either don't have the time, the budget or just the wish to implement a deep storyline. Her accusations towards Super Meat Boy stand out in particular; she shows the game's intro sequence, which is an almost frame-for-frame remake of the the intro sequence from 1989's Adventures Of Lolo. Rather than accept it for the homage that it is, Anita brands it "a shallow meta-commentary" and criticises it for not "challenging or disrupting what the damsel in distress trope says about the role of women in such narratives".

... Who said the developer had to? Anita goes on to praise games such as Fez and Superbrothers: Sword & Sorcery EP simply because they don't fit this mould. The problem here is that there's nothing wrong with Super Meat Boy paying homage to a retro game with its intro sequence but it still faces Anita's ire because ... it's not the retro quality she wants to see in a game. Again, this comes across as very entitled on her part. Rather than listing examples of games with damsels in distress, she's passing judgment based on preferences. This isn't the critical analysis that Anita claimed on her blog. It's closer to a soapbox or pulpit.

Three. This quote:

"The bad ending of the indie game Eversion (2008) features a similar joke; when the hero finally reaches the princess, she turns into a monster and eats you alive.

A similar end game punchline can also be found in Castle Crashers (2008). After you’ve saved the 4th princess, and then fought and killed your friends over who gets to claim her, it turns out that she has horrible clown face.

In each case the joke derives from the fact that after completing the long and perilous journey to save his woman, our hero is hilariously cheated out of his “rightful” reward."

When I watched the video for the first time, the exact thought that ran through my head was "okay, so the male hero is the butt of the joke; he gets eaten in one ending and in the other, he's deprived of any satisfaction when it turns out the princess has a clown face (and therefore has probably tricked the hero)". So how did Anita follow that up?

"In other words the comedy comes at the damsel’s expense."

 ... How? No, really, I mean how!? Only Anita Sarkeesian could see a princess eating a male hero as a sign that the damsel is being made fun of.

If I might go off on a tangent here, a few years ago I was watching any and all US comedy that I could to see if anything caught my attention. I became a fan of a few series that I'd never seen before, like Cheers and Scrubs, while some others fell by the wayside, like King Of Queens. One of the series that didn't make the cut was a sitcom called Just Shoot Me, starring David Spade. One episode featured Spade's character faced with the prospect of having a threesome with two women and as a result, he was able to persuade every male character he ran into that day to help him out because none of them wanted to ruin every man's dream (sarcasm) of being with two women at the same time. Here's the relevant part of the episode on Youtube. It ends with him being tricked, the two women who promised to have a threesome with him orchestrating an argument so they'd have an excuse to go back on the deal.

In this case, we're supposed to laugh at Spade's character. He's the butt of the joke. His sexuality and lack of sexual gratification is the butt of the joke. All the men who help him and appear at the end to applaud him are the butt of the joke too; they've all been fooled and we're meant to laugh at men for being so gullible.

The reason I'm writing all this about Just Shoot Me is because I heard a theory that Anita said "the comedy comes at the damsel's expense" because the damsel's value is supposedly lessened in the eyes of the male heroes because they turn out to be ugly (and therefore, not what the hero wants or expected). I couldn't disagree more; the damsels are no worse off than they were when the male protagonist thought they were just regular old princesses. The male protagonists, however, are David Spade's character in Just Shoot Me. They're the dorks and losers who don't get the reward they were hoping for and we're supposed to laugh at them for it. The damsels aren't devalued in any way. The damsels win.

The male protagonist is made to look stupid in these situations (or dead, in Eversion's case). While I see them as individual instances, the fact is that if Anita really is against "reinforcing pre-existing stereotypes", she really could do worse than starting with Castle Crashers. Given that Anita somehow manages to warp even that around to being offensive to women, however, that's obviously never going to happen.

Anyway, that brings this lengthy post to an end. I'd like to say that I won't watch another Feminist Frequency video but I think we all know that's a complete lie. Besides, with a brand new topic, the next time I write about a Feminist Frequency video, it'll seem more fresh. I really can't stress enough just how little of this video interested me. If anything, I was just disappointed that Anita acted so predictably, dismissing "dudes in distress" without much of a fanfare or even an interesting argument. If not for Spelunky, this blog would be much, much shorter. Again, we just have to look back on Anita's hypocritical tweet -- which I honestly did take a screenshot of before I ever saw the video -- and realise that the chances of her ever giving men's issues a fair hearing are zero.

Well, whatever. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an e-mail at themalesofgames@gmail.com.

The Sexism Of The Last Of Us

This post contains major spoilers about The Last Of Us. Only read on if you've already completed the game or don't care about knowing what happens.

I wasn't looking forward to The Last Of Us while it was in development. I've bought games based on the promise of a good story and beautiful environments in the past and been disappointed with them. Lately, I've stuck to Japanese RPGs, solely based on the fact that I know they'll last longer than ten-to-twenty hours. I feel like I've moved past the stage where I can be impressed by developers showing off their graphics, story or environments. Oh, and if it has a cover system, count me out.

So like I said, The Last Of Us wasn't thrilling me during development but a friend let me borrow his copy a few days ago, I played it and I actually enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I was impressed with the way Naughty Dog combined the cover system with the stealth, much like they did in Uncharted with the climbing/platforming. They're one of the few developers I can trust to do cover systems well. I really enjoyed the item crafting, scavenging and weapon upgrading. They added some depth to what I figured would be a very linear game and I wish I'd heard more about it during development.

The story, on the other hand ... hit-and-miss.

To fans of The Last Of Us, I will say that it isn't really sexist against men. Comparing it to something like Heavenly Sword or Lollipop Chainsaw, it's not even in the same league. There were a few things that stood out though. I don't want this to seem like a review of The Last Of Us but I feel like I have to criticise a few things about the game in order to properly explain my points.

First of all though, the story; the game stars Joel, a father whose twelve-year-old daughter is killed on the first night of a zombie outbreak. Twenty years later, when the world is in a post-apocalyptic state, he meets Ellie, a teenage girl who is immune to the infection that has consumed the rest of humanity. Joel is tasked with taking Ellie to a group called the Fireflies, who have been searching for a cure to the infection.

One of the problems I had with The Last Of Us is that almost everyone in the game is a scumbag. Almost everyone. The only real exceptions are Joel's brother, Tommy, some friends and coworkers of his that he's trying to rebuild a small town with and a young boy called Sam. Everyone else, for one reason or another, has an unpleasant quality or two that makes them hard to like. It isn't all bad though and, in fact, in a world where everybody is a scumbag, Joel comes out of it rather well. That's a credit to Naughty Dog's writers; Joel may murder people in cold blood and torture others with knives before killing them too ... but in this world, where everyone is a scumbag, the fact that he eventually grows to show a fatherly instinct towards Ellie actually makes him surprisingly relateable. It's a remarkably positive portrayal of fatherhood.

The Last Of Us does a good job of switching gender roles for the most part. While Joel is a compassionate character (eventually; he's stony when we first see him twenty years after the outbreak but he softens over the course of the game), his female partner at the start of the game, Tess, has some of the qualities of typically (but not always) male anti-heroes, such as stoicism, resourcefulness and facing death with determination and anger rather than fear. She also doesn't bat an eye at killing helpless, unarmed enemies that she dislikes but that seems like a given in The Last Of Us. Later on, Joel and Ellie meet a pair of brothers called Henry and Sam. By this point, Ellie has already handled a gun and saved Joel's life but Henry -- the older brother -- refuses to let Sam do the same. In most aspects, Sam is a male version of Ellie, being born after the outbreak began, being unable to swim but he's also more shy and reserved. It's been noted that it's usually female characters occupying Sam's quieter, more passive role. Plus, the final character killed in the game -- and main "villain", if you can call her that -- is female. Her death is just as graphic as anyone else's too.

It's certainly not perfect though and I had as easy a time spotting the differences as I did the similarities. For one thing, the game falls into the old trap of featuring both men and women as heroes but the only female enemies we see being fought (not including zombies) are Marlene, the aforementioned "villain", and a surgeon that the player can choose to kill at the very end of the game. For the entire rest of the game, men make up the murderers, enemy scavengers and cannibals that the player is tasked with killing. People have put forward the idea that the enemies likely rape and/or kill any women they find, so they're kept out of sight and off the front lines but isn't it just a lazy cliché to assume that all the bad guys are murdering rapists and use that as a justification? There was a lot of hype over at least one positive female character during development -- and the game certainly provides several female characters on the good side who are handy with guns, such as Ellie, Tess and Maria (Tommy's wife) -- so why fall back on a typical stereotype when it comes to deciding the sexes of the good and bad guys?

Then there's Ellie.

One of the big appeals of The Last Of Us during development was the promise that Ellie would be a strong and relateable female character. Since the game's release, reviews have been praising her as "likeable" and a positive portrayal. Personally, I couldn't disagree more.

I came to a few realisations about Ellie; one of them was that female characters can get away with a lot more than male ones and still be considered likeable. There are lots of little qualities that Ellie has that I suspect would have a gender-flipped version of the character branded as a burden or an annoyance. Being unable to swim. Being foul-mouthed. Making snarky comments about a man's weight (and imagine if he was gender-flipped too and it was an attractive male teenager mocking a woman's weight instead).

Speaking of which, that was the moment Ellie stopped being likeable to me. Joel and Ellie are travelling to meet up with a man called Bill, a paranoid survivalist who they think will be able to help them acquire a car. They meet up in the middle of a chaotic scene with a dozen zombies or so and, since this is before Ellie learns how to use a gun, Bill helps the duo fight their way to his safehouse. Once inside, he handcuffs Ellie and begins searching Joel for zombie bites (which Ellie has on her arm, but she's immune to the infection). Ellie escapes her handcuffs quickly and starts beating Bill with a pipe, simply because he handcuffed her. Obviously she was petrified about her bite mark being discovered and if it was just that single attack, I'd be fine with it ... but she maintains her snarky attitude until Bill disappears from the story. This, in spite of the fact that he saved her and Joel from zombies, gave them shelter and helped them find a car. This wasn't pointed out during the game. Later on, I also felt like she ignored Joel's wishes and overstepped her bounds when talking about his deceased daughter, Sarah, so my opinion of her dropped several notches when that cropped up too.

The thing is, while female teenage characters may have a reserved personality like Sam's more than male ones do, it doesn't necessarily mean male teenage characters more frequently have Ellie's brash and snarky personality either. Or if they do, it can instantly make them unlikeable (specifically, I'm thinking of John Connor in the first half of Terminator 2. Not that Ellie was as unsociable but she certainly had a few choice curse words here and there, as well as a rather unpleasant description of something she found in a pornographic magazine).

Then there's the whole chapter with David. While Joel is injured, Ellie searches for food and antibiotics to help him recover. She meets up with a man called David, who, long story short, turns out to be both a cannibal and a pedophile, with an attraction towards Ellie. Ellie ends up killing him after a stealthy boss fight by violently -- although the camera focuses on Ellie, to spare us from the gore -- slicing away at his head with a knife shortly after David tries to rape her. Joel, now on the mend, arrives in time to pull Ellie off him and comfort her.

Now, I'm not one of those people who says that rape doesn't have any place in video games. While I don't think it's as good a threat as death during gameplay -- it'd be a very dark game that had the player escaping rape instead of escaping death -- I think it has its place in a story. Looking at it in the larger context of The Last Of Us though, I think it comes off worse than if it was on its own. For one thing, although The Last Of Us isn't crawling with villains, the male ones, especially David, come off worse than the lone female one; believing that she can find a cure for the infection by operating on Ellie's brain, Marlene authorises some of the Fireflies' surgeons to do so, knowing that it'll kill her. However, not only does she think that curing humanity is worth Ellie's death (which is possibly justifiable in itself), she agonises over it. She's sincere when she talks about how much it hurts her, because she's known Ellie since she was born and was a close friend of her mother's.

The male villains, on the other hand, don't get any sympathetic or morally justifiable reasons for doing what they do. We have Robert, a gun-runner who was supposed to sell guns to Joel and Tess but sold them to the Fireflies instead. He opens fire on them when they came to talk to him, runs away like a coward and makes excuses for why he sold their guns. He ends up having Tess hit him in the leg with a pipe, Joel break his arm and finally gets shot in the head while he's unarmed, injured, helpless and pleading to make a deal for his life. See what I mean when I say that almost everyone in the game is a scumbag? They're supposed to be the good guys. The only other notable villains who receive any focus are an all-male group who fake injuries in order to mug and kill unsuspecting travellers who take sympathy on them. They can hardly justify their actions morally and David, cannabilistic pedophile that he is, speaks for himself. The only hint we get that David is perhaps an extreme example is an enemy conversation that can be overheard that describes how tired his "townspeople" are of indulging him.

David's death irritated me too. People have been saying that it was good that Ellie could handle herself and that, I agree with. She was never a damsel in distress. However, hacking away at David's head with a knife just before he intended to rape her was far too reminiscent of a Lifetime Movie of the Week, in my opinion. Again, on its own, it would be fine but combined with the fact that David was a pedophilic cannibal who attempted to rape Ellie right before being killed makes it seem a bit ... cheap. A bit too blatant an attempt to make the player feel something, if that makes sense.

It's interesting because I had an idea about what I thought would happen that the game's writers decided not to go with; this is off-topic but at one point, David goes to strap Ellie to a table in order to kill her and use her to feed his community and Ellie bites him. She shows David the bite mark on her arm in order to try and trick him into believing that she's infected (and therefore David would be too) but David is too smart to fall for it; not only has he known her for too long that she would've shown signs of becoming a zombie but, as he says, "nobody infected fights that hard to stay alive". Ellie manages to escape in the kerfuffle. Now, I figured that Ellie biting David would lead to his townspeople turning against him and killing him to make sure he didn't become a zombie, while Ellie stealthily made her escape. David's friend, James, had already shown himself to be more gullible than David regarding the bite on Ellie's arm (and given that he'd never met anyone immune to the infection, understandably so) so it wouldn't be a big stretch to assume the townspeople could feel the same way. Even Joel and Tess doubted Ellie's claim that her bite mark was three weeks old when they met her. All that didn't happen though.

I don't want it to seem like I'm too down about The Last Of Us because, like I said, it actually exceeded my expectations. It even has a positive portrayal of a father in Joel and, if feminist gamers and critics are happy with Ellie, fine with me. There are a few pitfalls that the game stumbles into though and at least one of them -- all-male enemies but male and female heroes -- seems very basic to me. Still, it flips a few character archetypes on their heads ... and who could be annoyed about that?

Why, Carolyn Petit, of course! Dismissing the deaths of male characters because they damage her argument that women die to fuel a man's story. Sam. Henry. Robert. David. James. The two guys Joel tortured and murdered (and how likely do you think it is that we'll ever see women receive that treatment in video games?). The many, many male enemies. I'm not going to go into it any more than that but I highly recommend reading the comments (and sorting them by popularity). Aside from the occasional transphobic comment (which I do not approve of at all), members of Gamespot aren't short on common sense. This is another no-win situation Carolyn Petit has created and the long-time members who've seen this from her before are happy to call her out on it. She's basically sending the message that no matter how hard a developer tries -- and believe me, Naughty Dog tried their hearts out -- it'll never be good enough for her.

For a better feminist opinion on The Last Of Us (albeit one that I still don't entirely agree with), Memoirs of a Soulless Ginger has a more balanced, less entitled viewpoint.

Oh, and before I forget, a new anti-feminism-and-gaming blog has made an appearance that is a fantastic read. It's called Virtually Anti-Feminism and it's written by a female programmer in the games industry. Check it out. Her first blog post was about an Anita Sarkeesian happening that I didn't write about because it seemed to slip under everyone's radar and I thought that was a good place to leave it. As it happens though, the post she wrote was longer, more in-depth and better-written than mine would've been, so I highly recommend it and I've already added a link to her blog in the sidebar.

By the way, has anyone else noticed that The Last Of Us is basically a post-apocalyptic, zombie-infested version of The Happening? Think about it!

As always, feel free to leave a comment below or send me an e-mail at themalesofgames@gmail.com.

Damsel in Distress: Part 2 - Tropes vs Women in Video Games

Anita's back again, with the second part of her three-part series on the damsel in distress. Let's jump right back into it. Since this video deals with the deaths of characters, there will be spoilers throughout this blog post, mostly for older games but for some as recent as Bioshock Infinite. So read at your own peril.

I'm not a fan of Anita Sarkeesian. That should go without saying. Without going too deeply into why, let's just say that it's been a rocky road for Anita over the last year. She made a few too many questionable decisions for me to trust that her video series would be anything but one-sided. To my surprise, her latest video -- part two of three in her damsels in distress series, focusing mainly on damsels in distress who are killed, sometimes by the main character -- was one that I didn't find completely disagreeable. She hasn't won me over. I'm not convinced that Anita is a force for good in gaming and the negatives continue to outweigh the positives. What I am convinced of is that, when it comes to gender stereotypes, her heart is in the right place. Unfortunately, other points put forward by Anita are so biased and outright contradictory at times that having her heart in the right place doesn't help her case in the slightest.

Let's keep it positive though. I'll try not to quote Anita too much this time around and just give some basic summaries but at this point, I'd like to. Talking about male video game characters who lose their wives and daughters -- Max Payne and God Of War's Kratos are the two examples used -- Anita puts forward the idea that the reason these characters go on their roaring rampages of revenge is not because they're trying to avenge the loss of their wives and daughters, whom they loved very much.

"I’d argue that the true source of the pain stems from feelings of weakness and/or guilt over his failure to perform his “socially prescribed” patriarchal duty to protect his women and children.

In this way these failed-hero stories are really about the perceived loss of masculinity, and then the quest to regain that masculinity, primarily by exerting dominance and control, through the performance of violence on others.

Consequently violent revenge based narratives, repeated ad nauseum, can also be harmful to men because they help further limit the possible responses men are allowed to have when faced with death or tragedy. This is unfortunate because interactive media has the potential to be a brilliant medium for people of all genders to explore difficult or painful subjects."

That last paragraph is the important one. The one that I have plenty of praise for. Anita takes note of the fact that male gender roles are very limiting; aggression, dominance, protectiveness, chivalry, resourcefulness ... it's a risk for men to step out certain gender roles and can be frustrating for the ones who don't feel that they can.

One of the problems, however, is that Anita only seems to be stating this because she believes it supports her idea about women being objects rather than fully-rounded people that the protagonist cares about. They're property to get angry about being "taken" from them rather than people to miss. I don't think one guarantees the other. If I also might state the obvious for a moment, another problem is that these are video games. Revenge stories tend to work far better for gameplay purposes than stories about mourning and how to deal with loss. Max Payne and God Of War are based on film noir and violent Greek revenge-stroke-tragedy myths; not the kind of genres that have the heroes reaching for boxes of tissues. At the end of her video, Anita gives a few examples of games that she believes handle the subject of death in games more maturely (specifically Dear Esther, The Passage and To The Moon). Not that I hold anything against these games for doing that but they're not likely to become the standard. I adored To The Moon but haven't touched it ever since I completed it and I'm more likely to play Max Payne before I go near it again.

I'll come back to this later on but there's a much more significant reason why my goodwill towards Anita over acknowledging this hurtful gender stereotype didn't last. The big chunk of the video revolved around what Anita described as "the Euthanised Damsel". This is what happens in a game where a hero manages to catch up to a person he/she has been searching for -- usually a damsel in distress, as the name indicates -- only to find them begging the hero to kill him/her. Perhaps they've been turned into a monster or altered in some other way by the bad guys and they don't wish to live anymore. They'll beg for their rescuer to kill them and the rescuer will respect their wishes. That's the Euthanised Damsel in a nutshell.

The problem is that, while I don't want to say Anita was moving the goalposts at any time, it was a very large pool she was drawing from, based on a varied list of criteria. At one point, it was just women who were beyond saving. Then it was love interests who were too far gone and had to be killed. Then it was family members, mostly mothers. Then it was love interests who didn't have to be killed but did have to be fought to break them out of whatever spell or ailment it was that made them attack the heroes.

We have to wait for Anita's next video to hear her talk about male examples but I have a tendency to pick out a few male analogues to Anita's accusations while she's discussing them. Each time the Euthanised Damsel definition was expanded, there were a few examples that immediately sprang to mind, be they characters like Sinclair in Bioshock 2, Jecht from Final Fantasy X, Steve's father from Resident Evil: Code Veronica and plenty who only had to be attacked, rather than killed, such as Leon in Resident Evil 4 and Baralai in Final Fantasy X-2.

However, there were very few examples I could come up with featuring a male love interest being killed by a female hero. That's partly because, as Anita points out, there are so few female protagonists but even fewer with male love interests. This is slightly off-topic but I think the inclination to place female protagonists in the "strong, independent woman" archetype is a reason why male love interests aren't often featured; perhaps the belief that the heroine is motivated by a man betrays the "independent" part of that archetype. On-topic, however, I read a suggestion on a Youtube video that made me think that a woman euthanising a male "damsel" isn't the real analogue to men euthanising a female one. No, the real analogue is male heroes who die to save their damsels in distress; just like the female characters Anita brings up who request death rather than live as an abomination, male characters are often expected to have no thought for their own safety as long as the female characters are okay.

Capcom is very fond of doing this. In Onimusha 2, one of the story branches features Kotaro sacrificing himself to save Oyu, a woman who he has been largely antagonistic towards for most of the game. In Devil May Cry 4 -- which Anita brought up to point out the damsel in distress, in spite of the fact the game also features Nero being captured -- has Credo betraying his religious order in an attempt to save his sister, Kyrie, and it costs him his life. In Resident Evil: Code Veronica again, Steve is turned into an invincible monster at the end of the game but manages to fight off the transformation, his love for Claire Redfield is so strong. He dies shortly afterwards. This one is quite close to the love interest being killed by the heroine, in that Steve was a "damsel" moments earlier but he dies because his body can't take the transformation rather than because Claire pulled the trigger herself.

Then there's the huge sacrifice made by the hero of Shadow Of The Colossus (although he doesn't die). In Bioshock 2, the hero, Subject Delta, dies regardless of the ending the player receives, while the young woman he set out to save, Eleanor Lamb, lives on. Bioshock Infinite features a similar story, with many different incarnations of Elizabeth drowning her father, Booker DeWitt (who accepts his death willingly), so he doesn't go on to become the game's villain and kidnap her in the first place. That probably sounds confusing if you haven't played Bioshock Infinite and trust me, it's hard enough to understand even if you have.

One of the flaws in Anita's argument is also making the assumption that developers only use the Euthanised Damsel when they wish to shock people. I find that hard to believe. While there are doubtless examples that do exist just to be edgy, it seems like Anita isn't willing to consider the possibility that the writers wanted to create a tragic storyline. Or a storyline with a twist. I can't help but think Anita came to the conclusion that being edgy was the reason why the Euthanised Damsel existed before she looked at her many examples and then just found a way to make them fit her viewpoint.

Those are my thoughts on the "main" portion of Anita's video but in spite of my criticisms, I don't see much of a problem with Anita's dislike of the "Euthanised Damsel". Unlike her first video, Anita isn't as judgemental. There isn't any demonising of Shigeru Miyamoto, for one thing. The attitude is still there though; Anita explains why she dislikes the Euthanised Damsel -- and don't get me wrong, I completely understand why -- but I'm not really given a reason why I should care beyond conjecture and guesswork. The Jack Thompson parallels are still there, this time with regards to domestic violence. More on that later.

That's the important thing -- and, more to the point, the reason I can't get behind Anita as a force for good in gaming -- Anita states, "one of the really insidious things about systemic & institutional sexism is that most often regressive attitudes and harmful gender stereotypes are perpetuated and maintained unintentionally". Unfortunately, Anita herself had already reinforced and condoned harmful gender stereotypes herself at this point. Long story short, she talked at length about domestic violence but her definition followed the Duluth model.

If you know about domestic violence, that should say it all. For those of you who don't, however, the Duluth model is the assumption that domestic violence is "patriarchal"; domestic violence is an act done by men against women and children. If you've been following me for a long time, you'll know that hearing statistics about male victims of domestic violence on television was what interested me in men's rights in the first place. So domestic violence against men is a very prickly subject for me and I do not appreciate having male victims dismissed with gendered language in sentences like "people of all genders tend to buy into the myth that women are the ones to blame for the violence men perpetrate against them". Aside from ignoring male victims and female abusers, it also ignores violence in same-sex couples and doesn't acknowledge reciprocal violence. It is not a healthy, intelligent or accurate image of domestic violence to promote.

Aside from this major problem with Anita's argument, I find her videos peppered with smaller ones too. While Anita's latest video didn't have me shouting curses at my monitor, I did find myself sighing and shaking my head a lot. Her heart may be in the right place -- albeit deep, deep down -- but her solutions are impractical, biased and based on questionable logic and outright contradictory statements. For example, she criticises and dismisses Devil May Cry 4 (and others) for being a "crude, unsophisticated male power fantasy" but also does the same for Ico with "the most decidedly patronizing examples depictions of female vulnerability are used for an easy way for writers to trigger an emotional reaction in male players". That, in particular, made me cringe. Some time ago, Anita removed her video on Bayonetta from her channel because she thought she came across badly in it -- she shrugged off the story and dumbed it down to make it seem insignificant -- and as far as I'm concerned, she's doing the exact same thing with Ico here, with regards to the main gameplay element. You've probably already noted, as I did, Anita's inability to consider that perhaps female players could feel emotionally attached to the characters in Ico.

At one point, Anita repeats the same sentence over and over, wanting to get a point across about a trend: "In [game] your wife is brutally murdered and you then have to rescue your daughter." She seems to believe that the trend of daughters being captured is disempowering to women but apparently doesn't consider the possibility that the reason daughters are so frequently kidnapped instead of sons (and possibly husbands too) is because female characters are automatically more sympathetic than male ones, simply because they're female. Games like Heavy Rain, featuring a kidnapped son, are very rare. We feel more for Max Payne and Kratos because they lost daughters, not sons. In Bioshock 1 and 2, the reason for Little Sisters rather than Little Brothers was because it would be more difficult -- and morally questionable -- for the player to sacrifice little girls rather than little boys. In Bioshock 2 and Infinite, the protagonist's main mission is to find mistreated female characters, not male ones. It's the same principle behind "missing white woman syndrome", where the media is more willing to spotlight missing people if they're middle- or upper-class white women than if they're, say, a poor black male.

While it might seem like a good idea for Anita to decide against including violence against women who are treated as equals -- female soldiers and fighting game characters, for example -- there are a number of reasons why it carries some unfortunate implications for men. Back in February, I wrote about the sexism in Heavy Rain, comparing and contrasting two death scenes in particular; one of playable character Madison Paige, having a drill used on her genitals and one of Leland White, the villain of "The Taxidermist" DLC story, who has a chainsaw used on his. White's death is much more violent than Madison's, showing the genital mutilation in full, gory detail while Madison's is treated with more sensitivity; instead of showing the death, the camera cuts to the outside of the house and we hear a scream. The problem is that under Anita's definition, White's death is actually more acceptable than Madison's because he's not a damsel in distress at the time. The grisly nature of his death becomes irrelevant because he still has his agency. While Anita may believe helplessness is required for her definition of "violence against women", I'm afraid that I don't.

Time and again, we're asked to trust in Anita's word only because we're supposed to. We're told to believe the Euthanised Damsel is done for the sake of being edgy, just because that's what Anita thinks is the reason for it. We're told to see the damsels as objects instead of people, since that's the conclusion Anita has come to. While she points out that playing the games she features will not "magically transform players into raging sexists", she also says "media narratives do have a powerful cultivation effect helping to shape cultural attitudes and opinions". There's no explanation why she thinks video games/the trend of damsels and Euthanised Damsels contribute to these cultural attitudes though and that is when we get back into Jack Thompson territory.

This is becoming longer than I intended but I didn't want to leave anything out, so I'll wrap it up. Even without Anita's stance on domestic violence, I wouldn't be able to accept this video. There are just too many little details, too many conclusions drawn from questionable logic for me to support it. That's a shame and I genuinely mean that because, not enjoying depictions of violence against men, I can sympathise with the fact that she is so strongly against the idea of the Euthanised Damsel. However, when Anita says something like "violence against women is a serious global epidemic; therefore, attempts to address the issue in fictional contexts demands a considerable degree of respect, subtlety and nuance", she doesn't seem to realise that she's demanding special treatment. I agree that violence against women deserves to be treated respectfully but she's reading too much into a few too many situations; for example, I'm not sure how many people compare the hero having to kill his fused-with-a-monstrous-alien girlfriend when she asks him to do so in Prey with domestic violence.

Finally, it has to be said ... these are video games. As it happens, there are many important real-life issues that aren't treated with subtlety and nuance. War, for example, has been glamorised ever since Wolfenstein. To ask that all game developers consider how they treat the deaths of soldiers, however, isn't practical for video games. When all is said and done, I could be the most ardent anti-war protestor on the planet but not have any say in what developers should be doing with their own games. The final say is theirs, and rightfully so. The same goes for Anita and her feeling about violence against women in games. That's about all there is to say about it.

Addendum

If you only care about video games, you can stop reading now. This is where I put my investigative hat on and check out the resources Anita used for her video.

Anita posted the list of resources she used for this video on the Feminist Frequency site and they are very telling. Anita's sole resource for the idea that game developers must feature the deaths of women to be "edgy" is this blog post and video. If she actually believes the statement Daria makes in the video then she's actually being more judgmental than I gave her credit for earlier.

While I can't find anything that goes against the claim that "every 9 seconds a woman is assaulted or beaten in the United States and on average more than three women are murdered by their boyfriends husbands, or ex-partners every single day", the Every 9 Seconds website states "there are over 4700 U.S. women incarcerated for defending their lives". Let's just say that the founders of Every 9 Seconds may be playing fast and loose with their definition of the term "defending their lives"; I live in the UK but if any of you have been following the trial of Jodi Arias over there in the US, you may know that she claimed she was acting in self-defence and was a victim of domestic violence. Having followed a few cases of women on trial for murder or wounding charges over the years, Arias certainly isn't the first to make this claim.

One of the other resources Anita posts a link to is for the Wellspring Alliance, which looks fine. In fact, on their FAQ page, they mention that they take everyone, "regardless of race, color, national original, gender, sexual orientation, disability or age". Likewise, on the page linked to on Feminist Frequency's website, they state "Men are also victims of domestic violence, as are couples in same-sex relationships". Apparently, Anita decided to ignore that part when she talked about domestic violence herself.

The resource I'd like to focus on the most is "The normalization of violence in heterosexual romantic relationships: Women's narratives of love and violence" by Julia T. Wood. It's from looking at this study that Anita comes to the following conclusion, which she states in her video:

"Research consistently shows that people of all genders tend to buy into the myth that women are the ones to blame for the violence men perpetrate against them. In the same vein, abusive men consistently state that their female targets “deserved it”, “wanted it” or were “asking for it”."

Looking at the study itself, that is not what was said. First of all, this is a single study, with twenty heterosexual women who used to be in abusive relationships. "Consistently" and "people of all genders" are completely misleading. Nothing of the sort is written about this in Wood's research. Secondly, abusive men are not shown to have stated that their female targets "deserved it", "were asking for it" or anything similar. When these phrases come up in Wood's study, they're actually used as reasons why the female abuse victims stayed in abusive relationships:

"The women in this study described their partners' violence against them as understandable at the time it occurred. They justified it using a variety of reasons: 'I deserved it,' 'He didn't really mean it,' 'He was drinking,' 'It could have been worse,' and so forth."

It's very unpleasant, yes, but this isn't what Anita said. She made a claim about how "people of all genders" view abuse that research "consistently" shows but none of the sources provided on feministfrequency.com confirm Anita's claim. I don't know if Anita or her team at Feminist Frequency can provide sources that back up her claim but this, at least, is an outright fabrication.