I've been procrastinating about writing a blog regarding Polygon's low Bayonetta 2 review score since they posted it last week but this couldn't wait. As some of you may know, there was a school shooting yesterday in Marysville, Washington, leaving two people dead (including the gunman) and four others in critical condition.
I woke up this morning and went on Twitter to see the following tweets from Anita Sarkeesian:
There are a few good reasons to bring up mass shootings with regards to debating an agenda. To discuss the possibility (or necessity) of gun control laws. To point out the poor record of supporting mental health issues and campaign for change.
To push a ridiculous, pseudo-scientific claim about "toxic masculinity" is not a good reason. It's nothing but shameless exploitation of a tragedy to push a sexist agenda. According to Anita the problem isn't guns. It isn't failure to diagnose and treat severe mental health issues. It's men. "Toxic masculinity", to be more specific.
It's one thing to use such a disgustingly sexist phrase as that but acting like pointing it out is helping men -- "this is how patriarchy can harm men too" -- is just ridiculous. Imagine applying the phrase "toxic" to any other characteristic of any other demographic and acting as if it's actually for their benefit. "Toxic homosexuality", for example.
Edit: Created this for Twitter, so I figured I'd post it here too. Feel free to spread it around.
I've already written about the patriarchy argument and how it fails to get to the root of many serious issues that affect men and women. Let's assume for a minute that the patriarchy exists; has the patriarchy ever described a characteristic innate to men as "toxic"? No, yet Anita is happy to do so. How exactly is the "patriarchy" harming me? They aren't stereotyping my entire sex in the way that a popular feminist is happy to, nor are they saying there's something wrong with me just for being male.
As Cathy Young's tweet above points out, it's important to keep in mind that this isn't Anita throwing out her "toxic masculinity" phrase as part of a TEDxWomen or Conference talk. She's branding mass shootings as something inherent to masculinity. Not only does it ignore female mass murderers but paints it as a male problem. Then claims that she's "helping" men by telling them.
I wasn't the only one to point this out but it has to be said: Anita Sarkeesian is now on the same level as Jack Thompson. For those who don't remember, Jack's big claim was that the Columbine massacre was the fault of gamers and he used it to fuel his anti-gamer crusade. Anita is doing the exact same thing and using a mass shooting to promote all the sexist views she wants. She even took the opportunity to plug a book that she had written a blurb for on the back cover:
Left-click for larger view.
Understandably, Anita's sexist exploitation of a tragedy caused some backlash against her. Rather than taking on board the criticism and considering making an apology, Anita did what she always does; claims she was harassed. It's almost reached the point of self-parody:
Yes, Anita actually claimed that a backlash against exploiting a tragedy to push a sexist agenda was "hate". I don't think I've ever used the phrase "professional victim" to describe Anita, as others have, but it's an accurate description; she poses as a damsel in distress to gain further magazine interviews, newspaper coverage and talks about being harassed. This is no different and I don't see any reason why it wouldn't happen; following the shootings by Elliot Rodger in May, feminist bloggers and journalists leapt on the opportunity to blame "male entitlement", "male rage" and "male privilege". Laying mass shootings at the feet of men is apparently common amongst modern feminist "hipsters with degrees in cultural studies" (as the wonderful Christina Hoff Sommers put it when describing Anita's video game criticism).
After this, I don't want to see anyone claiming all Anita is doing is "making videos about wanting equality in video games", as Anita has claimed in the past during her talks. That was never true. The same applies for those who say "feminism is for equality". This is just another example of how that is not the case. In fact, if there are any feminists, especially feminist gamers, this should be the straw that breaks the camel's back when it comes to reasons to denounce Anita as your spokesperson. If the flawed arguments, the bias, stealing videos from others without permission, stealing artwork from others without permission, the whole "prostituted women" instead of "sex workers" controversy and dismissing male victims of domestic violence didn't do it, this should.
In the link I just posted about part two of Anita's Damsels in Distress video, I wrote "her heart may be in the right place". Obviously, I withdraw that statement. There is no reason for any moral person to support Anita Sarkeesian or anyone else who would exploit a tragedy to push their own agenda. More than that, she is a prime example of why I refuse to support modern feminism. I actually follow plenty of feminists on Twitter who I like but it goes without saying that people like Anita Sarkeesian have made the feminist movement about misandry. Not equality.
This is a picture that I posted back in May, following the Elliot Rodger shootings. It's as true now as it was then:
Apologies for the lack of updates lately. I mentioned in my last blog post that I've been working on a short game for when I go back to college and it's been pretty much non-stop work on that, learning as I go. It's the kind of thing that I would love to be able to share with my readers but with people like Mike Bithell (hi Mike!), creator of Thomas Was Alone, slinging insults at people who disagree with feminism, I think it's best that I keep that type of thing away from prying eyes. It might be needed for a portfolio one day and, with people like Mike in the industry who aren't willing to listen to differing opinions, I feel like posting screenshots here could come back to haunt me.
Anyway, I'm a bit behind on this but Outlast: Whistleblower was the DLC prequel/sequel for Outlast that was released in May. As with the main game, the goal is for the player to make their way through an asylum while avoiding psychopaths who want to kill them. One of these psychopaths is Eddie Gluskin, also known as "The Groom". The Groom has an insane obsession with finding a bride and he sees all his victims as women, even if they're male. One of the ways he tortures and kills his prisoners -- all male in the game, although he apparently had a history of killing women prior to entering the asylum -- is by violently removing their genitals and surgically-modifying their bodies to give them breasts. Some of this "procedure" is seen in-game and is very graphic (but I won't show any screenshots here):
The reason why I'm bringing up Outlast: Whistleblower a few months after it's been released rather than closer to the time is because the genital mutilation is handled about as tastefully as a genital mutilation theme in a violent game can be handled, in that it's clear that the Groom mutilates men but unless you find out all the backstory, it's actually ambiguous to whether any of his victims are female; there's a Female Ward and the breasts and genitals of each victim are often obscured enough for it to be possible that the Groom murdered women as well as men.
It wasn't until I came across this review (Continue-Play.com) a couple of weeks ago, which states:
"Just as it was in Outlast, there are no women in Whistleblower.
We’re actually pleased; we’re unsure of how we would handle some of the
more controversial scenes if they depicted women as well as men. But if
you search hard enough within Mount Massive, you may just find what we
did – a single case file explaining why women are not present, despite
the female ward that was seen in Outlast. Well played, Red Barrels. Well played."
I took a look at the Outlast Wiki after reading this and found that there were indeed a bunch of notes in the game that explained that the only inmates (is that the right term? I'd say they were prisoners more than they were patients) of the asylum were male. This is most explicit in a document called "Gender Selection in Mount Massive Contractors" but others, specifically about the Groom's victims, can be read here, here and here. I can remember reading most of these but I must've glossed over or misinterpreted some aspects of either the notes or game environment that led me to believe the Groom's victims were both male or female.
Just in case this entire blog will be taken out of context, I have to clarify that I'm not arguing, "why doesn't this game feature the brutal mutilation of women's genitals!?" For one thing, I actually didn't have a problem with Outlast: Whistleblower only featuring violence against men, for reasons I'll come to later on. The double standard of violence against men being considered "acceptable" when the reverse would not be seems to be present
Since the Continue-Play review mentioned how pleased they were that Outlast: Whistleblower didn't feature any women, I took a look at a few other reviews. To their credit, most reviewers took the content very seriously, expressing the kind of revulsion you'd expect. Others, like Jim Sterling for The Escapist, took the opportunity to make light of the idea:
"Our plucky little tattler
soon finds himself a video camera, because that's the conceit of the
game, and tries to escape with his limbs - and penis - intact. Oh lord,
the penis."
[...]
"... suffice to say that men everywhere will be shuddering every time they recall this particular bad guy's scenes."
While GameFront's Phil Hornshaw's attempts at examining the thought process behind the developer's decision to feature the Groom made me cringe more than the genital mutilation did in the game itself:
"In fact, I found the whole section personally uncomfortable on a lot
of levels, which is probably the point (it is, after all, a horror
story). At this point, I’m torn on the depiction; there are degrees to
the idea of presenting a character inflicting this sort of violence on
people that feels insensitive to the fact that similarly awful violence
is inflicted on people in the real world — especially on women. (Outlast
contains no women, a point which is noted in a story aside if you find
the right file hidden in The Whistleblower.) Even more than just, you
know, murder, this is a deeply horrific thing that feels like it’s being exploited for a shock moment. At the same time, my own very visceral reaction to the scene — as a
male in a country where such a thing is very likely never to happen to
me — may well be the point Red Barrels had in mind. The language and
imagery used, at least under the immediate surface of blood and death,
screams at a presentation of violence against women to be experienced by
a male character. And while that’s not to suggest that violence against
women must be portrayed in a male way in order to make it “understood”
by male players and male characters, nonetheless, the scene presents a
very particular kind of menace not often experienced by male players,
and which was created by an all-male team at Red Barrels. There’s a
predatory man searching for a defenseless character, cooing about love
and marriage, bent on rape, torture and murder; it’s a kind of fear that
women may be familiar with, but men are infinitely less so. Whether
that’s exploited purely for novelty and shock, or something deeper, is
tough to say."
There are a bunch of things I would like to tell Phil Hornshaw about real-life violence towards men, from the customary practice of male circumcision in the West and men being more likely to be the victims of violent crime to sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and forced circumcision in Kenya (note that those articles don't feature pictures but do have graphic descriptions of sexual violence against men. The disturbing idea of sexual violence causing male victims to "lose" their manhood is also a theme that crops up in Outlast: Whistleblower, although obviously it's altered to fit a survival horror game and isn't as tragic or depressing as the real-life experiences). However, it's not only the ignorance of the issues themselves that bother me. I feel like Hornshaw's review dumbs-down a lot of real-life issues. I understand that he specified "as a male in this country" when talking about genital mutilation but does he also think that women can relate to the idea of being hunted by "predatory men bent on rape, torture and murder"?
If those are the reasons why Red Barrels -- the developer of Outlast: Whistleblower -- then it's similar to the problem that Far Cry 3 had; diminishing a real-life problem for men for the sake of imitating one for women in fiction. That may not be the case but Hornshaw apparently finds it tricky to see men portrayed as victims because they're male. Just like Jeffrey Yohalem for Far Cry 3, men being victims has to be representative of violence against women.
Personally, I think the genital mutilation in Outlast: Whistleblower is certainly shocking but not really something to be frustrated over. That would be a bit like watching an episode of Jackass and complaining about the "gross-out" nature of some of the stunts. There are all kinds of shocking things to see in Outlast, including naked, still-living people who look as if they've been sewn back together but without any genitals intact. It could certainly be argued that complaining about the violent content is completely different to complaining about the double standard -- the genital mutilation of men in Outlast: Whistleblower while women are unlikely to receive this kind of graphic mistreatment in games -- and if that's the stance you take on it, I understand.
However, in my opinion, it's clear that the double standard itself is to blame here rather than Red Barrels themselves. Look at the response of the reviewers, breathing collective sighs of relief, cracking jokes or trying to justify the genital mutilation just because men are the victims. Even though Red Barrels exploited this double standard, they were developing downloadable content for an already-shockingly violent game and I think to blame them just for adding more shockingly violent content would be a bit like -- if I can use the Jackass analogy again -- criticising Jackass: The Movie for going further than the television show.
The thing is, maybe Red Barrels were just playing it safe, as the Continue-Play.com review hinted at. Hypothetically, assume that someone like Jack Thompson re-emerges and picks Outlast: Whistleblower as a target of his anger, criticising it for violence against women. Maybe he assumes that the victims are all female or, like me, thinks that there's a mix of male and female victims but sees it as anti-woman rather than pro-equality. If this controversy was to crop up, Red Barrels have plenty of in-game documents as a defence against accusations of violence against women, which would make the whole controversy disappear (in a perfect world; in reality, logic doesn't mean anything to people with a vendetta against video games).
It's frustrating that the genital mutilation of men isn't considered a controversy but, again, the real-life double standard is the problem.
You can send me an e-mail at themalesofgames@gmail.com, follow me on Twitter @themalesofgames -- I'm starting to regret that long Twitter handle now -- or leave a comment below.
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.
(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.
Sorry I haven't updated in a while. This was meant to be posted a few days ago but I was suddenly hit with an influx of work. Actually, I still have a half-finished blog post featuring quotes that I found while writing assignments but that one's taking some effort to get back into, since I'd basically be rehashing some stuff I did for college only a month ago.
This one will be short but it's also something I find very interesting; there's a huge gap between the number of male enemies we slaughter in games compared to female enemies, which I've written about before. Specifically, this was about the number of generic, cannon fodder mooks that players slaughter in their hundreds without giving it a moment's thought, rather than named villains and villainesses. The majority of these enemies are male, or at least are male in appearance.
Thankfully, it seems like a gaming journalist has been thinking along the same lines as me; a few days ago, Nicholas Tan of Game Revolution uploaded an article he wrote titled "Can Women Be Video Game Enemies En Masse?"
I don't want to nitpick too much because I think it's a good article. It's the kind of article that needs to be seen more on mainstream gaming sites, something that is thought-provoking and acknowledges that equality for women in gaming isn't all about stomping out online abuse and reducing breast size. You also have to acknowledge that men are unfairly portrayed too and equality works both ways; unless you take the hit and have women killed as often as men (give or take; I'm not asking for a 50/50 split. That would be ridiculous), things will be unequal.
Even so, while the article gives a good overview and I hope will be enough to start a discussion, it isn't as in-depth as I would like. It would've been nice to see some more examples from games, since the only one focused on is Fallout: New Vegas (as an example of a game that gets it right). There are screenshots of Final Fight and Final Fantasy VIII but the author doesn't elaborate on either one. The picture of FFVIII's Edea raises questions, since she isn't specifically a female enemy to be killed "en masse", in the same way that Roxy and Poison from Final Fight are. Not that FFVIII isn't guilty of a lack of female enemies but I think Nicholas Tan could've provided context about why it was included.
Having said that, the author hits the nail on the head with two statements about why we don't see more female enemies in games. After writing about how enemies are more likely to be male in games designed to be realistic, Tan says the following:
"Now since most video games are not meant
to be absolutely realistic, it's unnecessary that they need to follow
this rule. I've blasted the heads off numerous female raiders in Fallout: New Vegas. But it's a rule that carries over, if but subconsciously, from video game developers who are predominantly men."
Apart from the "predominately men" part -- I haven't seen anything to suggest that either sex would be more or less willing to female enemies -- but the lack of female enemies in unrealistic games is due to real-world gender norms. Think of it this way; developers can introduce any number of fantastical elements into a fictional world, such as magic and monsters, but they can only do so much when it comes to subverting gender roles. If they do, it will only be to elevate the role of women and reduce the role of men; for those of you who have played the Shivering Isles expansion for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, think about the gender roles of the Golden Saints and Dark Seducers. Both are armies where the highest ranks are made up of women while males don't rise above being grunts.
So that's one of the reasons why we don't see women making up the majority of enemies in games and the second quote I'd like to use from Tan's article shows why we probably won't:
"Then of course, could you imagine a game
where a male protagonist goes around murdering women and exclusively
women and not just demons like harpies and hagravens? Even if the
gameplay is groundbreaking and the story is told with an attention to
context, it will become easy prey for the mainstream press. I mean, talk
about making yourself a target and bad marketing. At best, the game
would be considered a joke and be turned into an infamous meme. (Perhaps
such a game would need a female protagonist killing a whole lot of other women to work.)"
Not much to say about that, other than it's correct. There's no chance of a game featuring a male protagonist massacring an all-female army being released and not becoming a target for the gaming press (or the mainstream, as Tan points out). Back when Resident Evil 5 received its first trailer, it faced controversy for featuring a white protagonist -- Chris Redfield -- gunning down black enemies, as the game is set in Africa. With gender issues being a major topic on gaming news sites, is there any way a game like the one described could exist and face a similar controversy? Is there any way it could not become the gaming community's whipping boy (or girl, if you prefer)?
As good as the rest of the Nicholas Tan article is, it ends on a silly note:
"That said, a video game where women are
the primary antagonists would be an interesting experiment, so long as
it's handled well (say, a devilish male scientist creates a virus that
targets women because he thought it was THIS BIG but she said it was
only this big)."
It's a reference to penis size, in case you don't get the joke.
I realise I'm overanalysing this but there are four things wrong with that idea:
1) It paints the male scientist as the bad guy. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, since games with all-male enemies have had female antagonists (such as Final Fantasy VIII again) but I think Tan could've used a better example.
2) I don't see how that could be considered "handled well". Surely, the best way to handle a game with women as the primary enemies would be to avoid referencing it at all. We don't acknowledge men as the primary enemies being "the norm", so why reference the female enemies as being out of the ordinary?
3) It doesn't put the female enemies in control of their own actions. Having a virus that makes them evil is a lot different than the women choosing to be evil (or at least members of the evil army, whether it's because they were intimidated into joining, they signed up because they needed money, etc.). There's already criticism from feminist circles about female characters lacking "agency"; being active participants in the game's story, rather than passive ones. So if the game is going for true equality, the women have to choose to be the bad guys.
4) The male scientist lashed out at women because a woman said he had a small penis? Really? That's like Lara Croft's quest beginning because a guy said she was fat.
I don't want it to sound like I'm criticising Nicholas Tan or the article here. Instead, let's pretend we're playing "Fantasy Video Game Storyline Writer" and coming up with our own ideas for how predominately female enemies would work instead. That's more along the lines of what I'm criticising rather than the article itself.
Like I said, I've overanalysing but there are more sensible reasons to have a character gunning down hundreds upon hundreds of men rather than hundreds upon hundreds of women. That could just be part of the fictional universe's mythology rather than for any reason for it occurring in storyline.
So if you haven't read the article, go and read it and feel free to praise Nicholas Tan for writing about a subject we don't often hear about on gaming sites. I hope it receives more exposure and makes a few more mainstream gamers think outside the box.
IMPORTANT: This blog post contains spoilers for Grand Theft Auto V. Read at your own risk.
I know for a fact this blog is going to be posted later than I wanted. College work is now getting on top of me in a huge way. Doing homework has turned into a constant level grind, without the satisfying rewards when I level up.
It's been almost a month since the release of Grand Theft Auto V and when it was released, Gamespot's Carolyn Petit faced a lot of criticism for giving the game a 9.0 score. That's right, a 9.0 out of 10. As high a score as that might seem, there is a good reason why Carolyn faced a backlash; she seemingly deducted points from her score based on the claim that GTAV is "politically muddled and profoundly misogynistic".
I should say that I don't think GTAV is a ten-out-of-ten game. However, if I was deducting points from the game, I would do so based on the inability to map "accelerate" to the X button on the PS3 version and because I think the gameplay can feel a bit flat and aimless after the story is over. There are also a bunch of online issues but online play wasn't available at the time of the review. I feel like these are sensible reasons to deduct points from the game but, other than those issues, it's a phenomenal game. I compare the game's tone to a description of The Social Network I once read on TV Tropes; it "captures the spirit of the time it was made". Everything from reality television to politics is perfectly parodied. I feel like it couldn't have been made at any other time in gaming history, nor could it have been done as a medium other than video games. Although, as I say, it's not perfect.
So what's the big deal about Carolyn claiming that the game is "profoundly misogynistic" if I don't think it's perfect either? Well there's a difference between the game having flaws that could be improved and the game having content that offends you personally. People read mainstream reviews because they want impartiality, not ideologically-driven arguments.
Here's an example; I've sometimes come across Christian review sites that award games a score based on how highly they promote Christian values. This site, for example, gives two scores; a "game score" and a "morality score". That's fine for a niche site but not a mainstream one. The problem is that if I was a reviewer who said "Grand Theft Auto V is a good game but it doesn't promote Christian values. 9/10", I'd face criticism for that review. Not because the critics necessarily had anything against Christianity but because the reviewer is judging a game using personally-held beliefs and not professional impartiality.
There's also the fact that Grand Theft Auto V makes a point about not singling out any group for parody. Men, women, liberals, conservatives, religious people, atheists and others are all equally satirised. It'd be one thing to say "contains content that may offend" and deduct points for that but to single out only offense to only one group as a negative point for a review just reeks of personal bias. I might've used this quote before but in the words of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of South Park, on offensive humour, "either it's all okay, or none of it is".
Carolyn's supporters -- or those who agree that GTAV is misogynist -- have created a strawman argument by making out like her critics are actually complaining about the 9.0 score and not the reasons behind the score. It's easy to persuade people that the critics are crazy when the score is so high (and then there are the typical claims that the backlash is because Carolyn is a woman and because she's transgender). In actual fact, the critics have two problems with Carolyn's review scores; the first is that this isn't the first time Carolyn's personal beliefs have influenced review scores.
A month before GTAV was released, a PC game was released called Gone Home. Personally, I thought it was quite bad. The gameplay involved walking around a big house, examining items to determine what happened to your character's parents and sister. I thought the environment interactivity was well-done but apart from that, it had nothing to offer except a very schmaltzy, romanticised view of an immature teenage lesbian love story. Personally, I felt like the story was meant to come across this way, since it was narrated by the main character's younger sister, reading from excerpts in her own diary about falling in love with a girl, but it also made it hard to care about this romance in the slightest. Plus, the ending was about as anticlimactic as it can get.
The lesbian angle also played no role in the story whatsoever; one of the lesbian characters wanted to join the military and Don't Ask, Don't Tell was mentioned ... but also quickly ignored. I imagine this would be the case for gay people who wanted to join the military when DADT was still in effect, so there must be some truth to it, but it seemed like an odd thing to shrug off. There was a mention of the parents disapproving of their daughter's girlfriend but their reaction to this rebellious young woman didn't seem any different from a reaction they'd have if she was dating a rebellious young man instead.
So in spite of the fact that this game's storyline revolved around a lesbian romance, it didn't seem to have any relevance in-and-of itself ... except when it came to review scores, including Carolyn's. It scored a 9.5 out of 10, which is only 0.1 below the highest score Gamespot has ever given (for the original Diablo) and a full 0.5 points ahead of GTAV. Did I mention that Gone Home is only two hours long at the most and costs twenty dollars to buy? That means Gone Home earns ten dollars an hour, which is more than minimum wage in the US.
The second problem that the critics have with Carolyn's review scores is that they don't want one rule for women and another for everyone else, which is what Carolyn is promoting by listing "profoundly misogynistic" as a negative point.
Case in point, would you like to know a few ways men are negatively portrayed in GTAV? Well, there's the basic stuff about their portrayals; men are stupid, perverted, short-tempered, drug addicts, drug dealers, murderers, thieves and doormats. The radio commercials aimed at men try to appeal to masculinity by promoting domestic violence.
Those are just the basics. That's the kind of general parody that all demographics face in GTAV and that's the kind of parody that Carolyn is complaining about in regards to women. When we get into more complicated territory, consider this; we're forced to see a brutal torture of a clearly innocent man and, shortly after, we're forced to torture him ourselves. As usual, the victim of torture in a game is male. In typical video game fashion, absolutely every enemy you kill in the main storyline is male. Oh, and there's a threat of rape against a male character when we first meet Trevor, there's the implied rape of Floyd if you switch back to Trevor while staying at his hideout (although it isn't certain) and you can see a billboard for this television show in downtown Los Santos:
Prison Bitches: Break Out Before They Break You In
Incidentally, of the few blogs I've read criticising GTAV for misogyny and transphobia, I haven't read the words "rape culture" once. Because who cares when men are the victims, right?
In contrast to all of this, the only female villain I can think of is a woman working for the government who threatens to anally-violate the torture victim from earlier with a flashlight. Even though our heroes "rescue" the victim (to torture him themselves later), this woman escapes ... while about a dozen of her male colleagues get shot by Michael and Franklin. The only other unpleasant female character worth mentioning is Debra, the girlfriend of Wade's cousing Floyd. She appears for all of one cutscene to insult Floyd and mockingly tell him she's been cheating on him. She and Floyd are both killed off-screen by Trevor. Oh, and then there's Molly Schultz, who works with one of the villains but doesn't seem to be evil herself. In fact, Michael genuinely seems to regret her death, insisting that he just wanted to talk to her.
None of this is likely to be covered by Carolyn Petit or anyone else complaining about GTAV. I've seen complaints about GTAV having misogynist content and being transphobic but when men are the ones who are the victims of negative portrayals, violence and rape jokes, it isn't misandry; it's just typical video game content.
The thing is, I don't really care about how GTAV portrays men. The billboard made me cringe but it seems that I realise what Carolyn and other critics don't (thanks to Anita Sarkeesian for that link, by the way. Nothing like posting a link to a Tumblr called "Fuck NO Video Games" to show how much you love the medium); complaining about the comedy in Grand Theft Auto V is completely pointless because playing with the boundaries of bad taste is the entire point of the humour.
For goodness' sake, we're adults, or we're supposed to be. If people can't handle the mature themes in GTA -- handled in a sometimes-hilariously immature fashion -- then why are they playing the game? What did they expect? Buying a Grand Theft Auto game and complaining that it contains controversial content is like whining that a Metal Gear Solid game has a sexualised female character. Oh, wait ...
As far as I can see, buying Grand Theft Auto and then complaining about how morally bankrupt it is places us firmly in Jack Thompson territory. In fact, it's a textbook example of the way he used to campaign against video games. Yet we still see site after site falling back on Jack's arguments, without even reappropriating them for a different purpose; these arguments are still being made because people object to the content of a game and want them to change.
Although the more cynical part of me thinks that maybe they wanted to take advantage of the hits that they would get from creating clickbait articles about a game that made a billion dollars in three days. No, that's not why I wrote this blog. Shush.
As much as I don't want to give this guy video views, you can watch this video if you want to hear a basic defence of Carolyn's review, complete with strawman defence. However, he spends the majority of the video comparing Anita Sarkeesian to Rosa Parks, if you can believe it. It's hard to believe, considering Twitter was embroiled in the "#SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen" controversy about a month ago -- a movement all about how non-white women have been underrepresented or mistreated by the feminist movement, which made for interesting reading if you've ever been lectured on intersectionality by white feminists -- but this is the stage we've come to when it comes to defending Anita. Perhaps I should've written about that video instead but, if you watch it, I'm sure you'll understand why I didn't.
Feel free to leave a comment or send me an e-mail at themalesofgames@gmail.com. When I checked my e-mails at the beginning of October, I realised I hadn't checked for a month, so forgive me if I don't get back to you for a while (and I apologise to the few people who sent me e-mails who it took me a while to respond to).
I've been really bored lately, even with Dragon's Crown. I played Gone Home recently too but thought that was a letdown. While I suspect there'll be something to write about following Gamescom, it's all very slow-going right now. Not that there's a shortage of gender issues concerning men in video games to write about but, it has to be said, it's so much easier to write about current issues and have links at my fingertips than it is to hunt down pictures and videos myself. Still, with nothing else to do, let's talk about reversing the sexes.
A few days ago, I read a comment on Youtube that said something along the lines of "reversing the sexes is a standard defensive, kneejerk response to accusations of sexism in video games". I can't recall the video I saw it under (and after spending most of the day searching, can't find it either) but that statement left me scratching my head. Hypothetically reversing the sexes of a situation has always, to me at least, seemed like an easy and effective way to examine whether it's sexist or not. In fact, people like me who get involved in the bubble of gender issues can forget how easy it is to become bogged-down with complicated terms (like "patriarchy", "hypoagency", "rape culture" and other phrases that I like to steer clear of while writing this blog) so reversing the sexes is actually an incredibly useful, accessable tool to people who aren't as interested in gender issues; it's easy to do and doesn't overcomplicate any issues. So let's try a few.
There's a moment in Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic that always confused me; the player character meets a hunter on Tatooine who is stranded and needs the player's help. The wife of this hunter has rigged his hunting droids to explode if he takes another step. He had no choice but to wait for help, possibly dying of thirst in the process. The hunter isn't smart enough to figure out how to disarm them, so he asks the player character for help. It isn't the situation itself that's questionable -- even if it is the Star Wars equivalent of a bumbling husband being at the mercy of his more intelligent wife -- but if the player chose Bastila Shan, a female Jedi and something of a mentor to your own character, to accompany them, she has some eyebrow-raising things to say about the hunter's situation:
Bastila says, "I say leave him". The hunter replies with, "you're pretty heartless for such a pretty lady, you know?" Bastila responds, "I take it back. Let's congratulate his wife".
To me, this always seemed like a huge overreaction, especially for the supposedly good-natured Bastila. So much for "the Jedi do not believe in killing their prisoners", as she states earlier. Leaving prisoners to die of thirst, however, is apparently completely acceptable.
The uploader of that Youtube video comments that, as out-of-character as it may seem, it hints at Bastila having anger issues that would later be used to turn her to the dark side. Personally, I find it a bit hard to connect "irritation over clumsy come-ons" with "dark lord of the Sith". Not that I think the uploader is incorrect but it seems like an odd thing to foreshadow side-switching with.
So do you think it's sexist? I'm torn. The hunter isn't portrayed as a sympathetic character; using droids to hunt is a no-no in KOTOR and he has a habit of flirting with women in spite of being married. Plus, in spite of Bastila's comments, the player earns Light Side points for helping the hunter, so it doesn't seem like the game is encouraging punishing the hunter for his comments. On the other hand, it takes a lot to advocate murder (and congratulate the murderer) just because you're irritated over someone's pick-up lines.
Reverse the sexes and I think there's only one big difference; it sounds a lot more harsh to me to think of a male Jedi offering to congratulate an unintelligent woman's husband for plotting to murder her. It would come across as unbelievably petty for a male character to be so irritated by some (admittedly obnoxious) come-ons to advocate such a serious act of domestic violence. As we know, however, domestic violence against men isn't awarded the same seriousness as it is against women. Having said that, I'm still coming down on the side of "not sexist", solely because the player is rewarded with Light Side points for helping the hunter.
Helpfully, there are a few games that provide surprisingly accurate gender-flipped counterparts to each other in spite of the fact they're more-or-less unrelated. Take Heavenly Sword and Resident Evil 4 as an example:
And back when I wrote "The Violence Double Standard", I brought up a moment in Final Fantasy XIII when Lightning punched Snow -- her sister's boyfriend -- twice in the face for failing to keep her sister safe.
I went on to say, "according to Square-Enix, she was conceived as "a female version of
Cloud", from Final Fantasy VII. I must've missed the version of Final
Fantasy VII where Cloud clocks Tifa in the jaw angrily. Twice." It was only this month that I received a long reply in the comments that ended with a link to this video from Final Fantasy VII, where Cloud attacks Aeris in a moment of stress. Skip to 14:40:
Comparing these four moments is a good way to highlight the differences when violence is portrayed against colleagues in games. They are, more or less, gender-flipped versions of each other.
The big difference, first of all, is that the men aren't in control of their actions when they attack the women. In Resident Evil 4, Leon is being controlled by the parasite inside his body and in Final Fantasy VII, Cloud's stress causes him to have an out-of-body experience; literally, a ghostly image of Cloud appears that the player controls while the corporeal Cloud attacks Aeris and the player is unable to stop him in any way. In contrast to the two of them, both Nariko in Heavenly Sword and Lightning in Final Fantasy XIII are well aware that they're harming their own colleagues. So it's acceptable for female characters to hit male ones (which is shocking, I know) but for male ones to hit female ones requires a trance of some kind.
It's also worth noting the reaction to each one. Nariko's choking of her fellow clanmember is broken up quickly but there isn't any concern shown for the man. Lightning punching Snow is practically ignored by their fellow teammates. Certainly, no concern is shown for Snow. On the other hand, Ada reacts to being choked by kneeing Leon in the ribs and stabbing him in the thigh to break him out of his trance. He ends up thanking her for this. So no matter who is being choked and who is doing the choking, violence against the male character ends up being acceptable in both situations. In Final Fantasy VII's case, the remaining party member (Barret, in the video above) quickly rushes in to knock Cloud out and prevent him from hurting Aeris any further.
It seems like trances are an easy way to have violence stay reasonably inoffensive; reverse the sexes of either the Leon or Cloud attacks and they're practically the same. The hero doesn't come across as any worse because of the attack, regardless of his/her sex or the sex of the victim. Part of the reason for that is because the attack isn't the important part, whereas the trance is; both Leon and Cloud attack women because it's such an extreme action, it shows how far their sanity is slipping. Women attacking male characters on their own side is just ... a quality. Game audiences aren't supposed to think anything of it, except perhaps "I'm glad that guy got taught a lesson". As a result, reversing the sexes of the Heavenly Sword and Final Fantasy XIII attacks does make things seem worse; a male character in complete control of his faculties choking or punching a woman who refuses to fight back is just asking to be called out for its misogyny.
I suspect its moments like these -- strikes against male characters by female ones -- that make up the majority of examples that don't really stand out until we reverse the sexes. They're so quickly dismissed when they're against a male character that either we ignore them or we're supposed to ignore them. Take Bioshock Infinite. It's a very basic example but Elizabeth strikes Booker DeWitt in the face with a wrench that isn't brought up again after it happens. It knocks him out-cold, giving Elizabeth enough time to flee but Booker still doesn't have a word to say about it.
I don't know if the gaming public is prepared to see a male character doing this to a woman, although I think it's possible to give gamers a bit more credit. Take the Mass Effect series as an example. It's possible for the main character, Commander Shepard, to punch a female reporter attempting to smear his/her (although for this example, let's go with "him") reputation in all three games. Sure, it's not the same thing, in quite a few significant ways; the reporter isn't on Shepard's side, punching her is a "Renegade" option and, as previously mentioned, Shepard can be either male or female. Each of those points lessens the impact and controversy of a male character punching a woman. Even so, there doesn't seem to have been any backlash at all against the Mass Effect series for this. In fact, it's been praised because the reporter is intentionally unlikeable. Who knows if a male character intentionally punching, choking or bludgeoning a stubborn (like Snow) or sexist (like the clanmember) woman on their side could be as accepted as women doing it to men is now (irritatingly)?
As always, feel free to leave a comment or send me an e-mail at themalesofgames@gmail.com.
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.
