Feminism

[Merus]

I think in some ways it feels like validation, which is why I think there's not a lot of reflexive thought about whether the military are involved in games in the right way. It feels to me very much like the NFL's embrace of Madden, to the point where plays that work in Madden tend to trickle into the actual game, except instead of football it's murdering people for politics. It does also show up some of the medium's blind spots; there is no good reason why we don't have a game about building vital infrastructure for wartorn communities in an effort to get civilians onside, or peacekeeping, or the other things that defence forces do that is not murdering people for politics. (I can't ever recall seeing a game where a bunch of children run along behind the main character. How is that not a thing?)

[Problem Machine]

Just a note here: I believe that both the terms hooker/prostitute are somewhat outdated/offensive terms, I use solely sex worker at this point.

But that's so vague! It can be used to describe cam girls, erotic artists and writers, professional dominatrices, strippers... I have no strong opinion on what the word should be, but something a bit more specific to describe the specific role of in-person sex-times hired friend would be a handy thing to have... particularly since, of the above group of generalized 'sex workers', this last subgroup is the most at-risk, and most hurt by negative depictions.

(I can't ever recall seeing a game where a bunch of children run along behind the main character. How is that not a thing?)

Well in Diablo 2 you can summon an army of skeletons to follow you around. It's kind of the same thing, right?

[Apple Cider]

Escort? 

[Problem Machine]

Maybe? That sounds like something specifically associated with those escort services. "Hired companion" would be a delightfully video-gamey euphemism

[Apple Cider]

Professional sex pal. 

[Problem Machine]

PSP for short

[CollegeBaby]

Just a note here: I believe that both the terms hooker/prostitute are somewhat outdated/offensive terms, I use solely sex worker at this point. 

 

I am kinda amused that the campaign to prove that violent video games doesn't make you violent worked, but in a lot of ways, it conflated that point in a lot of ways that makes it hard to push for better representations of marginalized people, since that IS something that is impacted by portrayals in the media. It largely has to do with how enacting violence in an interactive way and how enacting or interacting with representations are two different things from a psychological and sociological standpoint. Enacting violence in real life is often based on a different set of parameters and has not as much relation to how it is enacted in the virtual world. However, all THAT being said, I find it really unnerving how the overlap between the military complex and video games is getting larger. Video games being used as training or inspiration for the military (along with TV shows, no less) or having ex-game devs go on to talk about how rad Call of Duty is being applied to military procedures is incredibly scary. 

 

I don't want to go on a tangent since this is the Feminism thread, but this is a thing. Shooters: How Video Games Fund Arms Manufacturers

[Erkki]

I wish that NPCs would dive out of the way of your car like they used to before GTA3 came out.

It's not that new, GTA 1 had an on screen congratulation text "Gouranga!" for driving over a group of Hare Krishnas ( dZe9M6DD-wI)

[Nachimir]

GTA2 repeated the exact same scenario but with lines of Elvis impersonators.

[BadHat]

I was playing Jackbox Party Pack and had to draw "feminism."

 

[Apple Cider]

I really like that Anita has such a signature look as to make her highly identifiable. 

[twmac]

I fell down a rabbit hole looking up Georgina Young and her writing (she claims to be a neutral feminist that leans towards to support for gamergate) and I came across this charming little video:

 

 

The crux is that the lense that Sarkeesian views Peach and Zelda is framed within the context that people of action are the only way to be and that strength is not perceived in people who are able to persevere through persecution and oppression. It goes on a few other tangents too and for me it is one of those ones where if I squint and turn my head sideways I can sort of see what they are trying to say...

[Bolegium]

Did not watch the whole video, or find it charming

 

Choosing to be optimistic is nice and all, but it seems like having a 'positive' attitude is more important to her above anything else.

 

- I was going to list the many problems I have with her video ("double-x chromosome"?), but her whole rhetoric of being polite and inoffensive makes that too much of a hassle for the good it does. I skimmed a bunch of her other videos and it's the same, I wouldn't call her insincere, but it seems like she's more interested in cultivating this persona than anything else.

 

Welp, that was my miserable attempt to not be "negative" (even though I think her video thoroughly deserves it).

Short version: She misconstrues Anita's arguments to paint her as overly negative, biased, and unfairly selective in choice of evidence, but does much the same herself. Seems to be particularly defensive about Zelda being called out as a damsel character.

[Gormongous]

The crux is that the lense that Sarkeesian views Peach and Zelda is framed within the context that people of action are the only way to be and that strength is not perceived in people who are able to persevere through persecution and oppression. It goes on a few other tangents too and for me it is one of those ones where if I squint and turn my head sideways I can sort of see what they are trying to say...

 

I really don't have the energy in me to watch the video, but it sounds like Georgina Young is using the age-old anti-feminist argument that women have agency even in traditionally passive roles because they have still made the choice not to act. Even if that argument were valid, which some aspects of it are in third-wave feminism, it doesn't change the fact that Peach and Zelda are most often kidnapped in Nintendo's games, by definition an act that removes agency from its victim, and their "choice" is to not reclaim their agency after it has been taken from them, hardly a choice at all.

[CollegeBaby]

I tried to give it a chance but gave up when it was clear she was arguing in bad faith.

 

She begins by complaining about a "one-sided argument" in response to a video essay presenting an argument. Fuck sake. Do all essays have to be debates where people are paired up with a contrary viewpoint?

 

Less than 2 minutes in she's trying to imply that Anita is the real problem for believing that a character being kidnapped is disempowering of women. Right, because media is meaningless and never suggests anything other than what's in your mind? Although Georgina doesn't take it this far, I've seen this argument as a lead in from GGers who say that Anita is the real misogynist for seeing sexism everywhere.

 

Stopped watching when she tried to argue for Zelda's and Peach's damsel status because it is justified by the fiction, and it was clear she had completely missed or ignored the point of Anita's videos.

[BadHat]

Where's that series of tweets about how arguing from canon is worthless because canon is just made up by people. I find it so frequently useful.

[twmac]

Yeah, sorry, should have put charming in italics. I found the video utterly hilarious but for all the wrong reasons

[Deadpan]

The crux is that the lense that Sarkeesian views Peach and Zelda is framed within the context that people of action are the only way to be and that strength is not perceived in people who are able to persevere through persecution and oppression. It goes on a few other tangents too and for me it is one of those ones where if I squint and turn my head sideways I can sort of see what they are trying to say...

I remember watching this and thinking that it wasn't the most wrong-headed video about this I've ever seen (where Blunderfoot still takes the cake among stuff I am aware of), but honestly, at the point where you decide to create a direct response to Tropes vs. Women in order to be point out how wrong she is or be pedantic about this or that little point (What about Wand of Gamelon?!?), there's really no coming back. You can focus on different aspects of the portrayal of characters and groups, you can do a more close read of a particular series opposite Anita's very broad introductions, you can even not care about any of this at all, but realizing that Anita's videos aren't a threat and don't have to be fought, even if you disagree, is the very first hurdle in a very long race. Always disappointing how many people are stuck just there.

[Apple Cider]

Where's that series of tweets about how arguing from canon is worthless because canon is just made up by people. I find it so frequently useful.

 

Yeah, I've fallen back on this defense a lot, especially when I was writing about only World of Warcraft. Guess what, Warcraft's lore is shitty because the writers made it that way, they wrote the women that way, they made those choices themselves.

[CollegeBaby]

I don't have a problem with rebuttal videos in principle, but I don't think I've actually seen anything that offers a genuine alternative interpretation of the way women are treated in games that puts as much research into it as Anita has. It's just takedowns directed at Anita's series, and at worst it is personal character assassinations. They don't replace it with a fully coherent argument that evaluates the state of games as a whole. If you don't agree with Anita, what do you actually believe? That Damsel in Distress is not a common trope? That the trope is not sexist? That the trope doesn't reinforce sexist attitudes? All of the above? Then prove it.

[Gaizokubanou]

What CollegeBaby said pretty much.  I've seen few good arguments about how specific examples she used (like Hitman Absolution example) isn't up to par but even then all of those specifics combined doesn't argue against the main argument IMO.  And I think it's fine to critique the specifics when they are misleading, so long as either you get a coherent argument out of it or accept that her point still stands.  Without either of those, like CollegeBaby said, the counter critiques often seem to be a stepping stone for character assassination.

[Apple Cider]

I don't even agree with Anita's assessments on things sometimes (such is the nature of feminist critique), but she's doling out really incredibly 101 level critiques and people want that to be the basis of rejecting her humanity. It's so bizarre. 

[Bjorn]

My wife and I are on what people would typically see as the extreme sex positive side of modern feminism. And some of what I've seen from Sarkeesian seems to put her on the more conservative side. So even if we disagree on some elements of feminism or society. that doesn't mean I can't find other parts of her work interesting, useful or entertaining.

Which, as a sidenote, is there a better way to reference the split in feminism that centers around sex? Like, I hate seeing women called sex negative by other feminists because they oppose sex work or pornography. That's not sex negative in the way that term has traditionally been used (the fear, control and conservatism around sex that I associate with the Bible Belt). And sex positive feminism implies that an opposite exists. And, to be fair, the people on the other side can be just as shitty towards the sex positive feminists. It's just not a division that I've ever seen someone describe in a way that I didn't feel was being unfair to one side, the other or both.

[Apple Cider]

I tend to use sex negative myself, because despite it having more conservative roots, there were some values from second wave feminism that I felt were accurate, even if misguided. Second wave sex negative feminism had incredibly opaque views on pornography and sex work even if their attack on the structures were mostly on-point. In the sex positive camp, it's been really good in a lot of ways but sometimes sex posi has a habit of running too far into liberal choice feminism and generally ignoring why sex is not a topic openly available or accessible to every feminist or even every woman. So in general, for my work, I use "sex criticality" to encompass the whole she-bang. 

 

There's also the same jackboats in "radical" feminism that shit on sex workers and trans women as well. 

 

There's ways of supporting and respecting sex workers, their work but also know that a lot of pornography or sex work is not healthy or respectful to said workers. 

[CollegeBaby]

That Anita's videos are Media Studies 101 and still cause so much controversy just reflects the poor level of discourse surrounding discussing games. The classic line of "video games are a young medium" can't live on forever. It's been brought up now and again that Siskel and Ebert were discussing sexist tropes in films 2 decades ago. On a mainstream television show. Broadcast across the nation. Games critique has so much catching up to do.

 

@Bjorn I recall "sex-critical" being used a counter to sex-positive. I'm not sure if that is what they self identify with or just another thing that sex-positives have labeled them with.