Feminism

[Ben X]

Yeah, the structure is pretty much the article-equivalent of a red-lines jpeg.

[BusbyBerkeley]

Argobot, yes! A quick rundown of why the comic wasn't great would have been wonderful. I also saw it framed as "maybe mad max fury road wasn't the feminist masterpiece people thought," which is just so infuriating. And yeah a lot of it seems to be critiquing the depiction of a fictional postapocolyptic dystopia which strikes me as kind of wrong-headed.

Ugh.

[Argobot]

Not to harp on this too much more, but a lot of the negative reactions the writer had to the comic were also present in the movie. She dings the comic for portraying Furiosa as an Exceptional Woman Character, when that's kind of what she is in the movie.

[Ninety-Three]

So this Polygon article adds up the race and gender of everyone on stage at E3, and to the surprise of absolutely no one it was an overwhelmingly white, male show. However, the article seems to criticize companies for their failure to put women and minorities on stage, and I'm not sure that's a fair criticism. The videogаme industry (people who make videogаmes, not people who buy them) is overwhelmingly white male. I don't have numbers on how white it is, but I believe the industry overall is actually more heavily male than E3 was. Can we criticize E3 for not being diverse enough when it accurately portrays how diverse the industry is?

 

(I'm not trying to shut down criticism, we can of course criticize the industry itself for not being diverse, but it seems weird to ask that E3 be more diverse than the actual industry.)

 

EDIT: Maybe this belongs in the E3 thread? It's relevant to both threads, this is hard.

[BusbyBerkeley]

Of course you can criticize E3 for not being diverse enough. You have to start somewhere. Maybe the industry at large is so homogenous because there are mostly white dudes acting as the faces of game development? Maybe seeing more women at press conferences would encourage more women to make a career out of games? If you use "well it IS all white guys who make video games" as an excuse then it becomes a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy. 

[ewokskick]

Not to harp on this too much more, but a lot of the negative reactions the writer had to the comic were also present in the movie. She dings the comic for portraying Furiosa as an Exceptional Woman Character, when that's kind of what she is in the movie.

 

I totally agree with you about how that article was ineffective.  Which is kind of shocking given how easy of a target that book is.  I don't want to psychoanalyze the author, but it almost feels like she should have been more confident in her core argument.  It would certainly stand on it's own better than this "more thorough" piece that includes minutiae, questionable arguments, and tangents.

 

I don't think I agree with the argument that she is an Exceptional Woman Character in the movie.  She isn't exceptional with regards to being the lone woman who fights in the movie.  There is literally a biker gang of woman and most of the wives do cool action-y stuff too.

 

Regardless, the original article uses that trope incorrectly.  It's supposed to refer to a woman who is cool because she acts "like one of the guys," but is still sexy feminine.  Such as most romantic interests in male-driven comedies.  It's problematic not because it portrays a woman as being exceptional.  I don't even get why that would be bad.  The Exceptional Woman Character trope in it's proper usage is bad because it carries within it the assumption that woman should confirm bodily to male desires and that they should value male friendship and affection more than self worth or female friendship.

 

Here is the article that coins the term (or at least claims to).  It's not very good, tbh: http://bitchmagazine.org/post/name-that-trope-the-super-hot-bro-girl

[Merus]

Of course you can criticize E3 for not being diverse enough. You have to start somewhere. Maybe the industry at large is so homogenous because there are mostly white dudes acting as the faces of game development? Maybe seeing more women at press conferences would encourage more women to make a career out of games? If you use "well it IS all white guys who make video games" as an excuse then it becomes a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy. 

 

There's two ways this can go: either you feel the pressure to put more women and minorities on stage, and their increased presence means they find it easier to move into roles where they get to have a say.

 

Or: you put women and minorities on stage, and then when someone else puts white guys on stage it's read as being more genuine because they're putting the actual project leads on stage instead of spokespeople.

[Problem Machine]

Isn't that only a problem if you have no minority project leads? Isn't that itself a problem?

[Merus]

Yeah, I left that as subtext, but the question is whether visibility on an E3 stage is good for a personal career. My suspicion is that it's not: an E3 stage is good for a studio, and if that studio is diverse then when those people will see success with their game they'll be able to be hired in more senior positions and present their own E3 segments. So the pressure to diversify E3 presentations is fine, but meaningless without a corresponding push for diverse hiring, which also means that either feeder schools like Full Sail will have to also diversify their entrants (without there being a bunch of minorities in places like E3 stages making it clear that there you can succeed even if you're not a white dude), or studios will have to endeavour to not hire many people from feeder schools.

 

It's not directly analogous to diversity on conference panels, where there is a more clearer feedback loop between being on a panel and being seen as notable.

[Apple Cider]

What made me never want to buy the comic book:

 

http://www.themarysue.com/mad-max-furiosa-mark-sexton-women-captivity/

 

I generally don't like Ana Mardoll's take on anything and she even got into it with me on twitter about my feelings on Mad Max and went off on some weird tangent about Max's benevolence. I don't think incisive media crit is actually a strong suit of hers. Nonetheless, I have no interest in a comic that graphically depicts rape and bodily submission in that way. See? Nailed my feelings on it in 2 sentences. 

[Twig]

Re: E3, yeah, it's still mostly white dudes, but also it's a marked improvement from past years (at least, it felt that way to me). There's even a moment in the Ubisoft conf (which I pointed out in some other thread, probably the E3 one) where a woman of color essentially hands the mic over to another woman of color.

 

It's important to keep talking about the problems, but I think it's also important to celebrate progress, sometimes.

[Apple Cider]

It's such a marginal, low bar of progress. It was great to see Aisha Tyler pass a mic to Angela Bassett and I liked seeing more women in games and on stage! It still was a fuckton of white dudes and shit though. I think you can do both things at the same time? Critique doesn't mutually exist from celebrating progress. 

 

I guess I'm okay with existing in the more critical space than celebration. 

[Twig]

Yeah you can do both. Never said you couldn't. I just wanted to point out that something good happened, too, because no one else had bothered.

[Merus]

I definitely remember noting it at the time, because I stole it from someone else noting it at the time on Twitter.

[Twig]

(i just meant in this thread - unless you noted it in here in which case i guess i will promptly go sit in the corner)

[Apple Cider]

sorry, I get allergic to that kind of reaction sometimes because it's frequently what turns up when I look at something critically, as if to say "Why are you being so sour, some good stuff happened too."

[Twig]

Yeah, I understand. I have the opposite reaction because overwhelming negativity just makes me more depressed than I already constantly am!

[Apple Cider]

Well, I guess I don't see it as negativity? Negativity would be like "Games is going to be white guys forever." vs. "This is the figures and facts we have at our disposal, we need to do something about this." 

It's very hard sometimes to constantly be painted as negative when I'm critical or looking to fix things because we have facts on hand that support that things are shitty because that's where work starts. I mean, the games space being so overwhelmingly white and male bums me out too. But that's part of the work I do. 

 

This is the feminism thread, after all. 

[Twig]

I was just messing around.

 

My intent was to be flippant and dismissive about myself, not you. It obviously came off the opposite of how I intended, so I'll just step out of this conversation before I say anything else wrong.

[ewokskick]

Well, I guess I don't see it as negativity? Negativity would be like "Games is going to be white guys forever." vs. "This is the figures and facts we have at our disposal, we need to do something about this." 

It's very hard sometimes to constantly be painted as negative when I'm critical or looking to fix things because we have facts on hand that support that things are shitty because that's where work starts. I mean, the games space being so overwhelmingly white and male bums me out too. But that's part of the work I do. 

 

This is the feminism thread, after all. 

 

I agree.  I think criticism is at its core optimistic.  As long as someone is willing to assemble these numbers and the community is going to discuss them, then there is reason for that optimism.  It's not criticism that I find tiring so much as cynicism.

[feelthedarkness]

E3 is the visible component so it's the place that is easiest to level complaints. You rarely see the staff of studios. I think the disparity in the workplace is implicit in the complaint! 

 

"why didn't you send any female developers?"

"uh, we don't have any?"

"...."

[ewokskick]

E3 is the visible component so it's the place that is easiest to level complaints. You rarely see the staff of studios. I think the disparity in the workplace is implicit in the complaint! 

 

"why didn't you send any female developers?"

"uh, we don't have any?"

"...."

 

I think it also tends to reflect leadership.  Usually the people presenting on games are lead designers or otherwise people in leadership roles.  It shows a a lack of diversity in leadership roles and/or a lack of trust in the women in those roles to be shown publicly.

[Apple Cider]

I know there's quite a few women developers at Blizzard but they NEVER let them go out on stage or let them be rockstars. I definitely agree with the leadership/trust issue - plus women are less relatable to a presumed male audience. How would a woman developer know anything? She's not some aspirational rock god game dev you want to have beer with. 

[Gaizokubanou]

I know there's quite a few women developers at Blizzard but they NEVER let them go out on stage or let them be rockstars. I definitely agree with the leadership/trust issue - plus women are less relatable to a presumed male audience. How would a woman developer know anything? She's not some aspirational rock god game dev you want to have beer with. 

 

Kim Phan became esports manager but that was right when SC2 was stagnating so it was kinda dubious as whether she was promoted or was sent to the front line to take the blame :/

[Apple Cider]

I'm reasonably sure she was promoted. However, when it comes to things like how Warcraft is presented, it's a very different animal. That's also one woman out of what, five major franchises?