First off, I wanted to say thank you to the Chief Mauskateer for taking interest in what I
have to say, and for including my thoughts on her blog. This whole
thing originated from a Reddit discussion on
Anita Sarkeesian's kickstarter campaign,
but by the time I had a chance to really collect my thoughts and write
an intelligent criticism, the community had moved on, so I don't think
very many people got to see it. What you see below is a slightly
revised version, based on some criticism I received.
Secondly, I caution you to have a grain of salt handy as you read
this. As Ms. Sarkeesian hasn't actually made her videos yet, I'm making
some inferences based on the press language from her kickstarter
campaign (including the list of tropes she's planning to cover) and the
views she expressed in
a set of similar videos about female tropes in Hollywood.
I have two main issues with Sarkeesian's argument. These are:
I'll cover both of these in depth, but first I'd like to present my own thoughts on the representation of women in gaming:
It's blatantly obvious that a large majority of video games and video
game characters are geared toward a specific set of preferences, namely
those that the video game industry believe to be their primary
audience. As a straight white male, I share that set of preferences, so I
enjoy some of those games (aside: some games are just plain terrible,
and I don't require a game to appeal to me sexually in order to like
it). On the other hand, it seems pretty obvious to me that if video
games were heavily balanced toward serving a different set of
preferences, I would feel really unwelcome in the gaming world. This is a
very serious problem, but the mere existence of these games (or the
tropes used therein) isn't the issue; in fact, it's not even an issue
that these games are
common. It's the fact that, by and large,
the only two options you have as a gamer are games that are meant to
appeal to a heterosexual male audience and games that aren't geared
toward any particular demographic. It's an entirely reasonable thing for
someone to ask where the games are that are meant to appeal to them.
That being said, tropes are tropes. I don't believe that they're
inherently sexist, and I don't buy into the implication that people are
too dumb to realize that characters in a story are characters in a
story. What I do believe is that the IT industry as a whole (and, by
extension, the video game industry) has a huge problem with endemic,
institutionalized sexism, and the fact that these tropes (which are
often just a result of bad writing on the part of a male writer) are
over-represented is a symptom of this larger issue.
Here's a blog post I wrote on this issue as it applies to the open source world.
Here's another article about a group of people called 'brogrammers', a term you may or may not already be familiar with.
It seems to me that sexism in the video game industry is particularly
prevalent in board rooms where people decide on the plot and style of
their games. People make the claim that 'sex sells' as justification for
this imbalance, but there's a lot of
really
strong evidence that you don't have to portray women unrealistically or
in an over-sexualized manner in order to sell games -- all you have
to do is make games that don't
suck. Again, though, I don't feel that
there's anything wrong with the fact that these games exist, and I don't
think there's anything wrong with liking them. The trouble is the lack
of balance, and that's largely a symptom of a different problem.
Now, my thoughts on the issues I mentioned:
I think my snarky and poorly drawn image is probably self
explanatory, but I'd like to go into a bit more detail than that.
Sarkeesian holds up Portal as an example of positive female characters
in video games. There are (ostensibly) two major female characters in
Portal: Chell, and GlaDOS (Disclaimer: I love Portal).
Looking at both of these characters:
- Chell is a silent protagonist, which means the writers didn't even have to give her a personality. Chell is simply a more awesome version of the player,
so all they really needed to do was find the exact line for her
appearance (attractive but not unrealistically so, athletic and in good
shape but not unrealistically so) and then set her loose in the game
world and allow the player to imagine what her personality must be like. There is very little characterization there -- she has no spoken dialog.
- GlaDOS is a computer. She's a computer with a female personality, but there is no sexuality or body
to speak of because her physical form is just a bunch of electronics.
So there is another line that the writers didn't have to worry about
straddling. She's not ugly. She's not sexy. She's a computer.
As I said, the goalposts are pretty narrow. What this might tell me if I were a video game writer is that
the only way to win is not to play.
Want to make a female main character? Silent protagonist. That way you
don't have to worry about someone bashing her as being overly slutty or
overly feminine or not feminine enough (omg, seriously, "man with boobs"
is a misogynist trope? -- the only sin there is trying too hard not to
over-sexualize a character, or -- crazy as it may sound -- writing a
character who is just unfeminine because that's the sort of character
they want to write). Chell isn't an example of writing a character at
all; she's an example of
not writing a character.
Imagine how people's opinions of Chell might differ if she had DD
size breasts but were otherwise exactly the same (I'm not advocating
this, by the way -- I love Portal as it is, and such a change would be
pointless and arbitrary at this point). Do you suppose she would still
be held in high regard as an exemplary female character? If not, what
does that say about our opinion of women with larger-than-average
breasts?
The take-home from Chell's body is this: If I were a video game
company specifically trying to build a female character to weather any
sort of body-related criticism,
I
would make her athletic but not overly curvy or thin, I'd make sure
that her breasts were an in 'acceptable' B to C range, I would dress her
in form-fitting but not overly revealing clothes, and I would give her a
pleasant, feminine features that don't appear overly sultry.
Similarly, GlaDOS is a convenient evasion of the Ugly Is Evil versus
Sexy Villainess tropes. Put her in any female body and suddenly the
issues with her character get a lot more complicated. Forget that she's a
computer for a second and consider her sultry voice. With a real
woman's body, that would probably constitute a 'sexy villainess' right
there, unless the character were deliberately designed to be non-sexy,
in which case the other trope would apply.
Take another Valve character, Alyx Vance from Half Life 2. One has to
wonder if someone just said "here's this idea for a character", or if
there was a ton of thought put into delicate line-straddling between all
sorts of different tropes. I don't think there are a lot of people out
there who would deny that Alyx is a 'good' female character, but one
really starts to suspect that an inordinate amount of care had to be
taken to get to that point. Real women deviate from "flatteringly
normal" a lot more than Alyx does.
I would not make the claim that Chell and Alyx are portrayed in a
sexist way -- far from it, in fact. Rather they serve to illustrate the
tiny box that female characters have to fit into in order to
avoid being picked apart for falling into one or more ostensibly sexist
tropes.
I'll illustrate this further. For reference, here are the tropes that Ms. Sarkeesian plans to cover:
- Damsel in Distress - Video #1
- The Fighting F#@k Toy - Video #2
- The Sexy Sidekick - Video #3
- The Sexy Villainess - Video #4
- Background Decoration - Video #5
- 1st Set of Stretch Goals Achieved! (emphasis mine)
- Voodoo Priestess/Tribal Sorceress - Video #6
- Women as Reward - Video #7
- Mrs. Male Character - Video #8
- Unattractive Equals Evil - Video #9
- Man with Boobs - Video #10
I left the 'goals achieved' bit in there because it seems to me like
the second set of tropes are on a more tenuous ground than the first
set. They were added on later, and I'm left with a sneaking suspicion
that they were to some extent put in there because she felt like
otherwise she wouldn't be producing adequate work for the amount of
funding she's received. On one hand, I get why she's doing it, but on
the other hand it's frankly kind of irresponsible to start criticizing
female characters for being
too masculine. It's easy to argue
that some of these tropes (Women as Reward tops the list, I think) are
harmful and sexist. On the other hand, taking the list as a whole, her
argument starts to overreach pretty badly.
Let's examine this from another direction for a moment. Valve's
games are frequently held in high regard for their positive portrayals
of female characters, but Valve has its problems with sexism too. Want a
zillion stupid hats in Team Fortress 2? Awesome! They've got you
covered! Want to play as a female version of any of the TF2 classes?
Sorry, you're out of luck! Have a stupid hat!
This goes back to what I said earlier about seeing this from the perspective of a game designer who sincerely
wants to avoid being sexist:
the only way to win is not to play.
If you're overly critical of female tropes in games (Sarkeesian has
stated her intent to do extensive research into these characters), the
end result could very well be that we'll just get more games
with no women in them at all.
The graphically impressive FPS Brink was widely criticized for
allowing tons and tons of character customizations, but no option to
play a female character. This may be better than the treatment of women
in
Duke Nukem Forever, but only slightly.
Unnecessary Polarization and Lack of Focus
In the original version of this criticism, this was my first point,
but it occurred to me that it makes a lot more sense in the context of
the point about goalposts.
From Sarkeesian's
youtube video page about her kickstarter:
NOTE ON COMMENTS & TRIGGER WARNING: I've left the comments open
on this video as a way of showing why this topic is so important. I
apologize in advance for the hate speech and ignorance that will
inevitably be left below. So don't feed the trolls - they are just
proving to everyone that sexism in gaming is indeed a huge problem.
She opens by lumping everyone who might disagree with her into a
group of people who are horrible and do not deserve to exist. These
trolls are not indicative of
the problem, they are indicative of a
different
problem -- namely that whenever anyone on the internet speaks out in
defense of a minority group, racist scum-sucking sociopaths emerge from
the depths of the internet to rain their hate and filth down on a
convenient target. The internet is absolutely bursting at the seams with
these people, and I know that because I've dealt with them myself.
But I repeat,
they are not an example of the problem she is attempting to illustrate.
There is no evidence that the people making these threats and comments
even like to play the sort of games she's criticizing. They just hate
her because she's an outspoken feminist and a convenient target for
their abuse.
To an outsider seeing her kickstarter project, in implying that the
swarm of ignorant and hateful internet trolls are part of the problem
she's addressing, she's essentially opening with "You people are all a
bunch of misogynists." People seem to like throwing the term
'over-sensitive' around a lot. Depending on who they are, they might be
using it to justify actual misogyny, or they might be using it to
justify inflammatory, blanket criticisms.
There are video games which have characters that fall into those
tropes that I'm quite fond of (and given how broad these tropes are, it
would frankly be pretty difficult as a gamer
not to happen to
like at least one or two games that contain them). If you make the claim
that a bunch of misogynists on the internet and the video games that I
like are the same problem, then what does that tell me that you think
about me for liking those games?
Let's follow this logic for a minute. In implying that these two
issues are connected, she's making an implication that liking these
games (and, by extension, liking images and characters with certain body
types) makes you a misogynist. I realize that I'm risking my reputation
by saying this in public, but I like
what this character looks like. This does not make me a misogynist. It does not mean that I have unrealistic expectations about what a woman
ought
to look like. It does not mean that I judge a woman's value as a person
based on my estimate of how attractive they are, and it does not mean
that I don't also like realistically-proportioned, normal women.
She could easily separate people who happen to like characters like
that from internet misogynists, but she has chosen not to do that,
instead implying that a) these things are connected, and by extension b)
heterosexual male sexuality makes you a bad person. The implication is
there, and much like other implied sexism, it's fairly obvious to the
people who are affected by it.
Several people have assured me that I'm taking this way too
personally. Perhaps I am, although I should note that when I blogged
about sexism several months ago, I was very careful not to be specific
and not overly inclusive in my language describing who the people were
who are causing the problem. But if these videos
aren't about people like me, then who are what
are they about? What's the ultimate goal?
Here's a brief outline of what I'm not understanding:
- These tropes are inherently bad.
- Is it necessarily a bad thing to enjoy these tropes?
- If not, then what? Do we get rid of them? Keep the old ones but stop
using them in new works? Or acknowledge that they're silly and a result
of bad writing, but keep using them anyway because some people just
like them?
If all Sarkeesian is doing is attacking the fact that these tropes are
overused in comparison with other ones,
or if she's just talking about how people could improve their bad
writing, then she's using a chainsaw where she should be using a scalpel
and it's entirely justified for people like myself to take legitimate
issue with them.
Finally, for the record, it is, in fact, quite possible to discuss
these issues without inflammatory, accusatory, and otherwise polarizing
undertones.
Extra Credits managed to pull it off just fine.
Thanks for reading!
Bart Kelsey
