Toxilicks
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- Posted: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 08:07:12 +0000
If anyone has paid attention to my previous posts on feminism from a while back, then you're about to get something that I want to keep as relatively politically neutral as possible. As much as I support feminism, there's a lot of the idea that is leaking into gaming in constant Anita Sarkesian dribble where the writers of articles who have picked up a recent study where women make almost 50% of the gaming community and take it as not only as a sign of change, but as a legitimate milestone for women. I think this might be lengthy as I haven't drafted this s**t, but I'm not going to give you a "tldr" because I don't owe any of you that s**t. If you disagree with me, if you agree with me, that's your issue, I really don't care, this is going to be my vent/viewpoint.
There's a lot more I can elaborate on here, because I feel that I did leave some of my other viewpoints of a completely unwarranted opinion of this topic out, but if you made it this far, you can...comment on it, or give your own argument on this. I'm just going to plop some of the articles that got me to write this.
The Mary Sue
The PDF used in the above article, linked from it.
Chesire Cat Studios
Anita's Background Decoration Part One.
Strike back how?
This was brought to my attention from a page that originally started off gender neutral. Women were actually the most vocal opposing this post on Facebook.
Actually, this was a point I left out but this one annoyed me. The author has done minimal research on Street Fighter's character, Poison, a CapCom veteran who is most recognized for at-one-time, a confirmed Male to Female transgender character. While I'll agree that making Poison's sex ambigious once again was a cop-out, the author seems to believe more audiences choose Poison to be trans because they feel more at ease with beating up a transsexual. More often than not, fans associate Poison as genetically female because of what I would assume is a potential sexual fantasy thrill. Many people who agree Poison could/should be trans do so because of her interesting history of gender ambiguity, as well as being a different potrayal for a transsexual from that of drag queens, like the one from Banjo Kazooie.
Once upon a time last year, I sat down to check my Facebook when a Gaming Page uploaded the infamous video for Anita Sarkeesian's first episode of Feminist Frequency. With my interest of feminism only happening to bloom at the time, I clicked, I watched. While there were little spots I thought she had taken out of context, I pretty much thought she nailed down the thing I myself had been annoyed with video games.
So, spurred on by this, I became more concious about certain things with female representation of video games, even at times that were indeed hypocritical, having not even thought back to my original view points of women in video games and the need for context. Though I never boycotted anything, I sure did whine about things such as some of the lewd potrayals of women in games like Dragon's Crown.
Fast forward to this year, I find an article that shows that gamers that are female come up to about 48% of the gaming demographic. Immediately I was pleased because "woo, female gamers, we're getting a gamer balance!"
It wasn't however, that I read an article by "Cheshire Cat Studios", where a group of pessimistic nerds write commentary on entertainment media such as movies and video games brought up an interesting insight on why there are less girl gamers.
To paraphrase, the article essentially said that there is an actual sexist mentality between gamers and "feminist" gamers. Both make the female Gamer out to be a mystical creature amongst men. For the Gamers, it's also the sexist idea that women only play "casual games", which is your Angry Birds, Flappy Bird and what have you, and the "feminist" gamer movement turns video games into a political statement instead of a past time. Essentially, both stereotypes differentiate the female gamer from the "default" male gamer. They are not being taken seriously, which is probably one of the big blockades for women in some gaming communities.
At first, I thought it was an interesting viewpoint, until I did look at the article I had read before on the gamer gender balance from the Female Media website, The Mary Sue, where I actually thought on this point, as well as reading how this article was written that I physically cringed when I re-read:
Fortunately, they have the pdf file that was used for this research, but I can't help but still loathe this type of writing. It's not formal, and it's not even written to sound mature. It sounds angry and hostile towards men under the presumption that every single one is a sexist p***k that'll chase women out of a convention to quarantine that precious space the girl's alleged heels had stepped on.
I recently watched one of Anita's most recent videos, "Women as Background Decoration, Part 1". I had thought to give her the benefit of the doubt when I found out that she doesn't like video games, though part of me wonders now if I had been trying to deny a big "no-no" simply out of a Feminist Pride. What I saw left me both annoyed and I feel like it may be time to do as I used to back in my uber Goth days, and try to lead a better example than her.
Anytime Anita has made a potentially good article related to the potrayal of women in video games, they are very small and few. For example, in that episode, Anita compares the fact that prostitutes are basically soda cans-they are actually itemized, and sex becomes the interactive sequence to replenish Health like soda. Otherwise, there are more examples than not where she'll take a video game completely out of context such as making a prostitute in Fallout: New Vegas a sort of grotesque necrophillic sexualization, with her words basically saying "this is unique to women." when in the actual game, you can pick up the corpses of men, women, dogs, cockroaches, or just raise part of their limb. The point is, I have woken upto what was more obvious than I wanted to believe- Anita is full of s**t, and a liar.
It also dawned on me when I thought more on the article that put a more central argument about reasons why women aren't taken seriously-I know female gamers, and have through my time on the internet, seen dozens of female gamers on youtube, in blogs, and made friends with some, and lost some as friends, and yet I too, was making this whole big deal about women in the gaming community. You know what would probably be the best comparison for this is? If anyone still watches The Simpsons, it's like the episode where Marge is training to be a police officer, and she's struggling to climb over a brick wall, and everyone is walking through a door-that's what this "war" is. While there are definitely imperatives towards girl gamers, if Jaltoid's animation on girl gamers can be considered enough commentary, there are people who do creep on women, and I'm sure "sammich" jokes at the time were heard over and over again. In my own personal experience having been mistaken for a female gamer, I am no stranger to this bullshit, it is the truth, and bloody ******** can these assholes be condescending.
However, instead of doing what many people have done in this day and age and dwelled on being a victim to this junk, I think the community should just try a more positive approach and welcome people into their gaming circles. Encourage and recommend people of either gender to play different things, instead of turning what would essentially be considered a way to enjoy a different medium into a war where the female presence is somehow revolutionary and then men have to back down. That's not going to help anyone, that's just going to make the few assholes who sneer at women playing video games sneer even more.
Personally, my experience with this is that there is still ways women could probably be improved in their potrayal in video games if they're being sexual for the purpose of "sex sells video games", but we also have to go from just calling out game designers for showing cleavage to also analyzing what they're doing, or perhaps the situation. There are better ways to do this, but Anita Sarkeesian, the Zoe Quinns of the world, these are not the people who should be leading the banner into the video game world. I think Cyndi Lauper said it best: Girls Just wanna have fun.
So, spurred on by this, I became more concious about certain things with female representation of video games, even at times that were indeed hypocritical, having not even thought back to my original view points of women in video games and the need for context. Though I never boycotted anything, I sure did whine about things such as some of the lewd potrayals of women in games like Dragon's Crown.
Fast forward to this year, I find an article that shows that gamers that are female come up to about 48% of the gaming demographic. Immediately I was pleased because "woo, female gamers, we're getting a gamer balance!"
It wasn't however, that I read an article by "Cheshire Cat Studios", where a group of pessimistic nerds write commentary on entertainment media such as movies and video games brought up an interesting insight on why there are less girl gamers.
To paraphrase, the article essentially said that there is an actual sexist mentality between gamers and "feminist" gamers. Both make the female Gamer out to be a mystical creature amongst men. For the Gamers, it's also the sexist idea that women only play "casual games", which is your Angry Birds, Flappy Bird and what have you, and the "feminist" gamer movement turns video games into a political statement instead of a past time. Essentially, both stereotypes differentiate the female gamer from the "default" male gamer. They are not being taken seriously, which is probably one of the big blockades for women in some gaming communities.
At first, I thought it was an interesting viewpoint, until I did look at the article I had read before on the gamer gender balance from the Female Media website, The Mary Sue, where I actually thought on this point, as well as reading how this article was written that I physically cringed when I re-read:
Quote:
Hey remember how girls are supposed to think that video games are gross and totally don’t belong in your hobby, or whatever? Yeah, no. We make up 48% of all “gamers,” according to the Entertainment Software Association—which makes us a larger demographic than teenage boys. So, guess you’d better get used to us.
Fortunately, they have the pdf file that was used for this research, but I can't help but still loathe this type of writing. It's not formal, and it's not even written to sound mature. It sounds angry and hostile towards men under the presumption that every single one is a sexist p***k that'll chase women out of a convention to quarantine that precious space the girl's alleged heels had stepped on.
I recently watched one of Anita's most recent videos, "Women as Background Decoration, Part 1". I had thought to give her the benefit of the doubt when I found out that she doesn't like video games, though part of me wonders now if I had been trying to deny a big "no-no" simply out of a Feminist Pride. What I saw left me both annoyed and I feel like it may be time to do as I used to back in my uber Goth days, and try to lead a better example than her.
Anytime Anita has made a potentially good article related to the potrayal of women in video games, they are very small and few. For example, in that episode, Anita compares the fact that prostitutes are basically soda cans-they are actually itemized, and sex becomes the interactive sequence to replenish Health like soda. Otherwise, there are more examples than not where she'll take a video game completely out of context such as making a prostitute in Fallout: New Vegas a sort of grotesque necrophillic sexualization, with her words basically saying "this is unique to women." when in the actual game, you can pick up the corpses of men, women, dogs, cockroaches, or just raise part of their limb. The point is, I have woken upto what was more obvious than I wanted to believe- Anita is full of s**t, and a liar.
It also dawned on me when I thought more on the article that put a more central argument about reasons why women aren't taken seriously-I know female gamers, and have through my time on the internet, seen dozens of female gamers on youtube, in blogs, and made friends with some, and lost some as friends, and yet I too, was making this whole big deal about women in the gaming community. You know what would probably be the best comparison for this is? If anyone still watches The Simpsons, it's like the episode where Marge is training to be a police officer, and she's struggling to climb over a brick wall, and everyone is walking through a door-that's what this "war" is. While there are definitely imperatives towards girl gamers, if Jaltoid's animation on girl gamers can be considered enough commentary, there are people who do creep on women, and I'm sure "sammich" jokes at the time were heard over and over again. In my own personal experience having been mistaken for a female gamer, I am no stranger to this bullshit, it is the truth, and bloody ******** can these assholes be condescending.
However, instead of doing what many people have done in this day and age and dwelled on being a victim to this junk, I think the community should just try a more positive approach and welcome people into their gaming circles. Encourage and recommend people of either gender to play different things, instead of turning what would essentially be considered a way to enjoy a different medium into a war where the female presence is somehow revolutionary and then men have to back down. That's not going to help anyone, that's just going to make the few assholes who sneer at women playing video games sneer even more.
Personally, my experience with this is that there is still ways women could probably be improved in their potrayal in video games if they're being sexual for the purpose of "sex sells video games", but we also have to go from just calling out game designers for showing cleavage to also analyzing what they're doing, or perhaps the situation. There are better ways to do this, but Anita Sarkeesian, the Zoe Quinns of the world, these are not the people who should be leading the banner into the video game world. I think Cyndi Lauper said it best: Girls Just wanna have fun.
There's a lot more I can elaborate on here, because I feel that I did leave some of my other viewpoints of a completely unwarranted opinion of this topic out, but if you made it this far, you can...comment on it, or give your own argument on this. I'm just going to plop some of the articles that got me to write this.
The Mary Sue
The PDF used in the above article, linked from it.
Chesire Cat Studios
Anita's Background Decoration Part One.
Strike back how?
This was brought to my attention from a page that originally started off gender neutral. Women were actually the most vocal opposing this post on Facebook.
Actually, this was a point I left out but this one annoyed me. The author has done minimal research on Street Fighter's character, Poison, a CapCom veteran who is most recognized for at-one-time, a confirmed Male to Female transgender character. While I'll agree that making Poison's sex ambigious once again was a cop-out, the author seems to believe more audiences choose Poison to be trans because they feel more at ease with beating up a transsexual. More often than not, fans associate Poison as genetically female because of what I would assume is a potential sexual fantasy thrill. Many people who agree Poison could/should be trans do so because of her interesting history of gender ambiguity, as well as being a different potrayal for a transsexual from that of drag queens, like the one from Banjo Kazooie.
