Well, Milo Yiannopoulos has declared victory, because in this video Sarkeesian looks tired and fat. He says. I don’t see it, but hey, OK, assholes gotta project.
Luckily, someone has prepared a .GIF from this very video to sum up my feelings for the witless Milo Yiannopoulos.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trollssays
Well, Milo Yiannopoulos has declared victory, because in this video Sarkeesian looks tired and fat. He says. I don’t see it, but hey, OK, assholes gotta project.
I know fat and tired, being both. Sarkeesian is neither. That refutes the intellectual “facts” of MY’s argument (*Waaaa*). Your last sentence is the correct assessment of the post.
slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem))says
When she got to the bit about “trophyism” Trump popped to mind, The ragmuffin who trumpets his masculinity by pointing at the beauty of the woman he’s shacking with. And who tries to mirror it (darkly) by running that competition where women are awarded a trophy based on their beauty.
agggg
I paused the vid there, so … BRB
numerobissays
assholes gotta project
I’m not a doctor, but I hear imodium can help with that.
Just read a few comments from (reasonable) gamers (let’s just take them at their word) on the Huffington Post article, and the biggest problem I see is that they keep making the same incorrect and insubstantial arguments:
1. She’s cherry picking the worst games.
2. She’s picking on an easy target (she should be making videos on the oppression of women in the Middle East).
3. She never shows any of the positive examples (she does)
4. I’m a girl gamer and I’m not offended by these games.
5. Duh, they’re pandering their almost exclusively male demographic.
6. Why beat up on video games while books, movies, TV show, music, do all the same things?
It’s almost as though they could find nothing of real substance to complain about in the video…
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trollssays
It’s almost as though they could find nothing of real substance to complain about in the video…
That goes back go her first video. Pathetic, unintellectual, immature, misogynistic, responses….
I just wish the videos came out quicker, but I understand why they don’t. The series is amazing, and yeah, I’ve yet to see critics with substantial counters to them myself…
I’d look tired too if I was dealing with assholes 24/7/365.
Ice Swimmersays
She speaks concisely, clearly and to the point. She does especially well with the concepts of objectification and male entitlement.
Tacitus @ 11
Of the arguments only number 1 isn’t completely ridiculous. It’s falsifiable, not immediately falsified by watching the video or checking Sarkeesian’s Wikipedia page and it attacks the substance of the video. Still, it’s probably without merit.
A. Noydsays
Ice Swimmer (#16)
Of the arguments only number 1 isn’t completely ridiculous. […] it attacks the substance of the video.
It doesn’t really, though. The availability of less-than-the-worst examples does not diminish Sarkeesian’s point that these tropes exist and are pervasive—quite the opposite. It’s actually a reference to the ad hominem about how she’s trying to spread some agenda. In fact, if you say “so what?” to the accusation in number one, I guarantee that’s the response you’ll get. Moreover, I’m sure if she didn’t show “the worst” then the same people would somehow hold that against her, too.
Of the arguments only number 1 isn’t completely ridiculous. It’s falsifiable, not immediately falsified by watching the video or checking Sarkeesian’s Wikipedia page and it attacks the substance of the video. Still, it’s probably without merit.
Actually #1 is funny because it reveals the strange logic of these people. It only makes sense if you think she is launching an attack against all video games or something. But she isn’t, she is just identifying tropes and discussing them. She doesn’t make any statistical claim about industry-wide prevalence as far as I can remember, so it doesn’t matter how often a trope appears in games. And so cherry picking would be impossible. So it actually doesn’t attack the substance of the video.
I mean, it’s like going over to TV Tropes.org and complaining that every single page is cherry picking. The complaint doesn’t make any sense.
vaiytsays
Oh, boy. Samus as the thumbnail screenshot! She knows exactly what she’s doing. Love it.
meshsays
I’d actually disagree with you on number 1, Ice Swimmer. The popularity of the games is a red herring; the point is the clear pattern across the sheer number of them. Every Jim Crow routine or racist joke could’ve been a flop, and this wouldn’t have made the racist tropes any less of an element.
It’s basically just a variant of sophisticated theology, which isn’t even an argument so much as a schoolyard taunt. None of the games that feminists are able to criticize are ever sophisticated games, they’re just low-hanging fruit being selectively plucked because the feminists know that the good games would clearly demonstrate just how far out of their depth they really are. Bawk bawk!
Ice Swimmersays
Ok, number 1 is less good that I thought. She lists popular game franchises with pernicious tropes. Anyway, my point wasn’t that Sarkeesian is wrong, it was that there isn’t much that you can put against her, if you are intellectually honest.
Ryan Cunninghamsays
1. She’s cherry picking the worst games.
I know a lot of people here are saying this might be true to throw the opposition a bone, but it’s not true. Resident Evil. GTA. MGS. Mario and Zelda. Metroid. God of War. Mass Effect. Hitman. Witcher. Come on. She’s talking about some of the most influential and profitable games on the market. Rank game franchises by sales, and I bet she’s talking about at least 5 of the top 20. This is not cherry picking. This is commenting on massively popular culture.
Oh ya I didn’t think that was what you were saying :)
Now that I’ve watched more, she does sometimes make some claims of statistical fact. But she doesn’t say or imply that the sample she has shown is what we should use to verify those statistical claims.
nomusesays
I may be misunderstanding, but I always felt most criticism of her work was at best pre-emptive. To my mind she isn’t saying, “This is why games are bad.” She isn’t even saying, “These are things that are bad in games.” She seems to me to be saying, “These are plausible categories that we can place a certain class of (bad things in games) in, providing a common language for continuing discussion.”
The pre-emptive nature being, once you agree that enough of the examples are plausible to justify the creation of the category, you have essentially admitted there are problematic issues with at least some games AND further discussion is indeed warranted.
And I’d think you’d have to be a grand master of double-think to reject categorically that no example of significance can be found resembling any of the tropes she has identified. No true Scotsman doesn’t seem adequate to cover the mental gymnastics involved in throwing two out of three AAA games under the bus.
Vatican Black Ops, Latrina Lautussays
Another solid video by Ms. Sarkeesian. I don’t know where she finds the resilience to shrug off the crap flung her way.
Also, I’ll just continue my crush on her from a distance. *admires*
McC2lhu is rarer than fish with knees.says
The responses in 11 were read by a funny looking cartoon robot in the year 3000. They were so overflowing with teh stoopid that it actually erased its Asimov protocol programming to the point it wanted to “kill all humans.” Anita has some powerful kung fu to be able to produce vids like this in the midst of a hurricane of shitbaggery. Some day her work will pay off…some day.
praesays
Equations, huh? That reminds me of the time when I almost became a PUA. I thought almost exactly like that back then. Not about anyone owing me sex per se, though, more along the lines of “you throw the right behaviour patterns in, the desired effects come out”. And the PUAs promised to have all the answers, like all good cults do.
I was kinda surprised that she cited Alice as a good example, though. I found her costumes just as sexy as any other examples :D
Amphioxsays
3. She never shows any of the positive examples (she does)
So long as one has something higher than a grade 2 listening comprehension, it is easy enough to see that she actually has a fair bit of praise for the Metroid games here, as well as the Resident Evil games, specifically for their portrayal of strong capable female protagonists who (in the default versions) were actually sensibly dressed.
It’s almost as if, *gasp*, a game, like any other work of art or popular culture, can have both good and bad elements within it simultaneously, and doesn’t solely have to segregate into a paragon of perfection bin on one hand, and a crass junk bin on the other.
Like how not all the CGI in Lord of the Rings was good and not all the CGI in The Hobbit was terrible.
(She also praised that Alice game, too)
nevillenevillesays
I am not sure that we should put to much value in these videos. It seems that much of what is included within them is fabricated or selectively chosen. If one tackles her assertions step by step, very little of assertions stand up to scrutiny.
Loftysays
nevilleneville, do you have anything factual to back up your assertions? If One looks at your post One sees the signs of hurt brogamer feelings.
tinkerersays
nevilleneville @ 30,
Please give some specific examples. In fact you could tackle her assertions step by step, otherwise it will appear that your own assertion doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
Yes, have a gander. Plenty of issues with the critiques. As for being a gamerbro or whatever they are called, i’m certainly not one of them. Why you get annoyed at someone who disagrees with you……. I am not sure, but it doesn’t help the conversation.
Goblinmansays
That video nevillenveville just linked is a thunderf00t video. Just to give people a heads up on the kind of credibility that’s being brought in.
nevillenevillesays
Attacking the messenger, not the message. That is hardly an argument. But you know that. There are plenty of other vids not made by the “Wrong”type of person. Address the matter at hand, not the horse it rode in on.
Goblinmansays
thunderf00t is a very specific “wrong” person, with a long history here, so I figured I’d warn people. But I’ll let the regulars sort it out for you.
nevillenevillesays
Oh I know, but that doesn’t change anything. But this is a place for adults, not a creche. If we avoided everything that wasn’t to our tastes, we wouldn’t get up in the morning. Address the issues, otherwise there isn’t an argument to be made. But here is another little insight for you, without your bete noire.
Sorry, nevilleneville, I’m really not interested in arguing with you about Anita Sarkeesian. I got about three seconds into your second link and lost interest when the guy started whining about the fact that she calls her series a “conversation”. Y’all are way too obsessive about this, and it’s tedious.
nevillenevillesays
I wasn’t looking for an argument per se, I was replying to an earlier message. So you avoid criticism of a point on the basis that……. you don’t have a good rebuttal. That is cool. Thanks for proving a point to me.
A. Noydsays
nevilleneville (#37)
Address the issues, otherwise there isn’t an argument to be made.
Since you haven’t been addressing jack shit, only linking to certain professional misogynists, is this your admission you don’t have an argument?
Goblinmansays
For someone not looking for an argument, you sure want the last word, don’t you?
McC2lhu is rarer than fish with knees.says
If you were a genuine adult you would know that linkwanking is not an argument. A grown up can put into his/her own words and do some fucking typing to make their own case. The video showed a long list of women presented as squeaky toys devoid of personal will for Pavlov’s Dudebros to get all Drooly Andrews over. Some were more gratuitous than others but all defending a valid point about a problem inherent in old boys club programming companies. It’s fair warning to a growing crowd that is far past just finding it all puerile and tiresome and wanting to do something about it by not supporting said franchises. The salient point is sitting out there in midfield with a fucking marching band and police escort, so how are you going to defend not cluing in, Mr. Bête Noire Holmes?
Athywren - Frustration Familiarity Pandasays
Err… wow. I’ve somehow managed to avoid the games with women as XP dispensers. That’s a bit weird.
Interestingly, I can usually think of a few criticisms over the course of a video which then get addressed toward the end, but in this one I didn’t pick up on anything where I thought she went off base.
@nevilleneville,
Honestly, I haven’t watched the entire video you linked to, because I remember it from over a year ago when it was originally shown to be clueless and can’t be bothered with it, but I’ll point out a couple of issues from the description:
Only 2 parts out of 7 in the mission involve dancers. So about 1 % of this game has strippers in.
Essentially, “she’s cherrypicking,” which could be a valid point as has been mentioned upthread, if she was attempting to argue that the entire game or all games were irredeemably sexist. However, she argues that sexist tropes exist. That’s basically her argument. Everything else is pointing them out and describing them. That they make up about 1% of the game doesn’t make that any less true, but the fact that mr f00t brings it up does imply that, unlike a good skeptic, he took no care to ensure he knew what he was arguing against before he started his argument.
NO ONE viewed the game as Anita Sarkeesian represented it.
Umm… firstly, this is false – Sarkeesian’s representation of the game used video clips that a great many of her critics will gladly inform you was stolen – STOLEN!! – from other youtube accounts. Hence, at least one person viewed the game as she represented it. Secondly, it’s worth noting that, again, f00t shows his ignorance of his opponent’s position. Her claim is not that everyone views it that way, that most do, or even that many do. Her claim is that it is there, which it is.
This really is like saying there is a problem with crime in Utopia. Then when people point out that there is no crime in Utopia, you go around on a vandalism spree simply so you can go back to your feminist funders and say ‘JUST LOOK AT ALL THIS OUTRAGEOUS VANDALISM IN UTOPIA!’
It’s not at all like that. In any real world situation, even in a utopian society, we all have something approximating free will and the power the choose our own actions. I could, if I had the skill and desire to do so, pick the pocket of every person in the building in which I’m currently typing and create a crime problem right here. It’s also possible that I could do that in a game, but that game would first need to give me the ability to do so. In a game, you have the power to perform only those actions which are coded into the game. If they are not coded in, you cannot perform them. This is not a comparison made by a rational actor, considering and dissecting an opposing viewpoint, it’s kneejerk bullshittery spewed out with no comprehension of the viewpoint he claims to “BUST.”
The fact that he made such a pathetic argument makes me wonder if my high opinion of his earlier videos was down to the simplicity of arguing against creationists and the ease of appearing impressive in with such simple opponents, or if it was simply because I was too young and naive to fully comprehend skepticism at the time. The more I see of his recent attempts, I suspect it was the latter. Seriously, understanding the thing you’re arguing against is skepticism 101, surely? So how does he manage to fail at it so comprehensively with this topic? The fact that an audience, supposedly of skeptics, laps this insipid bullshit up is just breathtaking to me.
nevillenevillesays
Christ, i can taste the salt in those tears from here. I see no valid points, just a lot of words and frustration. As i said, calling people dude bros and misogynists and lacking factual evidence doesn’t constitute a point. As my links show, the practice of ignoring pertinent information and just listening to rhetoric isn’t the course of action a skeptical mind should pursue.
nevillenevillesays
Athywren – Frustration Familiarity Panda
Maybe people don’t agree with all he has said, yet at the same time don’t want to live in a hugbox where everyone tries their hardest to be the most right on and at the same time avoid the glaring truth because they want the warmth of group acceptance.
Bitter rambling can’t avert eyes from the obvious flaws in the videos, and the position itself.
A. Noydsays
How is it you contact PZ these days to ask him to clean up troll barf?
Athywren - Frustration Familiarity Pandasays
Huh… maybe I should just stop assuming people genuinely want a discussion when they say they want a discussion.
The man demonstrates clear ignorance of his opponent’s position. That’s not something to agree or disagree over.
nevillenevillesays
My point is a simple one. We shouldn’t just blindly support someone’s views, however sympathetic we are to them, if neither evidence for the assertions is ably made or the individual is actively pushing an agenda for personal benefit. I think that is an acceptable point.
Loftysays
nevilleneville, you’re still reacting like a brogamer with hurt feefees. Show us some clear reasoning instead of tone trolling and thunderfool linking and you might be answered seriously.
doublereedsays
lol nevillenville that video isn’t even a critique about the video in question. It’s off-topic. Of course, I suppose your point was just to declare victory without even using your own words, which is just sad. You could at least rephrase his points or something to involve your cognition rather than just copying links and posting vagueries. Makes you nothing more than a really dull troll.
I mean geez, usually trolls at least make me angry or annoyed. But you’re not even trying here. 2/10.
Huh… maybe I should just stop assuming people genuinely want a discussion when they say they want a discussion.
Well, let’s not let the opportunity go to waste, then, shall we? So, from 43:
Essentially, “she’s cherrypicking,” which could be a valid point as has been mentioned upthread, if she was attempting to argue that the entire game or all games were irredeemably sexist. However, she argues that sexist tropes exist. That’s basically her argument.
There are two problems here. The first problem is that both in her arguments and even in the idea of “trope” itself the implication is that this is common or normal, not that this happens at some point in some very small minority of the media. Going beyond the videos themselves (which do this), the whole “Gamers are over” movement is commenting that these sorts of tropes are rife in both gaming media and in gaming culture. So if she uses an example that 1% of a game that’s in a genre that’s a minority of the games out there, she’s misrepresenting how common these things are in gaming in general. Which isn’t to say that they don’t exist and aren’t even problematic at times, but that the problem may not be as big and she implies it is.
The second problem is that the way she states it misrepresents the actual game, which is a trap you fall into as well. She presents it as being a case where the game allows and encourages players to kill and sexualize the bodies of the strippers (and women in general) while taken as described what it really means is that the game has a strip club level — not unreasonable given its subject matter — and that you can treat everyone inside the strip club the way you can treat them everywhere else in the game. So any demand to take that out and not allow it is a demand to either take it out of the entire game, or to treat these characters specially, either by not having strippers in a strip club, having them be fully-dressed when they wouldn’t be, or denying the player the ability to kill them and hide their bodies. But the implication is that this was put in specially to allow for the problematic tropes she references, which is almost certainly not the case.
. Secondly, it’s worth noting that, again, f00t shows his ignorance of his opponent’s position. Her claim is not that everyone views it that way, that most do, or even that many do. Her claim is that it is there, which it is.
For her argument to matter, it has to be the case that we ought to CARE about what she’s talking about, and this merely being there for a very small part of the game and it being merely emergent behaviour from what is reasonable given the game series itself and its general interactions that probably aren’t problematic on its own really does give us reasons to wonder why we should care.
Also note that he claims to have looked for it and didn’t find it in most of the more popular walkthoughs, which means that sure, you can do it, but there’s no evidence that most people actually do, which means they wouldn’t see it at all, and so again it’s hard to see it as a problem. This is particularly problematic since Sarkeesian explicitly states that the game ENCOURAGES people to do these things and yet, seemingly, most people DON’T. Either the game completely fails at its goal or it doesn’t encourage as much as she implies.
doublereedsays
Get we talk about the actual content of the video posted, not the video from more than a year ago?
We’ve had more than enough time to talk about the Hitman reference. Even if you disagree with the reference, it’s not at all relevant to the new video. Are you saying that you disagree with one of her references in this video, or is this a distraction thing?
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trollssays
Christ, i can taste the salt in those tears from here. I see no valid points, just a lot of words and frustration.
I have yet to see evidence to back up your assertions and bad misogynist opinion, and all you have is links to a professional misogynist. All the intellect argument of a gnat.
nevilleneville is stupid and wrong, but he’s going to work harder to get banned as a troll — although linking to Thunderf00t and Sargon of Akkad is a good start.
Really…”cherry picking” is a stupid argument here. It’s like declaring that there’s no problem in Ferguson because there are more black people walking around alive than dead black people lying in the street. The fact is that Sarkeesian backs up her claim that many video games rely on lazy, sexist tropes by showing a lot of very popular video games relying on lazy, sexist tropes.
Arg, I am so tired of people that refuse to argue their own points, like nevilleneville above, and would rather post links to videos. You are in a comment section, if you want people to reply to the content you have to actually put some work into it, and make your own arguments, otherwise I might as well go comment on the video. It gives me no reason to engage with you, you are not making an argument.
Use links to cite sources, to add extra information. They should not your full argument. Also, why are videos so popular when it comes to gamers that dislike Feminist Frequency? Can none of them write an article? I am going to scream the next time someone sends me to a rambling, hour long video to make a point.
Saadsays
When Sarkeesian sets out to talk about sexism in video games, I don’t know why she talk about video games with sexism in them.
If I were pointing out sexism in video games, I wouldn’t talk about video games with sexism in them.
I’d talk about video games without sexism in them.
anbhealsays
@57 Saad — I see what you’re doing there! It’s almost as if you destroyed Verbose Stoic’s exhaustive apologetics with an itta-bitty polemical jiu-jitsu. Slow….clap…..
drransomsays
These complaints about “cherry-picking” ring hollow when she keeps providing examples from bestselling games in major franchises. And it’s completely fine with me if people disagree with specific points. Media criticism inherently has a lot of subjectivity, so naturally people will disagree with her about, e.g., her analysis of the fact that you can kill the strippers in game X. That’s totally fine. But there’s just no reasonable way to disagree with her overarching thesis.
I suppose if i weren’t lazy and in a hury at the moment, i’d do it without a web service that leaves it’s silly watermark.
Amphioxsays
The first problem is that both in her arguments and even in the idea of “trope” itself the implication is that this is common or normal, not that this happens at some point in some very small minority of the media.
This is most certainly not true. “Trope” does not in any way imply “common” or “normal”. Tropes are literary devices that can be of any frequency.
When it comes to media, the issue isn’t “normal”, it is “normalization”. A problematic trope can exist in just a single example of media, the rarest possible of the rare, but if that example of media is a blockbuster with an audience of millions, then that is an issue.
Amphioxsays
Metroid. God of War. Grand Theft Auto. Resident Evil.
Those are some might BIG cherries….
savantsays
48 @ nevilleneville,
My point is a simple one. We shouldn’t just blindly support someone’s views, however sympathetic we are to them, if neither evidence for the assertions is ably made or the individual is actively pushing an agenda for personal benefit. I think that is an acceptable point.
Great! A wonderful point, glad you brought it up!
We don’t blindly support one anothers’ views here – perhaps you’ve seen some of the arguments that have been had here? – we encourage free thought. Hence the name of the community, actually.
See, we don’t blindly support one another. We just think that you’re wrong. We suggest that you get out of your ‘hugbox’ (what an insulting term, why are you using it if you just want reasonable discourse?) and perhaps try on a different pair of glasses for awhile?
Don’t link to videos as an argument – use the videos as support. Make your points clearly, compactly, and with a minimum of fuss. No loaded words (like ‘hugbox’, ‘blindly support’, ‘agenda for personal benefit’, and other assumptions). Engage replies directly and clearly. Avoid needless diversion. Learn and grow! \o/
Welcome to Pharyngula, happy posting!
Anrisays
Verbose Stoic @ 52:
Also note that he claims to have looked for it and didn’t find it in most of the more popular walkthoughs, which means that sure, you can do it, but there’s no evidence that most people actually do, which means they wouldn’t see it at all, and so again it’s hard to see it as a problem. This is particularly problematic since Sarkeesian explicitly states that the game ENCOURAGES people to do these things and yet, seemingly, most people DON’T. Either the game completely fails at its goal or it doesn’t encourage as much as she implies.
So… your point is that the game designers spent their time and money to develop these resources in the hope that they would never be used?
Is that what you’re saying?
Should we assume that you believe that the sexualized costumes and situations actually mentioned in the video (that this thread is, yanno, supposedly actually about) were also created without intent to be used?
Because otherwise, your argument begins to seem to be (at the risk of putting words in your mouth): “Yeah, the developers want people to use women this way, but most players don’t bother.”
Which, of course, is fine… so long as you understand that it directly contradicts the oft-repeated excuse for sexualizing women in video games: that the target demographic wants it.
Is your argument just “That wasn’t a great example of what she’s talking about” ? Ok, if that’s the case, pick another and let’s get on with the conversation.
So, maybe I’m confused about what you’re actually arguing.
Alverantsays
Verbose Stoic @ 52
Video games are art and art affects people. It can just give a little nudge in a certain direction but to claim it doesn’t affect people in any way is an ignorant position. Also the US population is 300+ million. If a game sells 3 million copies that’s 1% of the US population so it’s hard to say what kind of affect one game has. But consider the larger picture and how popular the video games she used as examples are. Enough nudges in a certain direction will bring a reaction.
Alverantsays
I enjoyed the video but it felt a bit dry and monotone like a Ben Stein lecture. Everything was presented matter-of-factly like a lecture. After it was over I watched the Game Overthinker (on the Screw Attack channel) videos about the state of video games. They have different opinions but Overthinker had more emotion in his voice (and about 1/5 as long). FF makes a good case and I agree with much of what she said and I’m glad I didn’t play many of the games she listed. But I was really getting bored at the end. You didn’t need to watch the video, just listen to it. That way you can multitask.
Rowan vet-techsays
If she had a lot of emotion in her voice, she would then be dismissed as an overly emotional woman having hysterics.
llamaherdersays
I get that the “cherrypicking” argument is a bullshit response, but it’s also wrong.
Grand Theft Auto, Metroid, Metal Gear, God of War, Resident Evil, and The Witcher are massive franchises. These are mainstream, flagship games that sell millions of copies.
She went straight to the top shelf and found plenty of examples.
Loftysays
If she had a lot of emotion in her voice, she would then be dismissed as an overly emotional woman having hysterics.
That.
No matter what she says, does, or looks like, she will be criticized by the gamerdoods. Personally I though the presentation was competently delivered. This is not an exercise in public entertainment.
johannes9126says
There are litteraly hundreds of videogames where you can go on a killing-spree with every imaginable weapon. The impact on society is basically nil. The same way video games that depict women as trophies have basically zero influence on real behaviour.
Besides the depiction of women like in the witcher games are erotic, not pornographic.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trollssays
Besides the depiction of women like in the witcher games are erotic, not pornographic.
Your opinion. Not ours.
Saadsays
johannes9126, #70
There are litteraly hundreds of videogames where you can go on a killing-spree with every imaginable weapon. The impact on society is basically nil. The same way video games that depict women as trophies have basically zero influence on real behaviour.
Besides the depiction of women like in the witcher games are erotic, not pornographic.
There is no ingrained, established culture of going on killing sprees. There is one of misogyny.
Would you defend depiction of black people as inferior or as property of white people by saying it also has basically “zero influence on real behaviour”?
Just what is it about women that it is to this day considered just fine to portray them in ways that it’s considered indefensible to portray other marginalized groups in?
Actually, I should really be asking just what is it about men that so many of them continue to defend misogyny to this day.
Saadsays
And it’s not even about erotic vs. pornographic. It’s about being shown as equal human beings vs. mere (sexualized) accessories for male protagonists (and thus for the male gamers taking on the role of the protagonist).
Duncsays
Since when was the threshold for thoughtful critique of cultural artefacts set so high? Games are cultural products, just like books, movies, and TV shows. People subject books, movies, and TV shows to all sorts of critique and criticism all the frickin’ time, even if nobody actually thinks that the specific books, movies, and TV shows in question are having a significant (or even meaningful) “impact on society”. You want to be considered a worthwhile, grown-up art form, you have to accept that people are going to subject your output to criticism.
What is it about games that is supposed to make them uniquely immune from the normal business of criticism?
komarovsays
So if she uses an example that 1% of a game that’s in a genre that’s a minority of the games out there, she’s misrepresenting how common these things are in gaming in general. Which isn’t to say that they don’t exist and aren’t even problematic at times, but that the problem may not be as big and she implies it is.
A single sample from a small subset of a population is not a good way to describe that population. Perfectly true. Only the entire Tropes vs Women series includes a long list of video games. Lots of samples from lots of different subsets making up the population. All of them problematic. Which would suggest that sexism in gaming really is a problem.
Obsessing over one mention of Hitman won’t help because, at least in the way Thunderfoot argued, it doesn’t address the actual point being made and is, funnily enough, just one sample from a much larger population.
Anri, #64
Should we assume that you believe that the sexualized costumes and situations actually mentioned in the video (that this thread is, yanno, supposedly actually about) were also created without intent to be used?
Perhaps that’s exactly what it is. The Sexist Option, built in the hopes that it would never have to be used but act as a deterrent instead. It certainly deters me from ever touching franchises like GTA or Witcher. It also deters a lot of people, not just women, from enjoying gaming as much as they otherwise might.
It’s a remarkable scheme with only two problems:
– It’s bullshit
– They didn’t even get the part where it was never going to be used right
johannes9126says
So, Saad, you are basically saying that women shouldn’t have the right to have consensual sex with a male they desire (like depicted in the Witcher franchise) for whatever reason? A right they in fact should have if they are equal to males.
And also you are imlying that a depiction of enslavement of blacks in video games or other media would unleash a desire to hurry to the next slave market?
This is most certainly not true. “Trope” does not in any way imply “common” or “normal”.
From TVTropes, the front page:
Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members’ minds and expectations.
We can quibble over how common it has to be, but it definitely needs to be something that audiences understand and expect in that media, even if it isn’t always present. But even notwithstanding that, for Sarkeesian’s points to work the elements DO have to be common and normal. If the examples she gives are the only examples that have it, it wouldn’t say anything about gaming as a whole, and wouldn’t be something we’d worry about. To take her points as being ones that matter, we have to believe that these are the tip of the iceburg. They may well be the worst and most obvious, but we have to accept that, in general, these sorts of depictions are common in games for us to worry about them being present in the examples she cites. Or, at least, that’s how I interpret her arguments; if you have another view, feel free to point it out.
When it comes to media, the issue isn’t “normal”, it is “normalization”. A problematic trope can exist in just a single example of media, the rarest possible of the rare, but if that example of media is a blockbuster with an audience of millions, then that is an issue.
Why? The only immediate argument I can see that has any real weight is that if that game does it and is popular, then other games will do it as well, and so it will become “normal”, but her videos don’t describe that as being her main issue; she seems to be trying to show that these things are ALREADY normal. The only other point is that any game that has it is essentially supporting a point that is itself problematic, which is an argument that she DEFINITELY tries to make, but then this gets back to whether or not the game actually does present that or encourage it in the way that she argues it does in order to make her case. But, in either case, all of her videos do not present these things as the “rarest possible of the rare” but as sadly common. When it isn’t as common as she implies, that strikes at her credibility.
So let me insert a reply to Anri @64 here, because it’s relevant to this part:
So… your point is that the game designers spent their time and money to develop these resources in the hope that they would never be used?
Is that what you’re saying?
No, I’m saying that the game designers didn’t actually spend time and money developing the ability to do this, which means that what she implies about the game is misleading. The only resources they needed to develop for the scenes she specifically cites are the models of the dancers, which they probably had to do the instant they decided to include a strip club in one of their games. All of the other behaviour is emergent, and totally in line with what you can do to all other civilians and bystanders in every other area of the game. Thus, as she states that the game encourages the behaviour, it doesn’t do so in any way other than to allow you to treat the strippers the same way as you do everyone else. It’s also presented as being a bigger part of the game than it really is; it’s one small part of one area or set of missions, and so hardly representative of the game itself.
So, to someone who have never played that game, it looks like she badly misrepresented it to make her case. An even worse example is her complaint about Dragon Age: Origins, with the City Elf storyline where she calls it a typical damsel in distress storyline. To be fair, the male City Elf storyline pretty much is. But that’s only one storyline out of something like eight, and more importantly if you play that as a FEMALE protagonist it’s precisely the sort of subversion of the damsel in distress story that she wants … and she never, ever mentions that that is how it works, even when giving examples of subversions that she likes. Which implies that either she was unaware of that storyline — which suggests a massive research failure on her part, because I knew it before I played the game and that was one of the reasons I chose to play as a female City Elf — or that she was aware but refuses to mention it, and so refused to give the game CREDIT for doing what she wanted, and so seems to be avoiding examples that would show that her arguments aren’t as universal or common as she implies.
This means that in evaluating her examples, I have to know the details of the games myself, because I can’t trust her presentation, as it seems to be often misleading. Thus, to conclude as Dr. Myers did that she’s showing that games rely on these sexist tropes, I have to go look to see if they really do rely on it. In the “Hitman” and “Dragon Age: Origins” cases, that seems to be completely false.
For this video, I’ll concede that she more or less accurately describes what happens in the games. I’m a little leery about the Conan and the Resident Evil examples (the XP might be for rescuing people not for the implied sex in the former, and as it looks like the DLC is simply a costume pack the character being “forced” into the ninja costume doesn’t seem credible), but I’m willing to grant her those since there might be things to talk about even if she’s wrong and even if they are just optional. However, this part seems to be overstating the case:
As a reward for completing the main game under specific conditions, players gain the ability to shove these female police and special agents into the digital equivalent of those patronizing “sexy” Halloween costumes we see mass produced every year. These ensembles are not only completely inappropriate for the mission at hand, but also reduce otherwise capable characters to sexual objects for the voyeuristic enjoyment of players.
In Mass Effect 2, if you have the DLC with Kasumi, you get the evening dress, which you can make your default costume. I liked how my female Shepard looked in it, so I had her running around in it all of the time, even in ME3. That in no way reduced her from a capable character to a sexual object. It simply ADDED sexually appealing to her already long list of good qualities. The same thing in general applies to the costumes, especially the ones you earn after beating the game. If you didn’t already find them capable and skilled after beating them in the default costume, that won’t be changed by you dressing them up in a way that’s attractive. So I’m STRONGLY skeptical of this line of argumentation, which feeds into the “entitlement” argument that I also find dubious.
Colin Jsays
johannes9126 @76:
So, Saad, you are basically saying that women shouldn’t have the right to have consensual sex with a male they desire (like depicted in the Witcher franchise) for whatever reason? A right they in fact should have if they are equal to males.
You are aware that the male that all these women desire is the PC, right? And that the women are all computer characters? PC/NPC – only one of them has any real choice in the matter.
There were only a few examples in the latest video of non-consentual contact. All those women overcome with gratitude at being rescued, or just overcome by the manly manliness of the man, may have been consenting. But that doesn’t make any difference to the point about how they are being depicted.
Do you really think putting a sex-starved nymphette in your game isn’t sexist because she is consenting??
Do you really think putting a sex-starved nymphette in your game isn’t sexist because she is consenting??
I don’t think that putting a sex-starved nymphette in your game is sexist. I think that putting in ONLY sex-starved nymphettes or having all women become that for the MC or having them all either be that or very reserved and demure is sexist, but not merely having that as a character.
That there is sexism in games or even problematic things is not really in question; most people accept that. Where most of the disagreement with Sarkeesian is — or, at least, the disagreement that’s worth considering — is over how much and what the implications of that are. I can see that, for example, using sexual depictions as rewards in a game — even if optional — is a problem not because of the implications Sarkeesian harps on, but because of the point that she VERY lightly touches on in that if we presume that these are reasons to play or buy the game, men might find it such a reason but women wouldn’t. Thus I’d be perfectly willing to, say, add the ability to dress the male characters up in whatever THEY found appealing, as long as it was just as optional as it is in most of those games for women., or that we provide whatever rewards women might find appealing even if men wouldn’t. But at that point, I’ve skipped 90% of her arguments and yet think I’ve covered most of the real and pressing objections.
Obsessing over one mention of Hitman won’t help because, at least in the way Thunderfoot argued, it doesn’t address the actual point being made and is, funnily enough, just one sample from a much larger population.
The problem isn’t so much the specific example, but that it’s an example of how she misrepresents how representative those games are and those games themselves. Despite being a constant gamer for about 30 years, I’ve played maybe 5% of the games she cites. And whether intentional or not, her examples often portray the examples as being things that occur throughout the game despite them being VERY small parts of it. To return to Hitman, I like to use it as an example because as a game I never played I got the impression from her video that this was TYPICAL of how women are treated in the game, that this was indeed something encouraged and that you were supposed to do, and that it was only the worst and most obvious example. On watching the reply video, I was struck by how misleading her presentation was of it, which undermines her point and undermines her credibility.
Which, to me, is the real problem with the “cherry picking”. I shouldn’t have to watch someone else’s video to understand what is going on in that game. To return to the Dragon Age example, she should have presented the storyline fairly, pointing out that the female protagonist line has the exact opposite connotation, even if as she did for Mass Effect she pointed out that most players probably take the male protagonist line. But this all strikes me as her emphasizing the negative and hiding the positive, which does not make me ready to accept that she’s presenting the OTHER games I haven’t played fairly.
Sorry, that last quote there was to komarov, not Colin J.
Colin Jsays
I hate this all or nothing approach that so many people seem to take. The idea that Sarkeesian is condeming all the games she mentions and that you’r either with her or against her. The idea that if you can come up with a redeeming feature for one of the games she mentions then she must be wrong. Or, on the other hand, being detered “…from ever touching franchises like GTA or Witcher”.
Didn’t Sarkeesian specifically say in the first video that she enjoys playing some of the games that she criticises in the series? She has certainly brought up a number of games that I’ve played and enjoyed. I can acknowledge her points and still play, and enjoy, those games. If they employ questionable themes, cliched settings and lazy plot devices then those are strikes against them but it doesn’t say everything about those games. There can be redeeming features.
The thing is, Sarkeesian doesn’t have to mention redeeming features because that’s not what her series is about. She’s not a game reviewer trying to give a balanced analysis of a particular game. She’s identifying examples – many, many examples – of the use of sexist tropes, and instances where a game isn’t being blatantly sexist really aren’t relevant. The Witcher 3 might include (some) strong, independant female characters but that doesn’t change it’s use of sexual conquest as a trophy. One character’s backstory in Dragon Age might subvert certain tropes but that doesn’t change the fact that another character is an out-and-out damsel. And the prevalence of strip club settings in SO. MANY. GAMES. is worth discussing regardless of any positive points you could make about some of those games.
I really don’t understand why so many people get upset at the thought of even discussing these issues.
Colin Jsays
Shorter version: Sarkeesian is not a games reviewer. She doesn’t have to give a balanced assessment of each game she mentions. She just has to back up her claim that the sexist tropes she identifies are prevalent. Which she does in spades.
Saadsays
johannes9126, #76
So, Saad, you are basically saying that women shouldn’t have the right to have consensual sex with a male they desire (like depicted in the Witcher franchise) for whatever reason? A right they in fact should have if they are equal to males.
I’m not talking about whether the fictional woman character on screen is being depicted as acting via her consent or not. That’s not the issue. The issue is about what roles women are cast into in many of these major games to begin with, how often they’re nothing but an accessory to be used by the gamer, how often they’re pointlessly sexualized, how often they’re shown to be helpless victims, as have been covered in previous FF videos.
And also you are imlying that a depiction of enslavement of blacks in video games or other media would unleash a desire to hurry to the next slave market?
No, I’m not. I’m not against movies or video games about the Civil War for example. I’m also not against a movie that deals with the topic of sex slavery or prostitution.
You’re misunderstanding analogy with black people here. I’m not against a video game that deals with the topic of prostitution or sex work or with the history of black oppression. That’s different. The proper analogy would be video games that show black people via negative stereotypes (like portraying them mostly as “thugs” or showing them to always be taking a back seat to white characters).
doublereedsays
In Mass Effect 2, if you have the DLC with Kasumi, you get the evening dress, which you can make your default costume. I liked how my female Shepard looked in it, so I had her running around in it all of the time, even in ME3. That in no way reduced her from a capable character to a sexual object. It simply ADDED sexually appealing to her already long list of good qualities. The same thing in general applies to the costumes, especially the ones you earn after beating the game. If you didn’t already find them capable and skilled after beating them in the default costume, that won’t be changed by you dressing them up in a way that’s attractive. So I’m STRONGLY skeptical of this line of argumentation, which feeds into the “entitlement” argument that I also find dubious.
What the hell are you talking about? How is that not entirely voyeuristic?
I don’t even think that dress is a good example (as it’s a classy dress), but your description of your motives is entirely voyeuristic. It’s not a pornographic game where that kind of voyeur reward would actually make sense. In a game like Mass Effect, it’s just bizarre and inappropriate and I have no idea why you would bother to defend it.
And I’m not surprised that you find the entitlement argument dubious, because apparently you don’t find it at all strange to have random sexualized imagery catered to you even when it makes no sense. The whole point is that women’s bodies are not just for male eyes to consume.
Alverantsays
@Rowan #67
If she had a lot of emotion in her voice…
Who’s asking for “a lot”? You don’t have to bounce from one extreme to the other. How about “some” does that exist in your view? I watch several educational series on YouTube and all of them put more emotion into their presentation than her. She did a great job, but that doesn’t mean she can’t do better. Even if this is not meant as entertainment you have to keep your audience engaged. She has a passion for her cause, a cause I support, but we’re not really seeing her passion in this video.
I’d have to watch the video again but I’m pretty sure the whole thing was her on the right side of the screen narrating while the video game footage was on the left. How about switching sides with each alternating point to help people stay focused?
I’m not sure how familiar you are with the series, but the reason you have that choice is because it’s necessary for Kasumi’s recruitment mission, as you have to infiltrate a party. Once you’re given the costume, you can then wear it like anything else you can wear in the game. So it being present in the game isn’t a “male gaze” sort of thing, but a requirement. In fact, you get a formal outfit for your male Shepard as well.
Also, there’s no expectation that the game is going to provide this for me. If a game lets me choose the appearance and clothes for my character, I’m going to choose the set that appeals to me, for whatever reasons I want. If that includes “Hey, that makes my character look hot!” then I don’t apologize for that. Which is why I defend the inclusion of such options as long as they are optional and, oh, BTW, argued against the entitlement line you’re taking against me by pointing out that it was in general an issue that there was nothing similar put in the game FOR WOMEN. In short, you are arguing that I’m arguing from male entitlement when I was clear that I felt that it was an issue that the rewards were only targeted at men. If I expected games to cater to MY whims, I wouldn’t do that, now would I?
But the key point is that Sarkeesian explicitly states that this REDUCES the character to nothing more than a sex objection, and you seem to support that interpretation, and my point was that it really doesn’t do that. That option being available or not, or my taking it or not, does NOT change my impression of or how I played Shepard AS A CHARACTER. She was still a hardass combat veteran dedicated to her crew and willing to tell everyone else to shove it. That she did that in an evening dress didn’t change that. So why would you or Sarkeesian think it should?
doublereedsays
@86
Not really. She didn’t bring up the evening dress in Mass Effect. You did.
Sarkeesian brought up blatant fetish outfits that are commonly costume choices for the male gaze of viewers, wholly inappropriate to anything they would ever do. Actually they’re wholly inappropriate to anything anyone would ever do except go to a sexy halloween party.
You were completely unclear that you believe women should be catered to as well. If that’s your position, then I think that’s fine. But then I fail to see where you disagree with Sarkeesian at all. Sarkeesian basically addresses this specifically saying that the weird outfits for men in games are more like joke outfits rather than sexualized outfits.
You were completely unclear that you believe women should be catered to as well.
Sorry, that was in the next comment. But I do think you jumped the gun a bit. And I used that as an example of choosing an alternative appearance for attractiveness reasons, which is what you jumped on at that point. I agree that the costumes don’t fit what they’re doing, but again don’t see that as a problem in and of itself as long as the conditions I gave are met.
That being said, here is where I disagree with her, to repost the quote:
These ensembles are not only completely inappropriate for the mission at hand, but also reduce otherwise capable characters to sexual objects for the voyeuristic enjoyment of players.
To which my comment is that it in no way does that, because the characters still remain capable and strong characters, they just turn into, to use your turn of phrase, strong capable characters with an added voyeuristic element. Since much of her objections rely on this reduction occurring, I find those arguments dubious.
The problem is that while she doesn’t have to be a games expert, she does have to make sure that she presents the examples fairly. For example, she uses Hitman as an example of there being so many strip clubs despite that sequence, from what I’ve read and seen, being the only one that had one IN THE ENTIRE SERIES. That a game like Hitman would end up in a strip club at some point was pretty much a given. And when she presents the negatives of a game and then later talks about how things could be better and games that do it better, then it would be nice for her to give those games a shout-out for what they did well. When she doesn’t — as was the case with Dragon Age: Origins, as the female line is EXACTLY the sort of subversion that she wants to see in games — then either she isn’t aware that that occurred in that game (which shows a lack of research) or she doesn’t WANT to portray that game as doing things well (which isn’t honest). Personally, my bet is on the former, but as I said it does mean that I can’t take her examples at face value, or the impressions she gives either; I have to do the research myself.
doublereedsays
@88 Verbose Stoic
To which my comment is that it in no way does that, because the characters still remain capable and strong characters, they just turn into, to use your turn of phrase, strong capable characters with an added voyeuristic element. Since much of her objections rely on this reduction occurring, I find those arguments dubious.
Are you serious? They’re literal fetish outfits. They’re outfits for sex fetishes. You don’t think putting security operative Sherry Burkin in a schoolgirl outfit objectifies her inappropriately? Again, you don’t see this treatment on male characters.
Remember, the trope is “women as rewards.” Your reward in the game is a fetish outfit for the woman. It’s making sexual thrill a trophy to be won by the game. That’s the trope. Making women’s bodies a reward.
BinJabreelsays
So I scanned the comments and didn’t see it, so I’d like to pop in here and say:
Using “hugbox” pejoratively like that is a giant fucking red flag that I’m dealing with some channer asshole who also uses “sperglord” or “aspie” as insults. The hugbox is a particular piece of equipment meant to help people with a form of severe anxiety caused by autism focus.
So fuck you, troll, and fuck your channer friends who shit all over people with legitimate disabilities.
Also, one last one:
I hate when people muddle the waters in discussions of sexism in media by arguing as though the character at any point “chose” to look that way. She’s not real. She’s the product of other people, and she *doesn’t* have fucking agency, no matter how many times she kicks ass or takes names. That’s why sexy costumes are problematic, and why something like Bayonetta exists in a grey area. It *does* matter whether a woman or a man chose to stick that character in that tiny outfit, and there’s pretty much no amount of “that’s not REAL equality” whinging that changes that fact.
BinJabreelsays
@Verbose Stoic:
I’d argue that, rather than “I’ve played 5% of the games she cites” being the meaningful metric, “Almost everyone has played at least one of these games she cites” should be how we’re approaching this.
Saganite, a haunter of demonssays
Here’s the thing, I don’t agree with Sarkeesian on all of her points. Sometimes she does overgeneralize, I think, although I can agree with many of her criticisms. But the backlash against her videos is typically so over-the-top vicious, that I simply have to default to her “side” (when “sides” are at all necessary). I don’t have to agree on every single point she makes or with every example she gives to see that many of her detractors are just beyond any sense and reason.
– She’s right about the “reward”-aspect to the Metroid endings for sure. I just wonder whether Samus’ awesomeness as a tough, powerful character otherwise “makes up for it” or something. Although, really, that isn’t the point. There’s no need for a “trade-off” like that. Plus, ever since Other M, that aspect of Samus has been somewhat bruised, considering we were apparently never meant to interpret Samus as this tough, independent and unflappable bounty hunter.
– The “hero reward with the princess’ hand in marriage”-thing is not really an issue with video games so much as it is with fantasy/fable/fairy tale tropes, although the two obviously overlap where fantasy video games are concerned.
– Ride to Hell isn’t exactly a good example to use, considering how laughable that game is. I heartily recommend Yahtzee’s review of that atrocity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWxEwdGpIPQ
There are plenty of other games that are not utter fringe garbage that employ these tropes and she gives lots of other examples, to be fair.
– The master of unlocking, yay! :-D
– The fuck? Playboy magazines? Weird. Never expected that. Some sort of pseudo-Playboy, sure, I guess, but an actual collaboration?
– The Stanley Parable? Yeah! It’s awesome. :-)
– Oh dear. She talks about male entitlement and qualifies her statements to ensure nobody will claim she calls all men potential date-rapists or whatever. What part of that do you think will be the first thing that’s conveniently lost when her more rabid critics start deconstructing this video to mine for quotes?
– Hey, I like mainstream pornography…
– I was hoping she would bring up an example of a game that might work to counteract some of these tropes at the end there. She just mentioned that they could exist. Surely, some already do? I dunno?
The above are just a few thoughts I had while watching. That’s why they’re a bit disjointed, like my brain. Anyway, overall? Good video.
doublereedsays
If I’m not mistaken, the whole “bounty hunter” thing for Samus was lost in translation from Japanese. Like I think Americans described what a bounty hunter was to Nintendo and they were like “No no, she doesn’t do anything like that.” I think she’s supposed to be a special-ops mercenary or something.
drransomsays
It’s perfectly fine with me if you disagree with her presentation of a particular game. This kind of media criticism has a certain amount of inherent subjectivity and there’s plenty of room for disagreement about particular points. Honestly the critique of the Hitman example sounds pretty reasonable.
But her overarching point in that sub-series had to do with the use of sexualized women NPC’s with little or no background or personality as decoration to titillate the presumed straight male player, as documented by a great many examples. And the fact that game designers do this routinely is pretty brazenly obvious to anyone who actually plays the sorts of games she’s talking about.
If someone created a video that complained that boss fights in games today suck, you wouldn’t try to refute it by pointing out that boss fights are only a small percentage of the content of most games. That makes no sense.
Anrisays
Verbose Stoic @ 77:
No, I’m saying that the game designers didn’t actually spend time and money developing the ability to do this, which means that what she implies about the game is misleading. The only resources they needed to develop for the scenes she specifically cites are the models of the dancers, which they probably had to do the instant they decided to include a strip club in one of their games. All of the other behaviour is emergent, and totally in line with what you can do to all other civilians and bystanders in every other area of the game. Thus, as she states that the game encourages the behaviour, it doesn’t do so in any way other than to allow you to treat the strippers the same way as you do everyone else. It’s also presented as being a bigger part of the game than it really is; it’s one small part of one area or set of missions, and so hardly representative of the game itself.
They didn’t decide to put a strip club in the game? It just kinda… happened?
Or did they just never actually playtested that bit and thus had no idea what would happen there?
Or did they just assume that no-one would go in there?
Because unless you’re arguing one of these, they did indeed spend time and resources in creating strippers you could brutalize, which is exactly what was argued in the video.
Let me put it to you this way: they could have put the strippers where they couldn’t be gotten to to be brutalized. I imagine that rather a number of players would have found that frustrating.
Ask your self what was being frustrated.
As for your argument that it’s a small part of the game, what level of brutalizing sexualized defenseless women are you comfy with? It doesn’t have to be an exact answer, just something like “Well, beating up three strippers is more or less ok, but I dunno, a dozen? That’s pushing it!” I ask just so we know where you stand on the ‘small part’ issue.
Colin Jsays
Verbose Stoic @89:
The problem is that while she doesn’t have to be a games expert, she does have to make sure that she presents the examples fairly.
No. The problem is that you don’t understand what her examples are.
You seem to think that Sarkeesian is saying “Hitman is a sexist game. The Witcher is a sexist game.” She’s not. She’s saying “This sexist trope is common in computer games. Here are examples from game A, game B, game C, game D, game E, game F…” Her examples have to show the existence of that trope in specific games. Whatever else is in the game is irrelevant. She doesn’t have to be “fair” to the game because the game isn’t her example. The example is the element within the game and if you want to claim that she’s being dishonest then you have to demonstrate that that element doesn’t exist. At all.
With respect to Dragon Age, maybe Sarkeesian isn’t aware of the alternative backstory. That would be a terrible lack of research if her video series was called “Dragon Age vs Women”. But since Dragon Age is only one of dozens of games she refers to, not being aware of all 10(?) different backstories is fine. Or maybe she is aware of it but she doesn’t want to mention it because it’s TOTALLY FUCKING IRRELEVANT. The good things in a game don’t erase the bad things, or make them off limits for discussion.
Sarkeesian has done separate videos about games that do things well. She hasn’t covered Dragon Age as far as I know, but so what? She hasn’t covered a lot of games.
You should try actually watching Sarkeesian’s videos rather than getting your talking points from TheFoot.
komarovsays
Re: Verbose Stoic #79/#80
I’d refer you to the responses given by several others in the meantime. The general points of any response I could give have already been made.
I do understand your complaint about misrepresenting Hitman as a whole. Having played some earlier instances of the game I already knew that the locations are very varied and so automatically assumed this would be just one mission out of many with different backgrounds. This may not be clear to someone not familiar with Hitman titles.
However, when she discusses a videoclip I think Sarkeesian always makes it reasonably clear whether a trope is a common or repeating element or something temporary that crops up once in a game and ends there.
—
Re: Colin J (#81)
Please don’t read too much into my never-ever-style comment. Just to clarify, this is (naturally) my personal opinion and was reinforced by, not based on, what I’ve seen in the tropes videos. Perhaps a matter of taste, but I am not keen at all on game mechanics (rare or not, optional or not) that would have the player use or abuse women (or caricatures thereof) for whatever benefit it may bring. There are other reasons for me to avoid these games in particular but this one was the proverbial last straw.
In general I’d go with the disclaimer from the Tropes-videos. It’s possible to enjoy games even when there are problematic elements. I’m just adding my own limits as to how much I’m willing to accept before looking elsewhere for entertainment.
Are you serious? They’re literal fetish outfits. They’re outfits for sex fetishes. You don’t think putting security operative Sherry Burkin in a schoolgirl outfit objectifies her inappropriately? Again, you don’t see this treatment on male characters.
Okay, first of all, as I already said, I think that male characters should get that, too. So, hey, in the same sort of character packs add a “fireman” option which I was assured in the past was the same sort of thing for women. Again, the problem that I agree with is the one that she — and you — are giving very short shrift: that these are rewards that appeal to men and they don’t give any similar rewards that appeal to only women, meaning that they either cater to men too much or assume that women won’t want to play the game. I want that fixed.
Second, I’m not getting into a discussion over “inappropriate”, because that’s debatable and depends on what you mean by that.
So all we have left is “objectification”. And then we can turn back to the quote I was originally replying to, which says that allowing a player to put them in these outfits after completing the game reduces them to, essentially, sex objects, which I think completely false. If you’ve played as those characters through an entire game, they don’t suddenly turn into nothing more than sex objects because you put them into a schoolgirl outfit on their second playthrough. Either you viewed them as a character during the first run or you didn’t; this doesn’t change that.
The objection here looks like one that I’ve seen commonly raised, which seems predicated on the idea that if a female character appears in ANY sexualized context, then that’s all she is, that she can’t be a good and deep character AND also be, say, in a sexual fetish outfit. But if that latter can be, say, for a male gamer the icing on the cake for a well-developed character, then the charges of “reduced to a sexual object” ring hollow; surely almost anyone can see that if you have a deeply developed and interesting character that also happens to be hot that doesn’t mean that their hotness must trump the rest of their qualities. This was actually the point of raising the “Shepard” example, and I note that your big response there was to move on to the overly fetishy costume examples, while I’d argue that the principle is the same.
Remember, the trope is “women as rewards.” Your reward in the game is a fetish outfit for the woman. It’s making sexual thrill a trophy to be won by the game. That’s the trope. Making women’s bodies a reward.
And I find that whole line of reasoning dubious, mostly because a) you only get it on a second playthrough and b) few are going to try to finish the game, especially one they dislike, to get that reward. You can argue that it makes women’s bodies a reward, but it’s not one that is as important to most players as it needs to be to make the links that she requires.
BinJabreel @92,
I’d argue that, rather than “I’ve played 5% of the games she cites” being the meaningful metric, “Almost everyone has played at least one of these games she cites” should be how we’re approaching this.
But having played one game where this appears and noting that most of the games you play DON’T have this seems to strike against the importance of the example. If it isn’t common, then why should we care if it appears in some games? Especially if they aren’t bad in and of themselves?
To be honest, for most of her stuff it is the case that the basic trope is common. Whether the examples are problematic or not is the issue, and also it would be nice if she noted that a lot of even popular games do better with this and are getting better at this all the time.
They didn’t decide to put a strip club in the game? It just kinda… happened?
Yes, they decided to put a strip club level in the game … in one game out of something like 3 or 4 at that point, with 2 levels out of something like 20 just in that game, in a series associated with shady and criminal dealings that are also associated with strip clubs in general. Honestly, it’s surprising that the game didn’t do that MORE often than they did.
Because unless you’re arguing one of these, they did indeed spend time and resources in creating strippers you could brutalize, which is exactly what was argued in the video.
Let me put it to you this way: they could have put the strippers where they couldn’t be gotten to to be brutalized. I imagine that rather a number of players would have found that frustrating.
Ask your self what was being frustrated.
The Hitman games are games set in a dark and gritty genre where the areas are populated with the sorts of NPCs that you’d expect to see in that area, and the player is indeed free to kill any NPCs they come across, for a penalty. Given a strip club level, there probably would be strippers in appropriate areas, meaning that then the player would be able to do that. Given that, you can indeed say that they put strippers in the game that you could brutalize, but that’s misleading because what they REALLY did was put strippers into the game in an environment where you would expect to see them, and allowed the player to treat them like any other NPC in the game, helpless or not (there is a distinction between “Civilian” and “Non-Target” from the footage I’ve watched, which means the the first are the helpless targets and the latter are ones that can fight back). So, yes, if they had made it so that out of all of the NPCs in the game THESE ones couldn’t be killed, the small percentage of players who a) got that far and b) tried to kill them would have been frustrated, for the obvious reason that the game would have, for no really good reason, made them EXCEPTIONS to how the game works. So not for the reasons that you’re obviously implying here; not because they really, really want to hurt scantily clad women, but because a game that had little to no real moral restrictions suddenly inserted it into this mission.
As for your argument that it’s a small part of the game, what level of brutalizing sexualized defenseless women are you comfy with? It doesn’t have to be an exact answer, just something like “Well, beating up three strippers is more or less ok, but I dunno, a dozen? That’s pushing it!” I ask just so we know where you stand on the ‘small part’ issue.
Ah, this is a “Have you stopped beating your wife?” kind of question, isn’t it [grin]?
The point is that the game designers didn’t run out and add tons of resources just to allow players to do that. Instead, they added environment appropriate NPCs and let them be treated the same way all other NPCs can be treated. You don’t have to like that sort of game — I, personally, don’t — but you have to acknowledge that, in context, the claims of encouragement and of them deliberately creating the game to allow this are misleading, at best.
No. The problem is that you don’t understand what her examples are.
You seem to think that Sarkeesian is saying “Hitman is a sexist game. The Witcher is a sexist game.” She’s not. She’s saying “This sexist trope is common in computer games. Here are examples from game A, game B, game C, game D, game E, game F…” Her examples have to show the existence of that trope in specific games.
No, her examples have to do more than, for example, show that a game contains a damsel in distress. For her arguments to work, her examples have to be cases where the game uses the trope in a problematic way. And that requires context. So, even WITHOUT looking at what she herself SAYS about the example, it has to be the case that it’s a problem. In the Dragon Age Origins context, it’s clear that the usage there is NOT a problematic example, and I’d even go so far to say that, in context, it’s a BRILLIANT way of providing the sort of subversions of the damsel in distress trope that she claims to want, as it takes the same basic storyline — there’s a wedding, and the arrogant human son of a … lord kidnaps the some of the women as party favours for their own party — and plays into the traditional damsel in distress role OR into a female “free yourself” fantasy depending on whether the PC is male or female. They COULD have simply had it so that you ended up rescuing your cousin whether male or female, but they didn’t. Bioware also subvert this AGAIN later in the game where the PC is captured and, given the right circumstances, can break themselves out or be rescued by their love interests regardless of the gender of the PC. I’ll forgive her for missing that last one, but for the first one as it’s the flip side of the storyline she uses as an example the BEST interpretation is that her research was incredibly shallow, while it would be reasonable to believe that in those games she’s looking for things to criticize, and so not evaluating them fairly.
So, in context, I think that it was a bad example of what she was trying to get across in the first place, and it gets worse when she talks about the subversions she wants to see in another video, describes what that would entail … and misses that the female City Elf origin story is pretty much what she wanted. Throwing the bone there would at least show that she did even a minor amount of research, but she didn’t even do that.
For Hitman, the example does technically fit her definition of “Women as Background Decoration”. But my objection there is not to its inclusion as that, but to what she SAYS about that game, and the intent of the designers. In context, it’s horribly misleading, if not outright false, for all the reasons I’ve gone on about to everyone’s ad nauseum [grin].
So, I can’t trust her examples, because she presents them misleadingly, in my opinion … and I have reasons to think that.
You should try actually watching Sarkeesian’s videos rather than getting your talking points from TheFoot.
You’re right, I haven’t watched her videos … instead, I’ve read each transcript, multiple times. TheFoot, for example, didn’t ever mention the Dragon Age point that, as you’ve seen, is the one that bothers me probably the most. So, uh, you probably shouldn’t make assumptions about what someone has or hasn’t done [grin].
Alex the Pretty Goodsays
@ Verbose Stoic, various
For her arguments to work, her examples have to be cases where the game uses the trope in a problematic way.
Just curious … when would you consider the myriad of sexist tropes that the series has illustrated so far to be used in a problematic way?
When you feel unconfortable about them?
When the parent/close relative of a child feels uncomfortable about them?
When the parent/close relative of a girl who constantly gets these “this is what it means for you to be a woman / this is how you should act as a woman” messages feels uncomfortable about them? (And don’t start about “these are series for adults” … the series has also shown many samples from “all ages” titles, like the well-known Damsel in Distress trope and the super-lame Mrs. Character trope.)
Or maybe … just maybe (and I admit … this is a wild idea to hold) when one or more actual women tell you that they feel uncomfortable about them?
As far as I have noticed so far, FF doesn’t claim that all games that contain any of the tropes discussed are inherently sexist; nor does she claim that the makers of the games are willingly including these sexist tropes. What she illustrates with this series is that one of the most modern forms of media/art in our society is just as “vulnerable” to these sexist tropes as other popular forms of media and art and that hardly anybody seems to think twice about the inclusion of these tropes in the medium.
She has also, repeatedly, mentioned that the presence of these tropes do not make the whole work unenjoyable. While if you hear the Tfoot-brigade ranting, you’d think that she was denouncing each featured game as irredeemably blemished by the presence of even one second of one the discussed tropes.
Allow me to illustrate with an example from a less modern medium. I’m a major Star Wars fan, and when I was an early pubescent teen I was of course fasinated by Leia’s gold bikini scene. In retrospect, I fully realise that was a sexist scene which only was there for the purpose of providing eye-candy (and look good on the promotional poster).
Did it diminish the over-all character of Leia as a strong woman, probably not. But Leia’s previous and later exploits don’t make the gold bikini less sexist. Add to that the fact that Leia was the Smurfette amongst the Star Warriors and there you have it … even one of the greatest stories ever told was subject to the inclusion of sexist tropes.
Loftysays
Verbose Stoic doesn’t have a problem with women characters used as sex toys, got it.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trollssays
Verbose Stoic doesn’t have a problem with women characters used as sex toys, got it.
Oink, Oink,
Verbal Stoic is a Male Chauvinist Pig, got it…..
doublereedsays
No, her examples have to do more than, for example, show that a game contains a damsel in distress. For her arguments to work, her examples have to be cases where the game uses the trope in a problematic way. And that requires context.
That’s not really the structure of her argument. She lays out the common usage of the trope, and then describes why having the trope be in common usage is problematic in of itself.
I don’t think every example of the trope being used has to be problematic. In fact, I’d say that’s rarely true. It’s more about representation.
Like Damsel in Distress isn’t inherently terrible. People get kidnapped or whatever. It’s not like bad stuff doesn’t happen to women to make them powerless in real life or something. Of course it does. But it is problematic when this is such a common way we see women in media. Individual instances of Damsel in Distress isn’t really an issue (although it might make it boring and cliche storytelling). It’s when it’s more widespread and common in media that it becomes problematic.
Anrisays
Verbose Stoic @ 100:
…So, yes, if they had made it so that out of all of the NPCs in the game THESE ones couldn’t be killed, the small percentage of players who a) got that far and b) tried to kill them would have been frustrated, for the obvious reason that the game would have, for no really good reason, made them EXCEPTIONS to how the game works. So not for the reasons that you’re obviously implying here; not because they really, really want to hurt scantily clad women, but because a game that had little to no real moral restrictions suddenly inserted it into this mission.
(emphasis added)
Should I presume “We believe brutalizing defenseless sexualized women is bad and we don’t want it in our game” is not a really good reason? At least in the minds of the developers and players alike?
And they could have easily set up a physical restriction, rather than a moral one – the strippers are simply in a place where you can’t, try as you might, get to them to hurt them. Or would that be less fun, do you think?
Or have a cutscene where they run off at the first sign of trouble. Or would players want to chase them down, do you think?
Or have the club just not be open at the moment – as many ‘worthy opponents’ with penises as you like, setting up, counting their money, whatever, just no defenseless, sexualized women. Or do you think there’d be a complaint about a strip club with no strippers?
Ah, this is a “Have you stopped beating your wife?” kind of question, isn’t it [grin]?
The point is that the game designers didn’t run out and add tons of resources just to allow players to do that. Instead, they added environment appropriate NPCs and let them be treated the same way all other NPCs can be treated. You don’t have to like that sort of game — I, personally, don’t — but you have to acknowledge that, in context, the claims of encouragement and of them deliberately creating the game to allow this are misleading, at best.
No, you could have easily said “I think brutalizing sexualized women is bad, and I think it’s repulsive when game designers set it up to happen. They shouldn’t have done that, IMHO.”
But you didn’t.
And they did deliberately create the assets within game to allow this – strip clubs don’t just accidentally appear in video games unless they are designed and put there.
Amphioxsays
For her arguments to work, her examples have to be cases where the game uses the trope in a problematic way.
No, no, and no.
Her argument is the use of the trope in games *in general* is problematic. That only requires that a significant fraction of her individual examples be problematic. It doesn’t even require, necessarily, a majority of the samples to be problematic, if the problem is sufficiently serious.
What she’s doing is typical scholarship for literary analysis. Present to topic, show a representative spread of examples, then discuss the impact of the whole. Individual examples can be, individually, both good and bad. Indeed her presentation would be weaker if she only showed the most problematic examples, and not the less problematic ones.
ck, the Irate Lumpsays
I find it interesting and frustrating that in a post about Ms. Sarkeesian’s latest video on video games, we’re still talking about her first video on video games. It does not reflect well on Ms. Sarkeesian’s critics when they cannot even be bothered to watch her latest video before criticising her for it.
johannes9126says
@ CK
If you have seen one video or tweet of her, you have seen all videos or tweets of her. She makes some good points, overexerts some other points and mixes it with quite some bullshit (and has been thoroughly criticised for the bullshit parts, even if the valid criticism is dismissed by some people here, even by PZ himself, as “Trolling”).
Rowan vet-techsays
And I’m totally sure that you can detail what exactly is bullshit and why these trips are not actually problematic and why using sex mini games to get exp is totes okay, right?
I’m just astounded and find it hilarious that you accuse *us* of being dismissive when you won’t even watch her videos and instead entirely rely on the opinions of other people.
How do you know the criticism is actually valid when you haven’t seen the actual video?
Amphioxsays
If you have seen one video or tweet of her, you have seen all videos or tweets of her.
The moment you see someone say a statement like this, you know they are not interested in a serious or honest discussion of the subject matter.
And you also know that should they say anything insightful at all about the subject, it is purely by accident.
komarovsays
If you have seen one video or tweet of her, you have seen all videos or tweets of her.
So apparently Sarkeesian has produced hours and hours of video arguing the ‘same point’* over and over again using ever more examples by way of evidence. Which would imply that these tropes really are common, even ubiquitous. Now if only you could understand why they are problematic, too, we’d be sorted.
*Her arguments are more nuanced than you give her credit for. I guess you’ll have to take my word for that if you’re unwilling to actually look at those arguments yourself.
Saadsays
johannes9126, #109
State the specific issues you have with the content of her criticism (include the video and exactly what she’s saying that’s bullshit) or fuck off.
Everyone I’ve seen so far that comes here to criticize her FF videos never explains exactly what the issues are.
Just curious … when would you consider the myriad of sexist tropes that the series has illustrated so far to be used in a problematic way?
For her purposes? When they are used in a way that objectively supports the feminist arguments and arguments of harm that she is trying to make in her videos. Which means, for example, that if an example starts as a traditional trope but that set-up is used to subvert it or to provide the basis for a subversion of it, then it doesn’t count. The Dragon Age example, to my mind, is one of those cases, as the set-up is used to subvert the traditional damsel trope when the protagonist is female, and so I think it is instead a brilliant way to do what Sarkeesian claims to want games to do.
Comfort isn’t a factor here. Sarkeesian is not merely doing an editorial about what bugs her. She is making what can definitely be considered an academic argument, and an academic argument needs objective facts and arguments. If it doesn’t have them, then it’s not a good argument, and not what she, at least, is trying to do.
On problematic instances themselves, for the damsel in distress trope:
1) The representation of women in the game is pretty much only as damsels in distress.
2) Overall, the representation of women in the genre is as damsels in distress.
3) The character is portrayed, personality-wise, as nothing more than a damsel character, with nothing beyond that.
2) is changing, at least in the genres I play (for Western RPGs, for example, the ability to play as female protagonists was long established and so works against that model). For an example of 3), think of the character in the Tomb Raider reboot who was, from what I’ve heard, nothing more than that (and, for many players, annoyingly so). The Dragon Age Origins case is not one of those. Applying that to the “brutalizing sexualized women” example of Hitman, that’s also false for that game, from what I’ve been told: those characters are a small part of the game, and you can attack various civilians, male or female, sexualized or not.
Beyond that, the only way for her to make her claim is to tie it strongly to the feminist theory she espouses, which often fails because it relies on assuming the psychology of game players which often comes across as inaccurate.
What she illustrates with this series is that one of the most modern forms of media/art in our society is just as “vulnerable” to these sexist tropes as other popular forms of media and art and that hardly anybody seems to think twice about the inclusion of these tropes in the medium.
She is explicit that she thinks these being in games is WORSE than it being in other media, and often DOES talk as if the game designers are deliberately setting it up — that’s my whole objection to the Hitman example, after all — and that either the tropes shouldn’t be there or that the game itself is problematic because of that. She does disclaim it but in at least some cases that disclaimer seems to be buried under her rhetoric.
Did it diminish the over-all character of Leia as a strong woman, probably not. But Leia’s previous and later exploits don’t make the gold bikini less sexist. Add to that the fact that Leia was the Smurfette amongst the Star Warriors and there you have it … even one of the greatest stories ever told was subject to the inclusion of sexist tropes.
I agree that the Star Wars movies should have included more female characters, although given how old it was I’m more forgiving of the originals than of the prequels, especially considering how competent and strong Leia was in them when compared to Amidala. On the gold bikini, I don’t mind things being added as fanservice, but have already commented that there’s an issue if you only add fanservice for men and not for women. At a minimum, it suggests that you don’t really have an interest in attracting the female audience. Now, there’s nothing wrong with making something and aiming it at a particular audience, be it male/female, or a particular race, or whatever, but there IS an issue with all of the works in a genre or media doing that. Unless there is something particular to that genre that means that it will likely NEVER appeal strongly to that demographic — romance novels for women and perhaps pornography for men — then you really have to wonder why you can’t appeal to that demographic, too.
That’s not really the structure of her argument. She lays out the common usage of the trope, and then describes why having the trope be in common usage is problematic in of itself.
I don’t think every example of the trope being used has to be problematic. In fact, I’d say that’s rarely true. It’s more about representation.
So, as said above, it’s about three main arguments:
1) The prevalence of the trope in gaming in general.
2) The prevalence of the trope in a game, to the extent of how women are represented.
3) Problematic uses of the trope in the game itself.
The problem is that some of her examples don’t really fit into any of the categories, or at least in a problematic way. The Dragon Age example, for example, is one where 2 and 3 clearly don’t fit. It could be an example of the overuse of the trope, but it’s hard to consider that a serious problem when the only evidence for that is that the idea is USED in the game. But I have a more detailed discussion of that on my blog and why the damsel in distress line IS used, but I’ll say that I think the fix to 1) is to include more female protagonists … which she explicitly denies. But, hey, that’s something that we can argue over, at least, but again given the context of the whole game the Dragon Age example is still a VERY odd choice, especially since, again, the subversions of that trope in the game are not at all mentioned when she explicitly sets out to talk about how to subvert the trope. At a minimum, she grabbed something she didn’t understand fully to use as an example of the problem without knowing how they tried to solve it. The Hitman example as an example of sexualized violence isn’t great as well, because that level being such a small part of the game it fails 2, it isn’t the case that it’s set-up to provide it and so it isn’t — despite her assertions — an example of 3, and for 1 it would have to be the case that it does this to try to exploit sexualized violence, but again the game actually includes strip clubs and so the sexualized violence LESS than you’d expect given its subject matter. It’s a case where adding a strip club level and making it consistent with the game and realistic seems to be what Hitman OUGHT to be doing, not as an example of them sliding something in to get “sexualized violence” benefits.
And those are the examples of the games that I know or have heard about. Again, I have to conclude that I ought not trust that her examples support her arguments the way she seems to want them to.
And since I talked about Hitman again, let’s include Anri @106,
Should I presume “We believe brutalizing defenseless sexualized women is bad and we don’t want it in our game” is not a really good reason? At least in the minds of the developers and players alike?
Do you think that being able to kill women who are strippers is worse than being able to kill women who are business persons, bank tellers, joggers, and so on? Because you can only say that they are sexualized because they’re dressed like strippers … which makes sense, since they ARE strippers in their place of work. The game lets you, from what I understand, kill defenseless women and people ALL THE TIME. Why is it worse when they happen to be strippers?
And they could have easily set up a physical restriction, rather than a moral one – the strippers are simply in a place where you can’t, try as you might, get to them to hurt them. Or would that be less fun, do you think?
Or have a cutscene where they run off at the first sign of trouble. Or would players want to chase them down, do you think?
Or have the club just not be open at the moment – as many ‘worthy opponents’ with penises as you like, setting up, counting their money, whatever, just no defenseless, sexualized women. Or do you think there’d be a complaint about a strip club with no strippers?
Most of your arguments here have been insinuations about what people playing the game would think, which as far as I can tell are completely wrong. You essentially are saying that if the game had restricted the game so that the strippers here couldn’t have been killed, gamers would have been upset because it would have meant that they couldn’t kill strippers. This is false. First, as TFoot pointed out, most gamers didn’t actually ever kill them, and the game is structured in such a way that unless you really, really, really wanted to kill strippers the ideal option in terms of gameplay efficiency and even in terms of bragging rights is to sneak past them, not attack them. Second, the open world of Hitman is what appeals to them, so ANY clearly artificial restrictions would annoy gamers. Third, any restrictions that are clearly based on the fact that one ought not MORALLY commit that action would be frustrating in a game that insists that you can determine the morality of your character and act as nice or as nasty as you want (within reasonable game parameters). Finally, gamers in the past have reacted the same way to other arbitrary restrictions. For example, I believe that it was either one of the Fallouts or one of the Elder Scrolls games where every NPC was killable … except children. Gamers complained, not because they really, really, really wanted to kill children but because they found the arbitrary moral restriction violated the terms of the game that insisted that they weren’t going to do that. Also, gamers complain bitterly about having decisions made for them in cutscenes; if they wanted to let them go, that should be their choice, not the choice of the game. Finally, gamers complain bitterly about chest high walls that limit their movement into areas that they should be able to get into in an open world. So all of your solutions would generate frustration because they’d go against the sort of game that should be — open world, open morality — NOT because seeing scantily clad women that they couldn’t kill would frustrate gamers in some way.
No, you could have easily said “I think brutalizing sexualized women is bad, and I think it’s repulsive when game designers set it up to happen. They shouldn’t have done that, IMHO.”
Which I won’t, because that’s not what’s happening in the game, as I’ve said repeatedly. The game is letting you brutalize innocent people IN GENERAL, and these happen to be people that you’d see there. Killing innocent people is not something I like, but it is popular for some people, and I’m not going to judge that, especially since with RPGs I can see how doing that might enhance a role playing experience if you’re playing someone who is evil. So, no, this is indeed a “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?” question.
doublereedsays
2) is changing, at least in the genres I play (for Western RPGs, for example, the ability to play as female protagonists was long established and so works against that model). For an example of 3), think of the character in the Tomb Raider reboot who was, from what I’ve heard, nothing more than that (and, for many players, annoyingly so). The Dragon Age Origins case is not one of those. Applying that to the “brutalizing sexualized women” example of Hitman, that’s also false for that game, from what I’ve been told: those characters are a small part of the game, and you can attack various civilians, male or female, sexualized or not.
Even if you disagree with some of the specific examples, by your first statement you imply that there is something to change. Which makes me think that you totally agree with her overall point, you just disagree with some of her examples.
I don’t understand why you don’t just say that then. Like I haven’t played Hitman, but from the gameplay, I was under the impression that the strippers are treated just like any other bystander, and aren’t actually sexualized for the player at all. It’s not like they’re putting on a show for the player (unlike some of her other examples). In fact it kind of looked like the opposite because it all happens in the backroom where they’re just milling around. If that’s the case, then yea I don’t think that’s a good example of the trope.
But she’s giving several different examples there from several different franchises. I can disagree with some of her examples as being representative while still recognizing the problematic nature of the trope and the widespread usage of the trope.
Even if you disagree with some of the specific examples, by your first statement you imply that there is something to change. Which makes me think that you totally agree with her overall point, you just disagree with some of her examples.
No, it’s more that I don’t think she gets EVERYTHING wrong, just lots of things (too many to go into detail here). My overall impression of her series so far is that the things she gets right are not novel or insightful and are things that many others inside gaming have pointed out far better than she has, and that the things she says that are novel and would be insightful are wrong. Taking this video, I agree that these sorts of rewards being so male-audience-centric is a problem. She very, very lightly touches on that. What her entire video is about, though, is about the problem of these things being used as rewards AT ALL, attached to numerous feminist talking points like entitlement … and, as you know, I am at best dubious on those points.
For those specific examples, I talk about them mostly because they strike at the quality of her effort. For Dragon Age, I consider it a problem with her research — ie it’s quite shallow — while for Hitman it’s an indication that she’s being misleading in her examples. In the latter, TFoot calls her a liar over that, which might be a bit harsh, but either she’s being dishonest or she doesn’t know what the game is like. Neither of those should be things that we just pass off in a serious work with “Well, she gets some things right”.
Athywren - Frustration Familiarity Pandasays
@Verbose Stoic
I’ve been meaning to respond to your response to me for a while, but I’ve been too busy for a proper response and I’m really tired right now, so it’ll have to wait.
I just want to add something to your “but the City Elf origin subverts the damsel in distress trope if you play a female character” argument. Shianni. No matter what you do or which gender you play as, you still have to fight through the place to save her and kill Vaughan for raping her (or take his bribe and walk away if you happen to take that particularly unsatisfying choice). So, while of course your character is able to kick butt, handily subverting the damsel in distress trope because apparently it’s more fun for the player to do the ass kicking rather than wait for rescue or something (who knew?!), there’s still some pretty clear damselling going on right there. The only real difference is that she’s your best friend, rather than the fiancée you met half an hour earlier.
I just want to add something to your “but the City Elf origin subverts the damsel in distress trope if you play a female character” argument. Shianni. No matter what you do or which gender you play as, you still have to fight through the place to save her and kill Vaughan for raping her (or take his bribe and walk away if you happen to take that particularly unsatisfying choice).
Sure. But in the video, Sarkeesian is explicit that she considers the damsel trope — or at least the problematic aspects of it — to be a woman being depowered for the story arc of the male protagonist, which isn’t the case here, and Shianni is not damseled in the game except for the part where she’s captured, because the incident starts with her hitting the nobleman with a wine bottle, and in the later mandatory Alienage scene she remains a leader of the City Elves, and in the end game she’s an important combat leader in the Alienage stage of the end battle. Add in that the game subverts it there AND in the “MC captured” scene later, and Dragon Age Origins, in context, is just a REALLY bad example to use, unless you mention the subversions as examples of it getting it right. Which she doesn’t in the video where she talks about subversions.
Overall, again, Dragon Age Origins is a better example of how to do the Damsel in Distress trope RIGHT than it is as an example of how to do it WRONG. So unless you think that using it at ALL is bad, it’s not a good example to use.
doublereedsays
But F00t doesn’t just dismiss certain examples, he says the whole thing is pointless exercise and goes on about how the whole thing is stupid to analyze. He goes much much farther than you in ridiculous and stupid ways. Why would you bring up F00t at all? It just makes you look like a dumbass.
My overall impression of her series so far is that the things she gets right are not novel or insightful and are things that many others inside gaming have pointed out far better than she has, and that the things she says that are novel and would be insightful are wrong.
So, the things that you disagree with are the precise things that are new to you? Doesn’t that give you pause? Because that sounds precisely like you’re dismissing ideas simply because they’re new or uncomfortable.
This seems like you don’t want to consider new ideas and are just in general close-minded.
What her entire video is about, though, is about the problem of these things being used as rewards AT ALL, attached to numerous feminist talking points like entitlement … and, as you know, I am at best dubious on those points.
No, you’re confusing me. Before you were saying the male entitlement point is fine, it’s just the reduction of women to objects which you didn’t agree with. The video is not about objectification per se. It’s about women as rewards. Relating that to trophyism and male entitlement is a straight line, and doesn’t require women to be reduced to mere objects.
Making sex and women’s bodies as rewards is playing directly into the idea that women are vessels of sexuality for men to consume, so I don’t understand how any of this is dubious.
She makes specific references to male entitlement in our culture. Are you saying catcalling and men’s demands for women’s affections like that doesn’t exist? Because once again, saying male entitlement is a “feminist talking point” makes you look like a dumbass much like F00t.
This does not sound like a coherent position at all. Please explain what your position actually is, because I am sick of guessing. And for the love of God, be more concise. You’re saying incredibly little with those giant walls of text.
Alex the Pretty Goodsays
You know, the more I read those anti-Sarkeesian arguments, the more I notice that it looks like they are all relying on one or two cases that maybe are honest mistakes* and hammer on them as if these are the whole of the series is based on those examples … and in the meantime ignore the many (often dozens) of other examples of the same trope shown in each video.
And I couldn’t shake the feeling there’s something very familiar about that behaviour … and then it struck me why the anti-Sarkeesian brigade keeps hammering on one sample from an earlier video. The “Hitman” scene is to the RMAs as Nebraska Man is to the creationists.
Food for thought …
* “Mistakes” in a sense of “to the uninitiated watcher, they might be understood as scenes being representative of the wole game” not in the sense of “they aren’t an example of the trope.”
FWIW, I’m no gamer so most of the titles presented are unknown to me, but I (and yes, I realise that personal anecdata is only a sample-size of one) never got the impression that ms. Sarkeesian presented those scenes as “This is the only thing you do in those games: comit violence towards women in particular”
But F00t doesn’t just dismiss certain examples, he says the whole thing is pointless exercise and goes on about how the whole thing is stupid to analyze. He goes much much farther than you in ridiculous and stupid ways. Why would you bring up F00t at all? It just makes you look like a dumbass.
_I_ didn’t bring him up. That was the OTHER person who started it, and you’ll note that Athywren replied to that by replying to the summary of the video, and it was THAT reply that I started from. I don’t agree with everything he says either — as I proved by saying that I think his comment on her being a liar was entirely reasonable. But, then again, that DOESN’T mean that everything he says is wrong either.
As another example, he goes on a rant talking about how the game DOES penalize you for killing civilians, with the loss of points, ignoring that Sarkeesian actually DID see that, and instead argued that it wasn’t much of a penalty and was one that you could avoid by hiding the body. But that he’s wrong there in no way changes that she does badly misrepresent the game there in what she explicitly says about it.
So, the things that you disagree with are the precise things that are new to you? Doesn’t that give you pause? Because that sounds precisely like you’re dismissing ideas simply because they’re new or uncomfortable.
This seems like you don’t want to consider new ideas and are just in general close-minded.
Of course, that must be it! It couldn’t be that they’re just wrong, right? Please.
No, you’re confusing me. Before you were saying the male entitlement point is fine, it’s just the reduction of women to objects which you didn’t agree with.
Unless you consider the male entitlement point to be nothing more than “These sorts of rewards would only appeal to men and not women”, I explicitly argued against that point, which is why you insisted that I believed IN male entitlement until I said that I think these things should be there for women to, and having no equivalent rewards for women was a problem. And on the deeper point:
It’s about women as rewards. Relating that to trophyism and male entitlement is a straight line, and doesn’t require women to be reduced to mere objects.
I disagree that it’s a straight line. I interpreted her point more that women in sexual situations as a reward linked to trophyism and male entitlement ITSELF in a straight line, and I think that’s dubious at best. That you gain a trophy for it is NOT the same sort of trophy as a trophy wife, and that it’s a reward does not in any way imply that anyone thinks — consciously or unconsciously — that they’re entitled to seeing women that way.
Making sex and women’s bodies as rewards is playing directly into the idea that women are vessels of sexuality for men to consume, so I don’t understand how any of this is dubious.
Um, you realize that this IS the objectification point? If she’s a character that’s dressed sexily or that you can have sex with, even as a reward, that doesn’t mean that that’s all she is, and that’s what you need to argue that she’s a vessel of sexuality for men to consume. That’s what I find dubious there; it depends greatly on the presentation in-game, and the RE examples are, in fact, not that sort of presentation OBVIOUSLY.
She makes specific references to male entitlement in our culture. Are you saying catcalling and men’s demands for women’s affections like that doesn’t exist?
No, I’m saying that the link between the reward examples she cites and those behaviours are dubious at best and that she has in no way demonstrated that there is one, for the reasons I cited. Again, to make that move she needs the objectification point to stand up … you know, that point that you’re trying to ignore?
Again, the one valid claim, to my mind, that she has is that the rewards in the game are too targeted to what a male audience wants to see. Anything beyond that I don’t agree with.
You know, the more I read those anti-Sarkeesian arguments, the more I notice that it looks like they are all relying on one or two cases that maybe are honest mistakes* and hammer on them as if these are the whole of the series is based on those examples … and in the meantime ignore the many (often dozens) of other examples of the same trope shown in each video.
I have and have commented on other problems than that, and said why I find those examples to be an indicative problem. To summarize: I can’t trust ANY of her examples unless I know it myself because of how she misrepresents these. I could go into more detail on the other issues, but that’s probably best saved for my own blog.
Athywren - Frustration Familiarity Pandasays
As another example, he goes on a rant talking about how the game DOES penalize you for killing civilians, with the loss of points, ignoring that Sarkeesian actually DID see that, and instead argued that it wasn’t much of a penalty and was one that you could avoid by hiding the body. But that he’s wrong there in no way changes that she does badly misrepresent the game there in what she explicitly says about it.
I have a game called Worms Crazy Golf. It’s crazy golf… with Worms characters. There are coins you can pick up, and a crate in every level. They give you access to unlocks. There’s also a score to aim for that gives you a little bonus. In order to unlock the next hole, you have to complete the hole you’re playing at or under par. You cannot collect all the coins or the crate and reach the hole at or under par in the vast majority of cases. That means that, in most cases, collecting all the coins or picking up the crate means that you can’t unlock the next level on that attempt – essentially, you are penalised for pursuing those goals. Does that mean that they are not goals?
(Don’t get me wrong, there’s a clear difference here as those are explicit goals, while there is no “kill the strippers” achievement or side mission as far as I can remember, but the point doesn’t really require it to be spelled out. The point is that points only count if you’re counting points, and you’re not always counting points, and so penalties only count when you’re counting points.)
You’re right, though, that his being wrong about that wouldn’t change the fact that she badly misrepresented the game if she did. Speaking as someone who played (and enjoyed, actually) that, and all previous Hitman games, I strongly disagree that she misrepresented it, any more than I would be misrepresenting Worms Crazy Golf if I told you that you can collect coins in it in a video about the weird tendency of games to have coins or coin substitutes dotted all over the place for no apparent reason.
antepreprosays
On Sarkeesian:
I have and have commented on other problems than that, and said why I find those examples to be an indicative problem. To summarize: I can’t trust ANY of her examples unless I know it myself because of how she misrepresents these.
On Thunderfool:
I don’t agree with everything he says either — as I proved by saying that I think his comment on her being a liar was entirely reasonable. But, then again, that DOESN’T mean that everything he says is wrong either.
One or two cases of overstatement by Sarkeesian: CANNOT BE TRUSTED.
Constant hyperbole and an admitted error from Tfoot: Meh, well, he isn’t wrong about everything!
Endlessly. Fascinating.
Anrisays
Verbose Stoic @ 115:
Most of your arguments here have been insinuations about what people playing the game would think, which as far as I can tell are completely wrong.
Not quite right, some of my arguments have been assumptions (oh, no, wait, let’s use ‘insinuations’, ’cause it sounds way worse) *ahem* insinuations about what content the developers wanted the players to experience, based on the content they put into the game. I’m insinuating that without having put a strip club with strippers into the game, that the players would not have been able to brutalize strippers. I’m insinuating that since the devs did, the players can. I’m insinuating that if the devs thought a game in which you can brutalize strippers was bad, they wouldn’t have gone out and made one.
So, yes, I’m insinuating intent on the part of the devs – the intent to include the content they actually included.
I’m then further insinuating that the devs are attempting to include content the players would want to play. I’m insinuating that if the devs thought your average player would be repulsed by given content, they would not have spent time and effort including it in the game.
Apparently, neither the devs, the average player, nor you think this content is objectionable enough to merit not having time and effort spent on it. That’s my insinuation.
Do you think that being able to kill women who are strippers is worse than being able to kill women who are business persons, bank tellers, joggers, and so on? Because you can only say that they are sexualized because they’re dressed like strippers … which makes sense, since they ARE strippers in their place of work. The game lets you, from what I understand, kill defenseless women and people ALL THE TIME. Why is it worse when they happen to be strippers?
Many women find the link between being sexualized and being the target of violence disturbing. Many women find that the common trope of women’s sexuality being linked to violence – especially towards the women in question – to be disturbing. Many women find the concept of women as objects for the target of violence or sexual aggression to be disturbing – moreso when combined. Some of them have even made videos about occurrences of these things in popular culture.
But hell, I dunno, maybe they don’t know what they’re talking about. They’re just women, after all.
Which I won’t, because that’s not what’s happening in the game, as I’ve said repeatedly. The game is letting you brutalize innocent people IN GENERAL, and these happen to be people that you’d see there. Killing innocent people is not something I like, but it is popular for some people, and I’m not going to judge that, especially since with RPGs I can see how doing that might enhance a role playing experience if you’re playing someone who is evil. So, no, this is indeed a “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?” question.
I asked the question because one of your objections to the characterization of the game was that brutalizing strippers wasn’t a major part of the game. So, I took that to mean that if it had been, that might have been bad. So, I was just asking you, based on what you said, how much of the game would have to be about doing that to be bad?
As you don’t think it’s bad in this case, it’s clearly a non-zero answer, but since you seem to think it would be bad in some amount, I was just asking you to take a stab at what your comfort level would be.
In other words, you’ve said you’re ok with this being in the game, ’cause it’s just a little bit. I’m asking “how much is a little bit?”
If you don’t have an answer to that, that’s fine, just say that and I’ll drop it. But quit saying it’s an unanswerable question. if the answer happens to make you look bad, well, that might not be a function of the question, but of the answer.
doublereedsays
Really? The one thing you didn’t address in my comment was where I asked you to concisely state your position.
No, I’m saying that the link between the reward examples she cites and those behaviours are dubious at best and that she has in no way demonstrated that there is one, for the reasons I cited. Again, to make that move she needs the objectification point to stand up … you know, that point that you’re trying to ignore?
Okay, but do you agree that male entitlement is a real thing and not a “feminist talking point”? Like do you agree that there are a lot of men in society that act as if men are entitled to women’s bodies? This is the part that you’re confusing me on, and this is why I want to state your position.
Because she’s relating these generalized tropes in media to real life problems for women. That’s the “so what” of her videos.
doublereedsays
@126 Anri
How much violence against women do you want in your games? Because practically every fighting game or beat em up or violent game in general has female characters. So I guess that’s a nonzero amount. How about violence in general? Do you just hate all media with violence in it?
How much rape do you want in your media? Or is that a ridiculous question because it obviously depends on the context and treatment that is depicted?
Yes, that’s an unanswerable question. Obviously.
Anrisays
doublereed @ 128:
How much violence against women do you want in your games?
Against sexualized, helpless women, especially for no discernible purpose? Very, very little, verging on none. I don’t like performing it, and I don’t like games that attempt to manipulate me by showing others doing it.
Because practically every fighting game or beat em up or violent game in general has female characters.
Yes, and I dislike the ones with sexualized, helpless female characters. Which, of course, typically (but not always) doesn’t include fighters.
So I guess that’s a nonzero amount. How about violence in general? Do you just hate all media with violence in it?
Yes, it is, and no, I don’t.
I dislike gratuitous violence against women, especially helpless ones, especially in a sexual context. I tend to avoid stuff like that – and (more to the point) recognize it for what it is when it’s there, and don’t pretend it’s inevitable or accidental, or that there wasn’t a choice by a creator to put it there.
I sure as hell don’t go around arguing it doesn’t exist, or that something that is a glaring example of it really isn’t because reasons.
How much rape do you want in your media? Or is that a ridiculous question because it obviously depends on the context and treatment that is depicted?
Very little.
Yes, it’s context-dependent.
If only we had been discussing a specific context, such as, oh I dunno, a video made about, let’s say, a particular scene in, just hypothetically, a specific game. Then we’d have something to go on, contextually, wouldn’t we?
Yes, that’s an unanswerable question. Obviously.
You got me, I cannot even write a reply to your post at all.
I’m not asking for games to be free of violence, even sexualized violence.
I’m just asking that it be recognized for what it is when it turns up, and not explained away as nothing in particular again and again and again and again…
Okay, but do you agree that male entitlement is a real thing and not a “feminist talking point”? Like do you agree that there are a lot of men in society that act as if men are entitled to women’s bodies? This is the part that you’re confusing me on, and this is why I want to state your position.
I don’t have a lot of time to reply at the moment, but let me try to clarify this: I think that she is evaluating this with certain points in mind, and interprets games in light of that, and the link from games to those specific feminist points is often dubious and forced. So I think that she interprets games and the intent of gamers and designers in light of this and gets it wrong — because they don’t think the way she implies they do — and that because of those issues she often misunderstands the current state of games. I’d care about this less if she wasn’t being seen as such a strong force in games, because to me those misunderstandings lead her to suggest things that are really, really bad for gaming.
I’m not going to comment at all on the specific feminist points; whether they are valid or not, the link to games and the filter they apply to games is what I’m arguing about.
johannes9126says
You guys still act as if a videogame had influence on real world behaviour. This has never been proven for violence or sexualized offenses. Gamers are not audience, they are players. Players that can make choices in their games.
If these choices offend you, don’t play these games. I like playing violent games like Skyrim, where you can chop off heads of male and female opponents all the time (indeed the Elder scrolls universe is mostly egalitarian regarding sexes). Do you see me running around with a battleaxe in real life? Won’t happen.
So it boils all down to that Anita is making videos about things that offend her. But guess what? In our free society you don’t have the right not to be offended. Don’t judge people who like to play games where Kratos or Gerald are sexualized to pleasure countless naked women.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trollssays
But guess what? In our free society you don’t have the right not to be offended. Don’t judge people who like to play games where Kratos or Gerald are sexualized to pleasure countless naked women.
And you can and will be criticized for your violent misogynic tastes, and if you don’t like the criticism, shut the fuck up about your freedom (which implies no criticism) as people can also have and express their educated opinions. I find your opinions emotional and uneducated.
Since Ms. Sarkeesian is so wrong about the strippers in every major shooter, please point me to the top shelf title that has male strippers in it.
Go ahead, I’ll wait.
I say this as a regular player of GTA V/Online, with a woman avatar. There are no male sex workers, and no male strippers. In GTA IV, an add-on was about a gay entrepreneur who ran two nightclubs in liberty City, one gay and one hetero. Despite the name of the add-on, “The Ballad of Big Gay Tony” featured only one nightclub which could be entered. No xp for guessing which one.
Anyway. I was waiting for that example of the male strippers.
*crickets*
johannes9126says
@ Nerd
Of course anybody can criticise me for playing bullshit, or having some violent tastes, I never said otherwise. But don’t claim that I am uneducated, or claim that I am a bad, violent or misogynistic person. Actually I am a feminist. There is a line between having opinions/being emotional and sticking to the facts. This line is constantly blurred here.
You can have your own opinions, but you can’t have your own facts.
Anrisays
johannes9126 @ 131:
You guys still act as if a videogame had influence on real world behaviour.
Actually, I’m acting as if video games reflect current societal attitudes, that they are the derivative party, not the other way around.
Using video games (and other popular culture examples) helps point out tropes and ways of thinking.
My point is not that these video games make people want to go out and objectify women. My point is that they would not be popular if the objectification of women didn’t already exist. Pointing it out in one place highlights its existence elsewhere.
johannes9126says
@ CaitieCat
Can’t depict male strippers in videogames. Since they earn much less than their female counterparts, that would be exploitation…
No seriously, good point you are making. But since these games are designed mostly for male audience anyway, there are basically no male strippers. In real life there are less mals strippers, too.
johannes9126says
@ Anri
So basically you say that the games where magic, aliens or zombies are encountered are so popular because these things really exist?
And what is bad again about depicting real world attitude in video games? Besides, most of the examples Anita picks in her videos and tweets are actually behaviour and actions of the bad guys.
johannes9126says
@ Saad #113
Liana Kerzner on Metaleater wrote a 5-part series about the Feminist Frequency videos, and she has more insight than me regarding games and the gaming industry.
Anrisays
johannes9126 @ 137:
So basically you say that the games where magic, aliens or zombies are encountered are so popular because these things really exist?
By god, yes! Yes, I must be!
Because magic, aliens, and zombies are totes equal to violence against women!
I mean, you’d have to be a total fucking moron not to see the perfect equivalence there!
Thank you, thank you for that stunning insight – I bow before your clearly superior intellect and trust your posts will go from strength to strength!
And what is bad again about depicting real world attitude in video games? Besides, most of the examples Anita picks in her videos and tweets are actually behaviour and actions of the bad guys.
A very good point. For example, the “Women as Reward” video, where the bad guys are rewarded with… ok, try again.
Or the example I’ve been arguing in this very thread, Hitman, where the titular character, who is totally not the PC…
*ahem*
Anyway, your point is well-taken. After all, when they’re writing the villain in a video game, they get an actual villain to do it. If they include, let’s say, Lex Luthor as a bad guy, they always get Lex himself to do the work, It’s completely not anything coming out of the writer’s own heads, nosireebob.
johannes9126says
@ Anri
Oh, yes, the Hitman thing. Where you actually are not supposed to kill strippers, but due to the interactive game world you actually can.
And yes, violence against women and magic – as long as they are happening in video games- are totally the same. They are both pixels and code. You know, just like nobody really dies in World of Warcraft.
Anrisays
johannes9126 @ 140:
Oh, yes, the Hitman thing. Where you actually are not supposed to kill strippers, but due to the interactive game world you actually can.
Gotcha, it just happened that way. If the devs had actually been somehow in control of the gameworld, they would never have permitted that kind of repulsive behavior, but whattya gonna do?
I mean, whores will be whores, amirite? They get in the damn way.
And yes, violence against women and magic – as long as they are happening in video games- are totally the same. They are both pixels and code. You know, just like nobody really dies in World of Warcraft.
Hey, you’re right.
In exactly the same way that all of art and literature is just squiggles and bits of color. It just sorta happens on its own, it’s never actually created by anyone, and never has anything to say about the creator or the world they live in, physically or mentally.
johannes9126says
@ Anri
“They get in the damn way.”
No they don’t. And if Anita had acutally played that game herself instead of “relying” on other persons playthroughs you and her might even have noticed this.
Athywren - Frustration Familiarity Pandasays
@johannes9126
But don’t claim that I am uneducated
But…
@ Anri (“Actually, I’m acting as if video games reflect current societal attitudes, that they are the derivative party, not the other way around.”)
So basically you say that the games where magic, aliens or zombies are encountered are so popular because these things really exist?
… you quite clearly are uneducated, at least as far as logic or skepticism go.
Magic, aliens, and zombies are not what you could call attitudes. There is nothing philosophical about them. There is no particular ethical implication to the existence of these things in games. They cannot, simply by existing in a game, make you think something specific. It does not, as you would know if you had even the most basic understanding of logic, follow from the fact that the ideas presented in games reflect societal attitudes that aliens are real.
You guys still act as if a videogame had influence on real world behaviour. This has never been proven for violence or sexualized offenses.
…
I like playing violent games like Skyrim, where you can chop off heads of male and female opponents all the time (indeed the Elder scrolls universe is mostly egalitarian regarding sexes). Do you see me running around with a battleaxe in real life? Won’t happen.
And you apparently don’t understand that there’s a difference between direct 1:1 causation and subtle influence. No, playing GTA will not suddenly make Jimmy McGamerson pick up a gun and murder his class at school. However, ideas can be expressed in games – and in any media – and ideas (I desperately hope you can understand this concept?) can influence people. If I spent an hour reading a book about pirates, it would be absurd to assume that I would run off and join the first band of pirates I met, however, if I read Atlas Shrugged, while being under the influence of youthful ignorance and arrogance, I might end up as a libertarian. Of course, that’s a pretty overt example, but it’s still clear that media (and games are a form of media) can influence people by introducing them to ideas, or reinforcing ones that they already hold for whatever reason.
Tethyssays
Oh good grief, it’s yet another logic impaired gamer boy trying to claim that the sexism in games really isn’t sexism.
johannes ~ So it boils all down to that Anita is making videos about things that offend her.
Actually I am a feminist. There is a line between having opinions/being emotional and sticking to the facts.
You are a very poor feminist. Sexism is offensive. You claiming that Anita is being emotional is sexism. I find her to be very monotone and stoic as she gives example after example of the sexist tropes, complete with actual, real game playthroughs. The fact that you want to whinge on about your stupid games shows that perhaps it is you who can’t see clearly because you are too emotionally attached to your games, at the expense of actual real live people who make up 51% of the population. (ie women, for the hard of thinking)
Anrisays
johannes9126 @ 142:
No they don’t. And if Anita had acutally played that game herself instead of “relying” on other persons playthroughs you and her might even have noticed this.
Ah, sorry.
I was under the impression that they could break your stealth by noticing you, and therefore cause you a problem. You know, get in the way.
Since (according to you) they don’t, there’s no reason to be able to do violence to them at all, I suppose. No point for them being in the game, in fact.
Wouldn’t you agree?
johannes9126says
@ Athywren
Bullshit. Depiction of violence in media or news-reports mainly centering on violence make people more afraid of violence in the long run, not more violent.
Apart from that do video games create an interactive environment where the players have to develop their own meaning, their own ideas. They have the choice to be misogynists or mass murderers – or to be not, mostly considering their own morality and the circumstances of the game.
johannes9126says
@ Anri
“Wouldn’t you agree?”
A stripclub without strippers? Kinda strange ideas you have there.
lasiussays
@ 131 CaitieCat
Just playing devil’s advocate, but Fallout New Vegas had male strippers in it (that you also could kill if you had the fancy).
Anrisays
johannes9126 @ 147:
A stripclub without strippers? Kinda strange ideas you have there.
Oh, I thought you said they don’t get in the way. Sorry that I misunderstood your assertion that they don’t get in the way to mean that they don’t get in the way.
…okay, I’m confused, since you didn’t mean what you actually said, what did you actually mean?
In any case, like I said, there was just no way they couldn’t have a strip club. The creators had no creative control, the strip club just kinda… happened. No-one’s decision. Really.
Amphioxsays
A stripclub without strippers? Kinda strange ideas you have there.
Who chose to put a strip club in the game at all?
Who chose to put a playable level in the strip club?
johannes9126says
Wait, wait, wait. You guys want to censor game-developers from depicting real-world situations? Realistic conversations between strippers? The fact that strip-clubs are often run by the more shady side of society? If you are so easily offended, maybe you should play PacMan. But don’t play Mrs. PacMan, since that game is sexualized and objectifying, too. At least according to FeministFrequency.
Anrisays
johannes9126 @ 151:
Wait, wait, wait. You guys want to censor game-developers from depicting real-world situations? Realistic conversations between strippers?
Let’s see if johannes9126 has basic reading comprehension, shall we?
Me at #129:
I’m not asking for games to be free of violence, even sexualized violence.
I’m just asking that it be recognized for what it is when it turns up, and not explained away as nothing in particular again and again and again and again…
For the hard of reading such as johannes9126, I don’t want to censor games. I’m hoping that societal attitudes will change to the point that sexualized violence against women would be as marginal and widely reviled someday as a game in which the player assists in a racially motivated lynching would be today.
Athywren - Frustration Familiarity Pandasays
@johannes9126, 146
Bullshit. Depiction of violence in media or news-reports mainly centering on violence make people more afraid of violence in the long run, not more violent.
Ok, I’m a little confused here. Are you saying that it’s bullshit that playing GTA won’t make someone murder people because violence in media or the news makes people afraid of violence, or that it’s bullshit that ideas can be expressed because violence in media or the news makes people afraid of violence?
Normally I’d be able to work this out, but neither of those options makes the slightest bit of sense on any level. I’d suspect it was the one about GTA not making people commit murder, but the only way that could be the case is if you’re only skimming through comments, looking for key words to disagree with rather than doing that thing where you actually read and then think about what you’ve read before deciding if a response is necessary, and what kind. I don’t know, is that “reading and thinking” thing just too emotional for a true skeptic?
komarovsays
But since these games are designed mostly for male audience anyway, there are basically no male strippers. In real life there are less mals strippers, too. [Emphasis added]
Well, this one is actually on the inofficial list of problems the gaming industry has, or at least on the list of inexplicable and silly things, so you might have skipped over that argument. On top of that games are not exactly overburdened with realism – that’s part of the appeal – so again, you might have skipped it.
Apart from that do video games create an interactive environment where the players have to develop their own meaning, their own ideas. They have the choice to be misogynists or mass murderers – or to be not, mostly considering their own morality and the circumstances of the game. [Emphasis added]
Except for what appears to be a majority of cases where the players actually don’t have that choice, where no real alternatives exist. For all the interactivity, most games still roll along a fixed track where certain things just happen. The most obvious example is the generic Damsel in distress, where it is inevitable that the woman needs to be rescued. Or whenever female NPCs are slaughtered, kidnapped, abused, etc., which tends include some added degree of sexualisation and / or helplessness not applied to their male counterparts. PC characters may just automatically play along with this. Where actual ‘choices’ are presented they don’t necessarily include what might be regarded as a moral option. These things just happen so the game can move along.
But don’t play Mrs. PacMan, since that game is sexualized and objectifying, too. At least according to FeministFrequency.
Guess you didn’t watch the Mrs Character video either. Mrs Character is to diversity what a postit note labelled “Chocolate” is to candy: The underlying idea may be good but the execution is so bad it only made things worse.
doublereedsays
@Anri
Very little.
Yes, it’s context-dependent.
If only we had been discussing a specific context, such as, oh I dunno, a video made about, let’s say, a particular scene in, just hypothetically, a specific game. Then we’d have something to go on, contextually, wouldn’t we?
You got me, I cannot even write a reply to your post at all.
I’m not asking for games to be free of violence, even sexualized violence.
I’m just asking that it be recognized for what it is when it turns up, and not explained away as nothing in particular again and again and again and again…
This is literally a contradiction in terms. You can’t say it’s context dependent, and then dismiss the context as “explaining away.” You’re dismissing the context he’s giving, but saying that context matters.
I mean, he’s literally giving you the context, and you responded with “well how much of the game needs to be brutalizing strippers to be bad.” That’s why the question is stupid. You deleted the context, making it an unanswerable question.
Then when I phrase similar questions at you, suddenly you’re talking about context here and context there. All you did was avoid the question just like he did.
doublereedsays
@Anri
To throw your own words back at you:
Very little.
Yes, it’s context-dependent.
If only we had been discussing a specific context, such as, oh I dunno, a video made about, let’s say, a particular scene in, just hypothetically, a specific game. Then we’d have something to go on, contextually, wouldn’t we?
As you don’t think it’s bad in some case, it’s clearly a non-zero answer, but since you seem to think it would be bad in some amount, I was just asking you to take a stab at what your comfort level would be.
In other words, you’ve said you’re ok with it being in some game, ’cause it’s just very little. I’m asking “how much is very little?”
doublereedsays
Frankly, the reason I’d give the Hitman example a pass is because I don’t think the strippers were actually sexualized (from what I saw from Anita’s video). They’re just treated as bystanders and obstacles you have to avoid. They aren’t background decoration by any means, so it doesn’t properly fit the trope. They’re treated like people, which, you know, strippers actually are.
If the game forced to watch the strippers do a dance or something like that, then yea wtf. But from what I saw they seemed to be treated like human beings and not an object to be gawked at.
Anrisays
doublereed @ 155:
This is literally a contradiction in terms. You can’t say it’s context dependent, and then dismiss the context as “explaining away.” You’re dismissing the context he’s giving, but saying that context matters.
I’m not saying no context matters, I’m saying I disagree with this specific instance of context as explaining away this particular instance of brutalizing women. That’s why context matters, to determine just what the hell’s going on in a particular game. A large-breasted woman in a tight-fitting outfit (for example, Chun-Li from the Street Fighter series) is arguably sexualized. Beating her as an active participant in a fighting game would be different context than beating her while she is unable to fight back at all. Y’know, like in the game which was the specific context we were discussing.
Having a different tolerance for violence against the character because of the context is both understandable and reasonable. On my part, and on the part of Verbose Stoic.
I mean, he’s literally giving you the context, and you responded with “well how much of the game needs to be brutalizing strippers to be bad.” That’s why the question is stupid. You deleted the context, making it an unanswerable question.
Um, no, I left it open as to context. An answer just like the one I gave above, talking about similar situations (the same character, in fact), in two different contexts would be an answer to my question. Verbose Stoic specifically said that they were ok with this content, in this context, because it was just a little bit of the game. I was checking to see what they actually meant by just a bit. When the question was turned around on me, I gave an answer that was both general (could be applied to many situations) and also addressed the specific context (the helpless strippers in Hitman).
Then when I phrase similar questions at you, suddenly you’re talking about context here and context there. All you did was avoid the question just like he did.
Well, and from my answer – which was that I don’t think beating up helpless sexualized women is a good thing – can you determine what my reaction to the specific context being discussed is?
If so, I’ve answered the question, haven’t i?
I even game some examples of answers that would have made me perfectly happy, including “That’s not something I’ve got a hard idea of.” How in the hell can I give example answers to an unanswerable question?
If Verbose Stoic didn’t want to use any of the possible answers, either the ones that I gave or one that they came up with, that’s not really my problem. I get that saying “Well, I guess I don’t mind it if a few helpless women are brutalized in the name of good gameplay” sounds shitty, but if it’s an honest answer, own it.
It’s an answer.
To the question.
If someone finds themselves not liking their own answers to difficult questions, well, folks, welcome to the real, complex, adult world.
Tethyssays
doublereed
Frankly, the reason I’d give the Hitman example a pass is because I don’t think the strippers were actually sexualized (from what I saw from Anita’s video). They’re just treated as bystanders and obstacles you have to avoid. They aren’t background decoration by any means, so it doesn’t properly fit the trope.
Oy, do you even hear the words coming out of your keyboard? Is the stripper a playable character? Is she naked? Claiming a stripper isn’t sexualized might be the most stupid comment so far on this thread of derp.
Amphioxsays
“stripper” isn’t the category of people that is or is not being sexual used. WOMEN are being specialized, and the means of that sexualization is being portrayed are strippers.
johannes9126says
@ Tethys
It is of no importance if the strippers are playable, or naked, or clad in bikinis. The tightasses here would still claim that a playable stripper is sexualization.
They however failed to demonstrate how sexusalization in games is a bad thing or has some negative impact on the real world, since it is a victimless crime and just a fantasy.
ck, the Irate Lumpsays
I think another point that is often being intentionally missed is that most of these tropes aren’t always harmful all by themselves. The problem is that they’re so overused, and have become the few ways players actually interact with in-game women, that this limitation in interaction is what causes some of the biggest problems. “Women as background decoration” isn’t a problem in itself since most NPCs are mere background decoration, but when that becomes one of the very few interactions any women characters have with the game and the player character, there is a rather significant problem.
I have not played Hitman, but I would imagine that if there had been significant interaction with NPC women outside of things like the encounter in the video, Sarkeesian’s critics would’ve brought it up. Pointing out that it is a very small portion of the game doesn’t actually take away from her original point, unless you can also point to some other part of the game where women are not just mere props.
Tethyssays
Johannes
It is of no importance if the strippers are playable, or naked, or clad in bikinis. The tightasses here would still claim that a playable stripper is sexualization.
Foolish boy, it makes all the difference in the world. Contrary to your belief that we are tightasses, you are actually speaking with a group of pretty open, sex positive people. We would be fine with sexual content, as long as it is equal opportunity. I think the game might be far more interesting if the stripper could also be an assassin who morphs into a dragon and flames dudes who disrespect her. Problem solved! You get to see nekkid women, and they won’t just be decorative.
Amphioxsays
The tightasses here would still claim that a playable stripper is sexualization.
You miss the point, as usual.
What is bad about sexualization is when it is combined with passivity and loss of agency.
A playable stripper, if implemented right, would avoid the passivity and loss of agency, and sexualization would no longer be a problem.
They however failed to demonstrate how sexusalization in games is a bad thing or has some negative impact on the real world, since it is a victimless crime and just a fantasy.
If nothing else, there seems to be a correlation between playing such game scenarios and harassing women like Sarkeesian (real victims) on the internet.
doublereedsays
The game doesn’t treat strippers in any meaningful way from what I saw. That’s just the occupation and outfit. They’re just treated as a bystander. And she’s not decoration, but an obstacle because all bystanders are obstacles. I just don’t see why that necessarily sexualized.
I fail to see how being playable matters in any way.
doublereedsays
Like the game isn’t like “ooo la la look at these strippers” it’s like “okay you have to get around these strippers undetected somehow.”
Where’s the sexualization exactly?
Amphioxsays
Like the game isn’t like “ooo la la look at these strippers” it’s like “okay you have to get around these strippers undetected somehow.”
Where’s the sexualization exactly?
Are you blind?
doublereedsays
Whatever. The game treats strippers as human beings and bystanders. It doesn’t treat them as eye candy but as obstacles.
Saying “are you blind” or “it’s obvious” frankly gives me a very sex negative vibe that I’m not at all comfortable with.
johannes9126says
@ Tethys
For some people here or in the mid of Anita playing as a stripper or a female character dressed like a stripper, powerful as it may be, is still oppression.
So, on your Worms point, keeping in mind that you know the game much better than I do, here’s a description of how the game works from the wiki:
Players can perform precise assassinations or slaughter indiscriminately in order to achieve the mission goals; however, the games reward a subtle approach by awarding special weapons or cash bonuses if players earn a favourable rank (usually achievable by eliminating only the assigned target, and without raising the alarm doing so).
Essentially, the game rewards you for not killing bystanders. If depriving some of a reward isn’t considered enough to impact the behaviour of the players, then the video linked here doesn’t have a link between getting trophies for, say, having sex with prostitutes and the player choosing to do that. So, if that’s an accurate description of how the game works in that scene, and if it is argued that setting up the reward structure isn’t enough to discourage people from killing the strippers, then it doesn’t seem like Sarkeesian has a point in THIS video. She can’t really maintain both points.
Also, that would be more than enough to disprove what I was actually complaining about, which is Sarkeesian’s explicitly saying that the game is set up to provide that experience. It clearly isn’t. Here’s exactly what she says while showing that clip of Hitman (note that in the transcript it doesn’t, in fact, say that this is the clip she’s showing here, but that’s likely because it only captures the spoken word elements):
So in many of the titles we’ve been discussing, the game makers have set up a series of possible scenarios involving vulnerable, eroticized female characters. Players are then invited to explore and exploit those situations during their play-through.
The player cannot help but treat these female bodies as things to be acted upon,because they were designed, constructed and placed in the environment for that singular purpose. Players are meant to derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual female characters.
It’s a rush streaming from a carefully concocted mix of sexual arousal connected to the act of controlling and punishing representations of female sexuality.
In-game consequences for these violations are trivial at best and rarely lead to any sort of “fail state” or “game over”. Sometimes areas may go on high-alert for a few minutes during which players have to lay low or hide before the game and its characters “forget” that you just murdered a sexualized woman in cold blood.
So, from the representation of the game as I understand it, none of this is true. Two missions, at most, is not a series. The game is actually set up for you to AVOID these situations (the easier path avoids this area entirely), so it’s not inviting to explore or exploit them. The player can indeed resist treating them that way, because the game discourages treating them that way (even the conversation between them discourages you from killing them indiscriminately, as it is designed to at least try to evoke sympathy and empathy). As I’ve said repeatedly, they weren’t placed there for that purpose; they’re there because it’s actually appropriate for them TO be there. Since you aren’t encouraged to kill them and in fact are discouraged FROM doing that, you’re clearly not meant to derive a perverse pleasure from doing something the game actually goes to lengths to have players avoid doing. Since the characters are dressed in environment appropriate attire and are treated like any other, the link — at least in the designers’ minds — from the sexualization to the violence doesn’t exist; from the game’s perspective, you’re not supposed to think of them in any more sexual a way than you would any other civilian in the game (which doesn’t mean that their outfits won’t evoke that, of course). In this game, the in-game consequences — if I’m interpreting the wiki right — are precisely as strong as the in-game consequences for not using women as rewards in the games she cites, which means that they’d have the same impact on behaviour, as I said above.
Now, maybe she didn’t really think that this game was a really good example of that … but it’s safe to say that if she used it as the example, she must either have thought it would or else couldn’t actually find anything that looked like treateing women as objects for sexualized violence better than this did. Either doesn’t really help her case.
But as I don’t play these sorts of games, maybe I’m missing something. Since you do, I’d appreciate you telling me what I’m missing.
I strongly disagree that she misrepresented it, any more than I would be misrepresenting Worms Crazy Golf if I told you that you can collect coins in it in a video about the weird tendency of games to have coins or coin substitutes dotted all over the place for no apparent reason.
From my perspective, it would be more like making a video that talks about how ridiculous some of the rewards for doing special things are, and noting that in a golf game if you get a hole in one the game calls it “You won the car!” … ignoring that it is indeed a common reward for getting a hole in one on professional golf courses to win a car.
Athywren - Frustration Familiarity Pandasays
@doublereed, 168
Whatever. The game treats strippers as human beings and bystanders. It doesn’t treat them as eye candy but as obstacles.
Are those categories mutually exclusive?
@johannes9126, 169
For some people here or in the mid of Anita playing as a stripper or a female character dressed like a stripper, powerful as it may be, is still oppression.
You might be more convincing if you argued against positions held, rather than positions you’ve invented. Just for future reference.
One or two cases of overstatement by Sarkeesian: CANNOT BE TRUSTED.
Constant hyperbole and an admitted error from Tfoot: Meh, well, he isn’t wrong about everything!
Endlessly. Fascinating.
I don’t trust him, either. I went to look up whether what he was saying made sense or not (I even went to count the instances of strip clubs in that game). But there are a number of differences between his stuff and Sarkeesian’s:
1) As has been pointed out in this thread, Sarkeesian relies a LOT on listing tons and tons of examples to prove her point. If she’s misrepresenting them, that strikes directly at her thesis.
2) In order to check TFoot’s case, what you’d need to do is watch the relevant video — which I always encourage. To check HER case, I’d have to play all of those games to that point. Thus, if something TFoot says sounds funny, I’m very much inclined to go and check that to see if she really said that, whereas for her my choices in most cases are to either accept it or dismiss it outright. Because her stuff is harder to check, there’s a greater burden on her to do the research and present the examples fairly.
3) As has also been pointed out in this thread, I think, TFoot is unlikely to have any real influence on gaming culture or gaming as a whole. Sarkeesian, however, is, and is doing that through the summary of the arguments and examples. It’s easy for me to say that you should watch the video for that argument but don’t take him TOO seriously, but not so easy to do that for her.
Amphioxsays
Whatever. The game treats strippers as human beings and bystanders. It doesn’t treat them as eye candy but as obstacles.
Saying “are you blind” or “it’s obvious” frankly gives me a very sex negative vibe that I’m not at all comfortable with.
The sexualization is accomplished through the VISUAL PRESENTATION of the strippers in the game. Hence the question, “are you blind”? Is very pertinent here.
That the game treats them as human beings is irrelevant. Sexualization is most commonly done to human beings, rather than animals or rocks.
That they are bystanders is also irrelevant to the question of the sexualization. Bystanders can be either sexualized or not sexualized, so the status in no way absolves the game designers of the charge.
That they are an obstacle to overcome is similarly IRRELEVANT. The same game mechanic of avoiding being seen can be accomplished with pillars mounted with security cameras, so WHY choice of strippers with a SEXUALIZED VISUAL PRESENTATION?
As for your last statement, what those blindness have to do with gender? What a disgusting intellectually dishonest false equivalency.
johannes9126says
@ Athywren #171
“You might be more convincing if you argued against positions held, rather than positions you’ve invented. Just for future reference.”
So I take it you haven’t paid much attention to Anitas videos, then?
@ Amphiox #173
“That they are an obstacle to overcome is similarly IRRELEVANT. The same game mechanic of avoiding being seen can be accomplished with pillars mounted with security cameras, so WHY choice of strippers with a SEXUALIZED VISUAL PRESENTATION?”
Wouldn’t make sense to have a strip-club with security cameras instead of strippers, would it?
Not quite right, some of my arguments have been assumptions (oh, no, wait, let’s use ‘insinuations’, ’cause it sounds way worse)
I was quite clear in the original comment and set of comments what you were insinuating. You were insinuating that the designers of the game put that in the game, and the players of the game who would be upset at its exclusion would be upset because it wouldn’t allow for an experience like … well, let me let Sarkeesian describe it:
Players are meant to derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual female characters.
It’s a rush streaming from a carefully concocted mix of sexual arousal connected to the act of controlling and punishing representations of female sexuality.
In context, the game is, in fact, nothing like that.
This is why your question is a “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?” question, because to answer it I’d have to accept that it is sexualized violence in the manner that Sarkeesian — and presumably you — think of it. And I think it isn’t.
Also note that my comments on its prevalence was to refute this part of Sarkeesian’s explicit statements:
So in many of the titles we’ve been discussing, the game makers have set up a series of possible scenarios involving vulnerable, eroticized female characters. Players are then invited to explore and exploit those situations during their play-through.
As I said earlier to Athywren, it’s not a series, and they aren’t invited to do that in that game. Thus, from the full argument, Sarkeesian has no case for its inclusion in that statement … but it’s what plays when she says that.
Many women find the link between being sexualized and being the target of violence disturbing. Many women find that the common trope of women’s sexuality being linked to violence – especially towards the women in question – to be disturbing. Many women find the concept of women as objects for the target of violence or sexual aggression to be disturbing – moreso when combined. Some of them have even made videos about occurrences of these things in popular culture.
And this is precisely what I say is NOT happening in this game. The characters are not sexualized because the outfits they are wearing are context-appropriate. The context is actually underused in the game series and game itself, not overused as a way to subtly do that. There is no link between their sexuality and the PC wanting to kill them. The PC is actually discouraged FROM beating them up and killing them. As an example of what you talk about, it’s pretty much about as dubious as you possibly can get, because all of the things that you could complain about are firmly justified by the game series and context itself. So all you’re left with is arguing that they’re strippers dressed as strippers and are NPCs and so NO violence against them can ever be reasonable … which is utterly ridiculous, and also risks simply cutting strippers out of all representation in games entirely.
I asked the question because one of your objections to the characterization of the game was that brutalizing strippers wasn’t a major part of the game. So, I took that to mean that if it had been, that might have been bad.
If it had been more frequent, it would have made a better argument for the claim that this was something the game invited players to do. Since it’s such a small part of the game, you can’t make that argument.
ck,
“Women as background decoration” isn’t a problem in itself since most NPCs are mere background decoration, but when that becomes one of the very few interactions any women characters have with the game and the player character, there is a rather significant problem.
The hitman’s handler — essentially, boss — is a woman throughout the series. So it STILL wouldn’t be a good example. The strippers in this scene are just as much background objects as anyone else is in the game.
Athywren - Frustration Familiarity Pandasays
@Verbose Stoic
Players can perform precise assassinations or slaughter indiscriminately in order to achieve the mission goals; however, the games reward a subtle approach by awarding special weapons or cash bonuses if players earn a favourable rank (usually achievable by eliminating only the assigned target, and without raising the alarm doing so).
Essentially, the game rewards you for not killing bystanders. If depriving some of a reward isn’t considered enough to impact the behaviour of the players, then the video linked here doesn’t have a link between getting trophies for, say, having sex with prostitutes and the player choosing to do that. So, if that’s an accurate description of how the game works in that scene, and if it is argued that setting up the reward structure isn’t enough to discourage people from killing the strippers, then it doesn’t seem like Sarkeesian has a point in THIS video. She can’t really maintain both points.
In Worms, collecting coins deprives you of the reward of unlocking the next hole. Therefore, you’re obviously not supposed to collect them.
Or… you only need to unlock the hole once. You only collect the bonuses once. If you don’t collect the reward the first time, you can replay the level and get it a second time. Worms impedes your progress through the game if you don’t complete the level at or under par, but Hitman is just as willing to let you pass to the next level after a bloodbath as it is if you get through without a touching a single person other than the target, or being spotted. There are other rewards in Hitman, by the way. One is to complete the level wearing only your default clothes, without changing, while another is to collect all possible disguises in the level. Completing one challenge makes it impossible to complete the other in the same playthrough. Therefore, neither is supposed to be completed, right? You can’t really maintain both points.
So, from the representation of the game as I understand it, none of this is true.
Well, let’s go through it then:
So in many of the titles we’ve been discussing, the game makers have set up a series of possible scenarios involving vulnerable, eroticized female characters. Players are then invited to explore and exploit those situations during their play-through.
Well, that’s true. You might not have received an invitation in the mail, allowing you to call this one false semantically, but the point of games is to explore the situations presented to you.
(By the way, I’d point out that this is not addressing Hitman specifically, but a collection of titles that had been referred to in the video, so arguing that the strip club level is not one of a series doesn’t really counter it.)
The player cannot help but treat these female bodies as things to be acted upon,because they were designed, constructed and placed in the environment for that singular purpose.
Also true. Everything in a game is a thing to be acted upon. Even skirting around them – and you do have to skirt around them unless you want a bloodbath because of the way the area is designed – is acting upon them.
Players are meant to derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual female characters.
It’s a rush streaming from a carefully concocted mix of sexual arousal connected to the act of controlling and punishing representations of female sexuality.
Yeah, ok, debatable. Were they put there specifically with the conscious intention of their being used to derive a perverse pleasure? Maybe not. She might be guilty of overly strong wording or attempted mind reading there.
In-game consequences for these violations are trivial at best and rarely lead to any sort of “fail state” or “game over”. Sometimes areas may go on high-alert for a few minutes during which players have to lay low or hide before the game and its characters “forget” that you just murdered a sexualized woman in cold blood.
True. You’ll tend to need to get a new disguise to lower the alert level – I don’t think you can just wait for it in Hitman – but this is true. The point penalty is small, easily counteracted by hiding the body, and only means a thing if you’re going for the high score, the silent assassin bonus is only awarded once, and failing to achieve it in later playthroughs doesn’t revoke it, so you’re not going to miss out on that. It’s also probably worth noting that there’s an achievement for killing alert guards and restoring the alert status to normal – an achievement which is very much incompatible with the silent assassin and high score goals… you’re obviously just not supposed to get that one, right?
So, rather than none of it being true, most of it is true, and a little is debatable.
The game is actually set up for you to AVOID these situations
If you want some of the achivements, sure. If you want other achievements, no.
(the easier path avoids this area entirely), so it’s not inviting to explore or exploit them.
What, the easier path through the area where several armed guards – who will notice that you’re not supposed to be there and attempt to kill you before you make it through – are sitting around and playing pool? Yeah. That path is pretty easy. Doesn’t effect your score at all either. Nope.
The player can indeed resist treating them that way,
This is true. Not particularly relevant, but true.
because the game discourages treating them that way (even the conversation between them discourages you from killing them indiscriminately, as it is designed to at least try to evoke sympathy and empathy).
The player can resist a lot of things. If you want the pacifist achievement in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, you have to avoid killing people at all, at any point through the game. There’s a point in the game where a bunch of private military thugs raid a “hotel” where people essentially live on shelves with a matress and a curtain. They kill everyone. People with nothing. People whose home you have spent the last few minutes exploring, hearing them talk amongst each other, argue, play checkers. A lot players would probably want to kill every last one of those mercenaries, but if you want the pacifist achievement, you can’t. You have to resist the urge to do so if you want to get that achievement, just as you have to for the silent assassin achievements. That doesn’t mean that you fail if you don’t resist, though. If you kill those Belltower arseholes, you miss out on the pacifist achievement. If you kill the strippers, or pretty much anyone else in the level, you miss out on the silent assassin achievement. In neither case does it stop you from completing the level or the game, or meaningfully penalise you unless you’re trying to get those achievements.
As I’ve said repeatedly, they weren’t placed there for that purpose; they’re there because it’s actually appropriate for them TO be there.
Sure, but why is it appropriate for you to be heading through their changing rooms? Sure, it’s necessary to take that route, because the supposedly easier route is full of guards who will spot you, but why is that the case? Was it accidental, or was the level designed with sneaking through that spot in mind?
Sure, if you make sure to focus closely enough, it’s perfectly reasonable to expect strippers to be in a strip club’s changing rooms, but ignoring all of the questions around that isn’t reasonable.
What you keep saying is that it’s appropriate for them to be there, because it’s a strip club, but you’re refusing to consider why you‘re there in their changing room. The level was designed that way. Why? Hell, the only nod you’ve given to why you’re there in the strip club at all is that it’s inevitable for a game tackling the subject matter that Hitman does, which apparently doesn’t raise any kind of flag for you that there might be some kind of… umm, what’s the word… smope? Flope? Wnope? Ah, you know – a kind of trend going on.
Since the characters are dressed in environment appropriate attire and are treated like any other, the link — at least in the designers’ minds — from the sexualization to the violence doesn’t exist; from the game’s perspective, you’re not supposed to think of them in any more sexual a way than you would any other civilian in the game (which doesn’t mean that their outfits won’t evoke that, of course).
See, now you’re engaging in the same mind reading that is the source of my one and only criticism of Sarkeesian’s argument in this case. Of course, in her case, the argument that “[p]layers are meant to derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual female characters” isn’t all that important to the overall point.
In this game, the in-game consequences — if I’m interpreting the wiki right — are precisely as strong as the in-game consequences for not using women as rewards in the games she cites, which means that they’d have the same impact on behaviour, as I said above.
The video you’re arguing against doesn’t tackle women as rewards. And you’re not interpreting the wiki right, fyi. But even if you were, doesn’t that directly counter your argument that you’re actively dissuaded from doing so? You can’t really maintain both points.
Now, maybe she didn’t really think that this game was a really good example of that … but it’s safe to say that if she used it as the example, she must either have thought it would or else couldn’t actually find anything that looked like treateing women as objects for sexualized violence better than this did. Either doesn’t really help her case.
She wasn’t using the game as a whole – she was using that element of the game. Which is why the repeated accusations of cherrypicking are meaningless and demonstrate an ignorance of the argument being made. Speaking of demonstrating an ignorance of the argument being made, she also had other examples.
But as I don’t play these sorts of games, maybe I’m missing something. Since you do, I’d appreciate you telling me what I’m missing.
You’re missing the content, the context, the attitude and the atmosphere. You’re also missing the fact that I, as a fan of the Hitman games who enjoyed Absolution and still plays it sometimes, am not defending the game against the accusation of containing tropes, while you, someone who hasn’t played it and apparently doesn’t play games like it, are defending it despite working only from a wiki. I don’t normally put much stock in personal experience arguments, but there are times when they’re relevant.
I love these games, so I’m not just going to wave away legitimate criticisms of them based on a wiki. I’m also a big fan of the Splinter Cell games, but that doesn’t mean I’ll deny that their use and portrayal of “enhanced interrogation” in Conviction, for example, is deeply flawed.
From my perspective, it would be more like making a video that talks about how ridiculous some of the rewards for doing special things are, and noting that in a golf game if you get a hole in one the game calls it “You won the car!” … ignoring that it is indeed a common reward for getting a hole in one on professional golf courses to win a car.
…how does that relate to objectives or bonuses outside of the main path? What are you arguing here? That a common reward for visiting a strip club and murdering the owner is a trip to the changing rooms?
Also, as a quick side note, is it wrong that “from my perspective…” made me think of this?
(I even went to count the instances of strip clubs in that game)
…why? What difference does that make? Yet again, the argument was not that Hitman is a sexist game which is full of sexist tropes, it was that women as background decoration is a sexist trope, and examples of it can be found in Hitman, among other games.
The characters are not sexualized because the outfits they are wearing are context-appropriate.
Just out of curiosity, do you also believe that actual women in actual strip clubs are not sexualised? Because their outfits are also context appropriate.
The hitman’s handler — essentially, boss — is a woman throughout the series. So it STILL wouldn’t be a good example. The strippers in this scene are just as much background objects as anyone else is in the game.
Funny story – she’s your first target in Absolution. You break into her safehouse and surprise her in the shower. There’s more to it than that, obviously, but spoilers.
doublereedsays
Right. So I don’t think the presentation is sexualized. Just because a figure is nude or a stripper doesn’t mean it’s sexualized. That’s what I mean. They aren’t actually presented that way.
And you just stating that the presentation necessarily is sexual because of their outfit really gives me the slut shaming and sex negative vibe I don’t like.
Some of the previous suggestions, like making them unable to be interacted with, is actually way worse. Then they literally would be nothing but eye candy for you to gawk at and decoration.
Either way, I don’t think this conversation is really going anywhere. You’re still being like “Just look it’s obvious” and I don’t get it.
doublereedsays
That they are an obstacle is relevant to the idea that they are background decoration. They are not. You have to avoid them. It isn’t eye candy. You interact with them like any other bystander or human being.
Athywren - Frustration Familiarity Pandasays
@doublereed, 178
That they are an obstacle is relevant to the idea that they are background decoration. They are not. You have to avoid them. It isn’t eye candy. You interact with them like any other bystander or human being.
They’re not actually all that much of an obstacle, though. You have to duck behind a wall but, other than that, it takes more effort to get their attention than to avoid it. Not much more, admittedly, but you do actually have to go out of your way to be spotted by them.
doublereedsays
I haven’t played it so I have no idea about that.
Tethyssays
doublereed
Saying “are you blind” or “it’s obvious” frankly gives me a very sex negative vibe that I’m not at all comfortable with.
Maybe you should quit pretending that presenting women in games as sex workers is somehow not sexualized. We are trying to get you to notice that your precious games contain huge amounts of sexism and misogyny. You acknowlege that they are just obstacles, and then keep claiming that Anita’s analysis is somehow wrong. At this point you are just as blind as the black man who tried to hold a southern pride rally around the confederate flag in Minnesota.
johannes
For some people here or in the mid of Anita playing as a stripper or a female character dressed like a stripper, powerful as it may be, is still oppression.
Quote it or GTFO. We aren’t oppressed by boobies. We are oppressed by male game developers using female boobies and bodies to sell their sexist dreck. How about you address the actual point rather than whinging and building straw arguments? A stripper/assassin/dragon as a playable character solves the background decor issue by giving the female roles agency, It would also be far more creative and interesting than the same old games as Barney Stinson teenage boy fantasy dreck.,
Anrisays
Verbose Stoic @ 175:
I was quite clear in the original comment and set of comments what you were insinuating. You were insinuating that the designers of the game put that in the game, and the players of the game who would be upset at its exclusion would be upset because it wouldn’t allow for an experience like … well, let me let Sarkeesian describe it:
Players are meant to derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual female characters.
It’s a rush streaming from a carefully concocted mix of sexual arousal connected to the act of controlling and punishing representations of female sexuality.
In context, the game is, in fact, nothing like that.
This is why your question is a “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?” question, because to answer it I’d have to accept that it is sexualized violence in the manner that Sarkeesian — and presumably you — think of it. And I think it isn’t.
Which would be an excellent point against what I was arguing… if that’s what I was arguing. Here’s what I actually said to summarize my point:
Apparently, neither the devs, the average player, nor you think this content is objectionable enough to merit not having time and effort spent on it. That’s my insinuation.
Anita’s welcome to impute whatever unpleasant desires the devs and players had in creating or playing the game. I’m primarily concentrating on the fact that it was placed in the game, on purpose, by the devs, and that many players, including yourself, are just fine with that, even though it is clearly a case of brutalizing sexualized helpless women.
I don’t think you have to accept that it is sexualized violence in any particular way.
I’m just trying to get you to admit that it’s violence against sexualized, helpless women, and that you’re ok with it. And then to maybe consider how much of it would be required to say it wasn’t ok.
In short, you’re conflating Anita’s arguments with mine. Until I start re-stating her arguments, please don’t do that – you’re going to get my arguments wrong every time.
I’m not conflating you with other people I’m arguing with. Please extend to me that same courtesy.
And this is precisely what I say is NOT happening in this game. The characters are not sexualized because the outfits they are wearing are context-appropriate. The context is actually underused in the game series and game itself, not overused as a way to subtly do that. There is no link between their sexuality and the PC wanting to kill them. The PC is actually discouraged FROM beating them up and killing them. As an example of what you talk about, it’s pretty much about as dubious as you possibly can get, because all of the things that you could complain about are firmly justified by the game series and context itself. So all you’re left with is arguing that they’re strippers dressed as strippers and are NPCs and so NO violence against them can ever be reasonable … which is utterly ridiculous, and also risks simply cutting strippers out of all representation in games entirely.
No, I’m arguing that it was a conscious decision to put them into the game, and that the people that accept that level of violence against helpless sexualized women own it.
I’m not saying it’s unacceptable.
I’m saying I don’t care to accept this instance of it.
I’m asking the people who do to acknowledge that it is what it is, and to be ok with it.
And that if they’re uncomfortable with acknowledging that, they might wanna examine why they are.
Really, I’ve said this several times.
If it had been more frequent, it would have made a better argument for the claim that this was something the game invited players to do. Since it’s such a small part of the game, you can’t make that argument.
I was asking what ‘more frequent’ meant in your opinion.
If you are saying – as you seem to be – that if that sort of violence would have made you uncomfortable if it had been more frequent, that’s fine, and a perfectly reasonable thing to say.
I was asking you to take a stab at vocalizing what ‘more frequent’ means to you.
If its something you don’t have a firm grip on because it’s something you haven’t really taken a hard look at, fine, say that.
But if its a question you don’t want to consider because you feel it makes you look bad to answer it honestly, well, that’s not a problem with the question.
As I said upthread, its impossible to give example answers (or my own answer) to an unanswerable question. Since I can – and have – its not. Not liking your answer is not the same thing as the question being unanswerable.
Amphioxsays
I haven’t played it so I have no idea about that.
So you don’t actually know what they look like, how they are presented, or how they specifically they interact with gameplay?
And you have the nerve to argue that it is “just” an obstacle and not “background decoration”? And have the nerve to argue that something cannot be both?
Right. So I don’t think the presentation is sexualized. Just because a figure is nude or a stripper doesn’t mean it’s sexualized. That’s what I mean. They aren’t actually presented that way.
Are you blind AND dumb? Or have you, who never played the game, not actually bothered to look at that segment, read the text and listen to the background sound effects?
They are nude AND strippers AND actively working at a strip club, and you, who haven’t played the game, want to argue that isn’t sexualized?
And you just stating that the presentation necessarily is sexual because of their outfit really gives me the slut shaming and sex negative vibe I don’t like.
No I am not stating that, you pitiful liar. I never said a presentation of nudity or sex workers is “necessarily” sexual. I said THIS SPECIFIC ONE IS. The combination of visual presentation and circumstance of context makes it so. And you who have never played the game have the nerve to dishonestly try to distract with abstractions and continue to employ your false equivalencies.
I am done talking to you. I only engage so much with the deliberately intellectually dishonest.
doublereedsays
Ugh. So a game can never be set in a strip club or contain sex workers and not sexualize them? (are strippers considered sex workers? I thought they’re just strippers.)
But yea, if you’re operating under that assumption that literally any portrayal of strippers is sexualizing and sexist, then yea I totally disagree. But I see zero way a game could include such thing in a positive way if hitman doesn’t apply, considering they’re humanized in those games.
And dude, I know the games contain plenty of sexism. I don’t disagree with any of Anita’s major points. I just think the hitman example is bad. And I stated before in this conversation that I was going from what gameplay I saw in her video.
But whatever. I must be intellectually dishonest or something. That’s why I said the conversation was getting pointless. You saying that they’re obviously sexualized and me not really getting why you’re saying that. Of course you consider me intellectually dishonest. Stupid way to have a conversation, and I don’t see a resolution.
doublereedsays
Just because they’re nude and strippers in a strip club doesn’t mean they’re sexualized. I just disagree, and think that’s a pretty puritanical view.
Tethyssays
Actually Doublereed, I think that you cannot understand because you have zero experience with being objectified, or female. You can’t see the background toxic sexism, because it is common as dirt in our culture. You think it is completely unremarkable that games have been marketed exclusively toward a male demographic, and fail to make the connection that those games serve to perpetuate misogyny as normal behavior. The strippers sell sexual gratification, and they sell it almost exclusively to men you dolt. Apparently you are of the opinion that it’s only sexual if you actively try to derive sexual gratification from them, and nothing else counts as sex or sexualized. Because how women are depicted just magically poofs into existence and the poor mens can’t help drawing porn and abusive violent scenarios that involve strippers and prostitutes.
Loftysays
doublereed
Just because they’re nude and strippers in a strip club doesn’t mean they’re sexualized. I just disagree, and think that’s a pretty puritanical view.
And there it is, the utter blindness of male privilege. “I choose to not notice it therefore it isn’t worth talking about.”
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trollssays
The mansplainin’ from those opposed to AS’s analysis is reaching toxic levels. Guys, here is your problem. If I will consider whether something is sexist or not, do I listen to males explaining why nothing is sexist, or to those who are on the receiving end of your sexism? The latter will always prevail. Your mansplainin’ is diminished a thousand fold in my consideration, that of a 60+ year old fat/bald male. Want to get anywhere, start by acknowledging what you are doing, and why it is wrong. Until then, don’t bother.
Rowan vet-techsays
Just because they’re nude and strippers in a strip club doesn’t mean they’re sexualized. I just disagree, and think that’s a pretty puritanical view.
*30 seconds of open mouthed silent WTF*
I have shared these two sentences with many of my female coworkers. We have come to a consensus that this may be one of THE stupidest things we have ever heard. Ever.
I am personally forced to wonder what exactly you think the purpose of a strip club is, and how they go about making money, because that statement of yours tells me that you clearly don’t know.
Rowan vet-techsays
I mean, to further this…. why must they be naked? Why can’t they be fully clothed in loose jeans and t-shirts, and still be strippers in a strip club?
Amphioxsays
It’s just interpretive dance done without clothes. Fine arts all the way down. Nothing to see here people.
Amphioxsays
Note the unspoken implication here.
HIS personal opinion on what is and is not sexualization immediately and automatically invalidates Sarkeesian’s opinion on the same subject. HIS opinion is the only one that matters, the only one that counts. The opinions of women don’t count.
Athywren - Frustration Familiarity Pandasays
@doublereed
But whatever. I must be intellectually dishonest or something.
Well you might not be intellectually dishonest, but if you’re capable of reading this…
I never said a presentation of nudity or sex workers is “necessarily” sexual. I said THIS SPECIFIC ONE IS. The combination of visual presentation and circumstance of context makes it so.
…and responding to it with this…
But yea, if you’re operating under that assumption that literally any portrayal of strippers is sexualizing and sexist, then yea I totally disagree.
…there’s clearly some disconnect there, and if it’s not a result of dishonesty, then it’s definitely a massive failure of some kind.
—
Aaaanyway, I only popped back in to add to add a little comment on the matter of whether players are supposed to be attacking the strippers and dragging their bodies around. I decided I was going to watch the “Women as Background Decoration” videos again, since I was only going from memory and that’s a really good way to screw things up.
Interestingly enough, Sarkeesian says something almost immediately before that part that Verbose Stoic has made such a point of quoting. I can’t help but wonder why it wasn’t included in that quote, honestly, considering how clear it makes it that any implication of their abuse being an overt objective is merely the result of imprecise language… oh wait, maybe that’s why.
I should note that this kind of misogynistic behaviour isn’t always mandatory – often it is player directed – but it is always implicitly encouraged…
She then goes on to talk briefly about how players engage with games, which I won’t quote but will link to here, and then gets onto the “series of possible scenarios involving vulnerable, eroticized female players” bit that’s been quoted.
I have to admit, I also found it pretty interesting to notice just how little of those videos actually referenced Hitman at all. I’d somehow managed to get it in my head that it was the majority of them – probably because people seem to argue exclusively about Hitman when they’re arguing this subject – which I guess just goes to show how fallible memory can be.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trollssays
HIS personal opinion on what is and is not sexualization immediately and automatically invalidates Sarkeesian’s opinion on the same subject. HIS opinion is the only one that matters, the only one that counts. The opinions of women don’t count.
Noticed that days ago. Typical mansplainin’. And treated their posts accordingly.
Amphioxsays
Speaking of which, it is not for nothing that “obstacle” and “object” have the same latin root.
Even if that ludicrous claim that because the strippers are “obstacles” they can’t be background (I guess every slapstick comedy routine that has the protagonist falling over the ming vase in the background is now invalid), all it means is that Anita should have put that one specific example in a different video in the series.
Athywren - Frustration Familiarity Pandasays
@Nerd, 194
To be fair, not all of doublereed’s posts have been mansplainy… seemingly just the ones about Hitman for some reason. It’s actually a bit confusing considering they apparently haven’t played it, so I don’t really understand what would drive all that weirdness.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trollssays
To be fair, not all of doublereed’s posts have been mansplainy… seemingly just the ones about Hitman for some reason.
Since doublereed has acknowledged they haven’t played Hitman, that is explained due to using secondary sources of information for the game play. Without attribution to that source, that is a dishonest practice, and can’t be explained away. Typical of mansplainin’.
Verbose Stoic and Johanness9126 are simply mansplainin’ at the end of the day, using different methods. The end result is the same. Believe them without evidence, not AS with evidence.
But yea, if you’re operating under that assumption that literally any portrayal of strippers is sexualizing and sexist, then yea I totally disagree.
Well, they could be sharing a Caffe Latte in a Starbucks and comiserate about how the management doesn’t turn on the heating in the changing room. While still wearing their street clothing.
Or be shown doing grocery shopping.
You know, like people.
This is a good comment here, because it’ll let us get down to brass tacks on this and ignore some of the sidetrack over trophies:
I didn’t that part because, well, it isn’t actually all that relevant to the discussion. I completely agree that games can implicitly and even EXPLICITLY encourage behaviours that are player-optional. I can even agree with the latest video that providing trophies for doing it can be a way to do that (the problem with that, though, is for at least repetitive ones players tend to ignore the content of the trophy itself, which is what she needs in this video). The issue, then is if in the Hitman case that’s what’s actually done. And it’s important to get the Hitman case right, because that’s what she deliberately chose to run while saying this, so the implication certainly is that she thinks this is a good example.
So, then, my question for you — and it isn’t mocking or sarcastic, but is serious — is to tell me, since I don’t play the game, how the game implicitly or explicitly encourages players to kill the strippers. Your Worms Golf example talks about trophies, points or achievements … do you get any of these for killing them? Your response to the point about resisting it is to give the perfectly agreeable point that even things that are hard to resist can be resisted, but what’s in THAT sequence that makes it hard to resist? If I picked up that game and got that far, what is it about it that would make it hard for me to resist killing them? You even said that sneaking past them is relatively easy, and if one needs to trigger an alert going the other way, from what you said, would be the easier method.
I can’t get this from Sarkeesian because she doesn’t actually SAY how Hitman does it. If you watch the video, all you get is the impression that this game, in general, does everything she talks about, but nothing about how.
Let me at least leave the rest of 176 until we get past this, because it’s the more important point anyway.
Which would be an excellent point against what I was arguing… if that’s what I was arguing.
Um, but that’s the point that my “It isn’t a big part of the game” was aimed at, and you replied to me. So if that isn’t what you’re arguing, then my argument, the one that spawned you continually asking me how much brutalization of sexualized women was okay, obviously doesn’t apply to it, and was never meant to reply to it … but, then, it means that you weren’t addressing what I was arguing despite you, in fact, being the one to reply to me on that point. So:
n short, you’re conflating Anita’s arguments with mine. Until I start re-stating her arguments, please don’t do that – you’re going to get my arguments wrong every time.
I’m not conflating you with other people I’m arguing with. Please extend to me that same courtesy.
Since my arguments were originally aimed at her arguments, and you replied to my arguments about her arguments, it was perfectly reasonable for me to assume that what you were talking about was, in fact, the arguments I was making. Except here it looks like you inserted your own argument into the picture and then interpreted my responses as responses to it and not to what I was actually arguing, despite my saying that in other comments. So please extend me the courtesy of not taking arguments against another argument and then translating them to your argument as if that was what I was arguing.
I’m primarily concentrating on the fact that it was placed in the game, on purpose, by the devs, and that many players, including yourself, are just fine with that, even though it is clearly a case of brutalizing sexualized helpless women.
I replied to this: I don’t see how this is an example of at least problematic depictions of that, because I don’t see how the women are meant to be portrayed as simply sexualized and don’t see the link between their sexualization and the violence. You aren’t, as far as I can tell, in any way meant to think of these NPCs any differently than any other NPCs in the game. At a minimum, the game does not present their sexualization as a reason TO brutalize them.
So let me ask you a similar question to what I asked Athywren: what is it about the situation that makes that link? It has to be more than “They’re there and can be killed”, doesn’t it? And since they do discourage it with gameplay mechanics — you lose points — even if that discouragement might be insufficient, relying on there being a common real-world link between the two isn’t really sufficient, because the game could be easily seen as trying to subvert that expectation. So, to your mind, what is it about this that makes it so that the player is supposed to either see or accept a link between sex and violence in that specific example? I argue that the context works against that, you disagree: why?
Believe them without evidence, not AS with evidence.
Ignoring that the argument is that the evidence she’s giving, in at least that specific case, is not evidence, and which evidence has been provided for, including the evidence she herself gives.
Tethys @186,
Actually Doublereed, I think that you cannot understand because you have zero experience with being objectified, or female. You can’t see the background toxic sexism, because it is common as dirt in our culture.
Look, what Sarkeesian is doing is not simply an opinion piece. She’s not just looking at games and pointing out what she likes and doesn’t like. She’s trying to build an academic study out of this, something that can be used in schools (literally; that’s one of the unlocked rewards on the Kickstarter). If you’re trying to build an academic case, as she is, you can’t rely on “Well, you just don’t have the right perspective”. It might be true, but the case has to be made such that even if you don’t have the right perspective you can see that the points hold. As I said earlier, for her strong points, the ones that we should really be worried about, she doesn’t have that evidence.
For example, looking over some other playthroughs, I think that Hitman: Absolution DOES treat strippers in that negative way in the main club, because while them simply being dancers dancing they seem to allow for a lot more direct interaction in a sexual way. Is this good or bad? I can’t say. In an open game like Hitman, it might be seen as too much of a limit to not put it in, but then again you are a Hitman so it doesn’t really need to be there, either. That part, from my admittedly quick and shallow skimming, is a far better example of Women as Background Decoration than the Watchdogs case is. From what I can see of the Dressing Room part, though, that’s not the case. I was looking through those to see if I could get a full transcript of the conversation there, but the player is not encouraged to think of them as sexual objects for their pleasure, but instead as people who are scared and frustrated by the position that their boss has put them in, and that there’s nothing the police can do because he pays them off with THEIR bodies. If you pay attention to the conversation, it’s hard for me to see how anyone wouldn’t think of them sympathetically, and not as just sexual objects.
Anyway, that was a bit of a digression (but I think a useful one to explain my position). But the overall point is this: just because I don’t see that as being an example doesn’t mean that it isn’t … but just because others see it AS one doesn’t mean that it’s an example either. It is of course perfectly reasonable for others to feel that it is a problem and be bothered by it, but it’s also perfectly reasonable for me to not see it as one as well. Our experiences are our experiences, and no one can say which ones are, a priori, to be preferred. But presumably there is a truth of the matter here beyond what our own experiences tell us, and that’s what Sarkeesian needs to get at, and what requires evidence and argumentation.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trollssays
Ignoring that the argument is that the evidence she’s giving, in at least that specific case, is not evi
She shows evidence, unlike you. You have nothing to say other than you don’t like her conclusions. Typical of mansplainin’. Except you use five hundred words to say something you could say in fifty.
Anrisays
Verbose Stoic @ 200:
Since my arguments were originally aimed at her arguments, and you replied to my arguments about her arguments, it was perfectly reasonable for me to assume that what you were talking about was, in fact, the arguments I was making. Except here it looks like you inserted your own argument into the picture and then interpreted my responses as responses to it and not to what I was actually arguing, despite my saying that in other comments. So please extend me the courtesy of not taking arguments against another argument and then translating them to your argument as if that was what I was arguing.
Ok, my apologies, it looked to me as if I was asking you a direct question about your reaction to the game.
How should I have phrased the question “How much is too much?” to let you know that what I was asking was “How much is too much?”
I replied to this: I don’t see how this is an example of at least problematic depictions of that, because I don’t see how the women are meant to be portrayed as simply sexualized and don’t see the link between their sexualization and the violence. You aren’t, as far as I can tell, in any way meant to think of these NPCs any differently than any other NPCs in the game. At a minimum, the game does not present their sexualization as a reason TO brutalize them.?
Well, if we can’t agree that nude strippers are pretty much inherently sexualized, we’re never going to agree on anything else. In terms of asking how these NPC’s differ from others, I not familiar enough with the game to know how many other NPC’s are presented in the nude, doing sex work.
I’m presuming from your assertions that this is a ‘small part of the game’ that the answer is “very few, if any”. Which, I guess, is you answer as to what makes these NPC’s different from the rest.
Tethyssays
Verbose Stoic
If you’re trying to build an academic case, as she is, you can’t rely on “Well, you just don’t have the right perspective”.
RLY? You interpreted my comment explaining why doublereed might not notice the large amount of sexism and misogyny in games as a matter of perspective? I was following the new commenting rules, while tying to make him really think about WHY he doesn’t find the common as dirt trope in games of strippers or prostitutes or just naked women in general as anything strange or unremarkable. I’m not going to spend any time on which category of sexist trope it should be filed under before you admit that Anita has a valid point. Go read some data on the correlations between aggression and violence and exposure to violent media.
There’s still a disconnect here. Let me state it as clearly as I possibly can:
There are two points under discussion here: whether the game invites or encourages killing the strippers, and whether or not that violence counts as sexualized violence or not. The first argument is the one that is straight from Sarkeesian, which you say you are not addressing, the second is, I believe, the one you ARE actually addressing. The “it isn’t very common” argument addresses the FIRST argument, and only partly, as one of the reasons for us to think that the game doesn’t encourage this is that despite them being able to get away with including it much more often than they do, the game series typically HASN’T. The “the strippers are not simply sexualized and the game doesn’t seem to create any link between the sexualization and the violence” addresses the second point. Thus, your continually repeated question ends up being one that addresses the point that you claim to not be addressing, while you aren’t really addressing the point that IS supposed to address the point you claim to be addressing.
Is that clearer?
Tethys @204,
RLY? You interpreted my comment explaining why doublereed might not notice the large amount of sexism and misogyny in games as a matter of perspective?
Presuming that doublereed has looked at Sarkeesian’s comments and the video, my comments on the game, and Athywren’s comments on the game, if doublereed doesn’t see that it isn’t going to defend Sarkeesian to say that it might be due to a lack of being objectified in real life that causes that. As Sarkeesian is doing an academic treatment, she’s going to have to be able to demonstrate it to people who do not have those experiences and, presumably, are not massively predisposed to disregarding the argument. There is no evidence that doublereed is so predisposed, so doublereed ought to be able to see it if Sarkeesian and the people defending the point in this thread provided the appropriate evidence.
As for those correlations, they are just that: correlations. And gaming has already dismissed — for good reason — the idea that violence in games in and of themselves can cause any real or lasting change in attitudes or behaviour wrt violence. If you’re trying to rely on that to make your case for the sexist tropes, you DEFINITELY need to present really strong evidence.
For the record, as I’ve said earlier sometimes Sarkeesian has valid points. I just don’t think she does in the cases we’re talking about, but unfortunately those tend to be the more unique ones and the ones that we really would have a pressing need to make radical changes to fix if they were valid.
Tethyssays
And gaming has already dismissed — for good reason — the idea that violence in games in and of themselves can cause any real or lasting change in attitudes or behaviour wrt violence.
You keep saying this, but have yet to provide a shred of supporting data. I just linked you to a an entire textbook full of studies that show that exposure to violence and sexism in media has negative effects on social behavior, especially for boys, and the effects were still measurable 30 years later. Saying that there aren’t any real consequences to violence and misogyny in media is actually quite disingenuous, considering that the military has long used video games to desensitize/ train soldiers to purposefully shoot and kill people with various weaponry from guns to jet fighters.
Tethyssays
In my comment #206 please read quite disingenuous as —– I wish I could turn into a dragon and flambe every single asshole whose entire argument is “Sexism? I don’t see it as sexism because as a cis/het/dude I like looking at naked women, therefore it isn’t sexist.”
Godsays
There’s an easy answer if you don’t like these games. Just don’t buy them.
Loftysays
There’s an easy answer if you don’t like these games. Just don’t buy them.
And the easy answer is almost always completely useless at addressing the problem of society wide sexism.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trollssays
There’s an easy answer if you don’t like these games. Just don’t buy them.
If you don’t like the threads here criticizing your misogyny, don’t read/post here. Read your own post and behave accordingly.
Tethyssays
An even simpler and far more effective solution to games full of sexist stereotypes, is for game developers to not make games full of sexist stereotypes.
Saadsays
God, #208
There’s an easy answer if you don’t like these games. Just don’t buy them.
That’s the answer to a question nobody is asking here.
She’s wrong though about gender being a social construct. It is not. It is how the world presents itself to us; and how we perceive all things in it: in binaries, in oppositions. Here’s what the TAO has to say about yin and yang -the female and the male- and their interactions in the world. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulGnc0BfPWQ
You’re saying that ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ are completely identical across every single culture in the history of the entirety of the human species?
Because I can prove, easily, that it’s not. Which means that ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ are, indeed, social constructs.
Teachers tried to actively make me ‘act like a girl’. I identify as a woman. I’ve never felt like I wasn’t female. But I’m physically active, hate sitting around and talking, not afraid of reptiles or amphibians, aggressive, loud, outspoken. All traits viewed as ‘masculine’.
So… you’re wrong. You might want to choose a different screen name, because gloating when you’re beyond ignorant is just embarrassing.
Anrisays
Verbose Stoic @ 205:
There’s still a disconnect here. Let me state it as clearly as I possibly can:
There are two points under discussion here: whether the game invites or encourages killing the strippers, and whether or not that violence counts as sexualized violence or not. The first argument is the one that is straight from Sarkeesian, which you say you are not addressing, the second is, I believe, the one you ARE actually addressing. The “it isn’t very common” argument addresses the FIRST argument, and only partly, as one of the reasons for us to think that the game doesn’t encourage this is that despite them being able to get away with including it much more often than they do, the game series typically HASN’T. The “the strippers are not simply sexualized and the game doesn’t seem to create any link between the sexualization and the violence” addresses the second point. Thus, your continually repeated question ends up being one that addresses the point that you claim to not be addressing, while you aren’t really addressing the point that IS supposed to address the point you claim to be addressing.
I’m not claiming the game encourages brutalizing strippers, I’m claiming that it was included, deliberately, as a design decision, by the devs. That’s the premise that I’ve been working with, and stating explicitly, from the start. This appears to differ from Anita’s point that there is active encouragement within the game to do so, which (apparently) is incorrect.
So, no, my argument about the presence of that action in the game is not “straight from” anything other than my own points.
In answer to this, you appeared to make the argument that it was acceptable because there wasn’t all that much of it in the game.
I then asked you – nastily, no argument there, but answerably – to qualify what you meant by that.
I don’t see the point you raise as separate, as one depends on the other.
This question hinges, as far as I am concerned, in large part on if one would consider the strippers in question to be sexualized when being targets of violence. As I said, if we can’t agree on that, there’s no point in having the argument further. I asked if any other NPC’s were presented nude and helpless to emphasize the point that there was something exceptional about these NPC’s, specifically in a sexual dimension.
If beating hell out of nude, helpless people in many situations is common in the game, the strippers are nothing unique, and my argument fails.
If beating hell out of nude, helpless (ostensibly attractive) women is common throughout the game, then it isn’t a “small part” and your argument fails.
If the answer is neither of these two (which it is my – second hand – impression that it is), then we have a point of contention, and quite possibly just an argument about degree. Hence my trying to determine what degree you’re comfortable with.
. . .
God @ 208:
There’s an easy answer if you don’t like these games. Just don’t buy them.
Hey, good point!
And if you don’t like a shop with a “no blacks” policy, just don’t shop there! Problem solved!
God is wiser than I thought, folks. I may have to give up my atheism if he keeps showing solutions this insightful…
antepreprosays
Sarkeesian’s videos always seem to attract the most, let’s just say “interesting”, critics. Between vague insinuations of “fabrications”, painfully verbose retreads of stupid shit TFoot has garbled about completely different videos, ridiculous insistence that strippers aren’t “sexualized”, general assholish pseudo-arguments, and whatever the fuck WeToldYouSo1 is supposed to be doing, you get to experience the full Rainbow of Internet Nuisance.
I’m not claiming the game encourages brutalizing strippers, I’m claiming that it was included, deliberately, as a design decision, by the devs. That’s the premise that I’ve been working with, and stating explicitly, from the start.
I’m not claiming you were. I’m pointing out that that was what _I_ was talking about when I made the point that you keep questioning me on. Again, that point was never meant to argue against what you were talking about.
So let’s move on to more substantive comments:
If beating hell out of nude, helpless people in many situations is common in the game, the strippers are nothing unique, and my argument fails.
If beating hell out of nude, helpless (ostensibly attractive) women is common throughout the game, then it isn’t a “small part” and your argument fails.
If the answer is neither of these two (which it is my – second hand – impression that it is), then we have a point of contention, and quite possibly just an argument about degree. Hence my trying to determine what degree you’re comfortable with.
The thing is that this may give an indication of designer motive, but wouldn’t indicate whether it’s a problem or not. If this was a rare occurrence, but it was clear that in the game the context was such that the link between the sexualization and the violence was made clear, or that the game encouraged you to link the two, then it only being a rare occurrence wouldn’t mean that this was an acceptable, reasonable example. So, for example, if the game used the same models for these strippers as you see outside and can interact with, and had them talk about how their customers were all clueless rubes who humiliated themselves to see a little T&A, that would link that behaviour to them AND, as they’d be mocking you, give you reasons to kill them with that context currently in mind. That’s not how their conversation goes in game. Also, of course, if the game made a habit of putting nude and/or sexily dressed women in positions to be attacked, that would be bad, too.
From what I can see, in the game the characters, essentially, HAPPEN to be nude/scantily dressed, but that’s not made relevant to the action itself, and there’s nothing in the context for the player to make the link between that and the violence they can, if they choose, commit upon them. If there’s any sexualized violence there, it’s not in the game, but solely in the mind of the player.
Tethys @206,
You keep saying this, but have yet to provide a shred of supporting data.
Well, I’ve probably only said it once, maybe twice, but the reason why gamers are going to be skeptical of these claims is that they are the same sort of claims that Jack Thompson made, which I am given to understand have been pretty much discredited. Going from the same argument as he did is going to be mostly dismissed, even if she’s right.
I just linked you to a an entire textbook full of studies that show that exposure to violence and sexism in media has negative effects on social behavior, especially for boys, and the effects were still measurable 30 years later.
You linked me to a 752 page textbook covering all of social psychology, which presumably includes more than just studies on violence and sexism in the media. Also, the description of the book doesn’t even MENTION studies like you say the book is full of. Thus, for me to see this as evidence, I’d have to go out, buy, and read that entire book. So, no, I think you still have to provide some evidence here, with details of specific studies and how they support your contention here.
Note: Sarkessian herself has actually done that. The problem is that she takes studies of passive media — TV, for example — and then tries to apply that to video games specifically, in fact arguing that because it’s interactive it’d actually be worse. The problem is that this isn’t necessarily true, especially if you want to make a “normalization” argument, as in a movie or a TV show it doesn’t break immersion for me to see other characters doing that if it isn’t something that I would normally accept, but in a game because I have to do it myself if I didn’t see it as normal it WOULD. So it’s easier to condition me to accept these things as normal when I’m a passive observer than when I have to do it myself. Sure, with exposure to enough games I might at least see that as normal in games and so get used to it that way, but then you risk me seeing it as a gameplay element, not as something that applies to real life.
Anyway, let’s look in detail at your claim, so that you can provide your studies:
Go read some data on the correlations between aggression and violence and exposure to violent media.
Obviously, correlations are not causation, and you need causation here: you need to show that playing violent games increases one’s aggression, and that it isn’t the case that people who are more aggressive simply like playing more violent games. Given your comment about the effects being measurable 30 years later, you have to be comparing players to each other, not to their own levels, and that means that you, again, might be finding the rather unstartling fact that more aggressive people like more aggressive games. But if you have better studies, and studies about video games in particular, I’m more than willing to look at them … but, no, I’m NOT going to buy that big textbook to do that, thanks.
Anrisays
Verbose Stoic @ 129:
From what I can see, in the game the characters, essentially, HAPPEN to be nude/scantily dressed, but that’s not made relevant to the action itself, and there’s nothing in the context for the player to make the link between that and the violence they can, if they choose, commit upon them. If there’s any sexualized violence there, it’s not in the game, but solely in the mind of the player.
…you do know that video game characters aren’t real people, and don’t actually do stuff – or wear stuff – not specifically put onto them by the designers, right? (Emergent behavior from procedural sources aside – I’m assuming you’re not arguing this is a case of that, yes?)
The fact that they were presented as nude strippers was a conscious decision made by the dev team. They didn’t just happen to be nude, no. They were made that way. It sounds as if you’re arguing that the devs had no choice in the matter, and that’s just plain wrong.
Someone on (or over) the dev team said “I want to include strippers , and I want them to be nude.”
You know, after you agreed with doublereed that the context of the situations matters to how they should be assessed, it’s a bit odd that every time I get into talking about the context you keep diving right back to the argument of “The designers added the nude strippers deliberately”. Yes, they did. But does just adding that mean that the example is a problematic one? I argue that it isn’t: their nudeness or stripper-outfitness doesn’t seem to be added to promote the player ogling them, it is appropriate for the setting, the game doesn’t draw attention to that in any way that should promote sexual feelings, and there’s no link from that to the violence that is optional anyway. So if you still think that this example is problematic, could you outline in some detail what bothers you about it? Because I think at this point we all agree that saying “They’re nude and strippers!” isn’t enough, don’t we?
Goodness, if all those nude female bodies in media are actually not there for straight men to oggle at, why are they even there in the first place?
This reply would mean something if I was arguing that nude female bodies are NEVER sexualized. I’m not. I’m arguing that they aren’t sexualized in that specific scene which relies only on the argument that being nude — or scantilty-clad, actually, because in that scene NEITHER of them are nude — does not mean sexualized.
They are clearly sexualized in the scenes outside in the club. There is no real sexual content or context in the scenes in the dressing room.
Saad @223,
My comment is that beyond being scantily clad there is no sexual context in that scene. If you disagree, point it out, noting that the actual conversation between the two women is about how much it sucks to be used as sexualized bribes for the police officers so that their sleazeball boss can get away with things (like, it seems, making some dancers “disappear”).
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trollssays
The mansplainer is back. I will always let those who are subject to microagressions to tell me what is and isn’t microagressions against them. I won’t listen to the oppressors, that mansplain.
Hey, there’s nothing sexualized about them, they’re just strippers, in their work wear, talking about being used as sexy bait, really, nothing to see here, move on.
Either Verbose Stoic is as thick as they seem or they have never ever watched porn.
Hey, there’s nothing sexualized about them, they’re just strippers, in their work wear, talking about being used as sexy bait, really, nothing to see here, move on.
Either Verbose Stoic is as thick as they seem or they have never ever watched porn.
Except the porn example works against you, because the sexualized nature of it is built right into the entire context, not merely what they’re wearing. To make that comparison means that you’d have to consider someone talking to a stripper to be pretty much the same on sexualization scale whether the person was negotiating for a private show or interviewing them because of the suspicious death of their best friend who also worked there. As another example, you’d have to consider the lesbian scene between Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman in “Black Swan” to be essentially a porn scene, because it’s a sex scene between two women that many men would love to see having such a scene … except the context is enough to inspire reviewers to say that no one should find that erotic in any way.
Despite what some may think, men generally don’t find women talking about being objectified and how much they hate it attractive, and that in and of itself would lessen the sexualized impact. Add in what the player is doing at the time, and they are indeed an obstacle to avoid, and their outfits seem to be irrelevant to that role, at least from the game’s perspective. Thus, if they are sexualized or, if killed, are victims of sexualized violence that seems to be something that the player brings to the game, not that the game brings to the player. And for Sarkeesian’s analysis to work, the latter is what she needs to be true.
Anrisays
Verbose Stoic @ 221:
You know, after you agreed with doublereed that the context of the situations matters to how they should be assessed, it’s a bit odd that every time I get into talking about the context you keep diving right back to the argument of “The designers added the nude strippers deliberately”. Yes, they did. But does just adding that mean that the example is a problematic one? I argue that it isn’t: their nudeness or stripper-outfitness doesn’t seem to be added to promote the player ogling them, it is appropriate for the setting, the game doesn’t draw attention to that in any way that should promote sexual feelings, and there’s no link from that to the violence that is optional anyway. So if you still think that this example is problematic, could you outline in some detail what bothers you about it? Because I think at this point we all agree that saying “They’re nude and strippers!” isn’t enough, don’t we?
I keep having to say:
The fact that they were presented as nude strippers was a conscious decision made by the dev team.
…because other people keep saying things like:
From what I can see, in the game the characters, essentially, HAPPEN to be nude/scantily dressed…
…and apparently expect not to get called out on being dead flat wrong on that point. Once these people stop being openly, repeatedly wrong about that point, I’ll stop correcting them.
Also, you seem to have changed arguments at some point – which is fine, of course.
Initially, you were arguing that this example wasn’t a problem because it wasn’t a large part of the gameplay, yes?
Now, you appear to be arguing that it isn’t a problem because despite being strippers, and despite being (I presume – correct me if I am wrong) the only nude character models, the devs didn’t intend for them to be viewed as sexual objects. I’m checking because I don’t want to misunderstand your position.
I suppose the obvious question to that would be: why go to the trouble of making them nude? If they’re not intended to be sexualized, their street clothes would have served just as well, and probably (again, correct me if I am wrong) have been built out of assets used elsewhere in the game.
You appear to be arguing that the devs were designing nude models for the strippers in this scene, while thinking “Boy, I sure hope no-one thinks these girls are sexy! ‘Cause that goes against the whole nude-stripper-vibe we’re going for here. These are strictly the non-sexy nude strippers.”
Not buying that, myself.
Rowan vet-techsays
Now, correct me if I’m wrong… but isn’t the act of ‘stripping’ one that involves wearing some clothing… and removing it? That means that they have clothes on, to some degree, when they are not actively engaging in stripping.
So tell me again how nude strippers aren’t ‘sexualized’? I’d love to share that new bit of stupid with my coworkers who got such a kick out of the last iteration.
johannes9126says
A lot of discussion still going on here. Of course there is no point debating that games often contain sexualized male and female characters and are mostly targeted at (youthful) male gamers. But this is a choice the game designers make and they have every right to do so.
Why? Because no one could prove that sexualized games or visuals have an impact in real life (same goes with violence). Or did anyone see Anita – after allegedly playing 1000s of hours of sexually perverted games – groping mens or womens buttocks in the train?
So quit pretending that pixel-sexualization is a bad thing and quit trying to censor game design – as already happened, like in Dragon Age 3.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trollssays
Why? Because no one could prove that sexualized games or visuals have an impact in real life (same goes with violence).
Sorry, it’s been done. Quit lying to yourself, then you can quit lying to us. We know better.
Rowan vet-techsays
Why should women care about being seen primarily as sexual objects in media? Oh… I dunno, because that is a reflection of how we’re seen in real life, too? Our primary worth is treated as being how attractive we are to straight men. If we aren’t attractive, what we say has no merit. If we’re too attractive, then we’re airhead bimbos and what we say has no merit. We women have a shelf life, and once we hit 30 it’s all downhill from there.
Also, as an FYI, most of the males in games aren’t sexualised. They’re idealized and there’s a big difference between how male characters are portrayed and treated.
Anrisays
johannes9126 @ 230:
Why? Because no one could prove that sexualized games or visuals have an impact in real life (same goes with violence). Or did anyone see Anita – after allegedly playing 1000s of hours of sexually perverted games – groping mens or womens buttocks in the train?
So quit pretending that pixel-sexualization is a bad thing and quit trying to censor game design – as already happened, like in Dragon Age 3.
As I said to you, waaaay back @ 152:
For the hard of reading such as johannes9126, I don’t want to censor games. I’m hoping that societal attitudes will change to the point that sexualized violence against women would be as marginal and widely reviled someday as a game in which the player assists in a racially motivated lynching would be today.
Hard of reading, indeed.
The argument I’m making isn’t that games create this attitude, it’s that they reflect it. They’re a symptom, not a cause. By highlighting the symptom, we bring attention to the cause.
This isn’t hard to understand… unless you’re actively trying not to.
Athywren - Frustration Familiarity Pandasays
Because no one could prove that sexualized games or visuals have an impact in real life (same goes with violence).
What the hell is it with this irrational notion that, because a game cannot turn you into something you are not, that it cannot have any impact at all?
I am not dead. Does that mean I haven’t been sick for the past two weeks? No. Because something not having a large impact is totally different from it having no impact. Every book we read, every conversation we have has an impact upon us. Maybe not a large one, but an impact nonetheless. We are not the islands of libertarian will that so many anti-rational gamers like to believe.
What the hell is it with this irrational notion that, because a game cannot turn you into something you are not, that it cannot have any impact at all?
For this to be true you’d have to be born with all your ideas and values already in your brain and nothing can ever change that.
Or you’d have to be a computer and unless somebody exactly tells you something and that somebody has “administrator access”, this doesn’t have any impact on you at fucking all.
Athywren - Frustration Familiarity Pandasays
Or you’d have to be a computer and unless somebody exactly tells you something and that somebody has “administrator access”, this doesn’t have any impact on you at fucking all.
User Account Control
Do you want to allow this app to make changes to your ideology?
Because no one could prove that sexualized games or visuals have an impact in real life (same goes with violence).
Such idiocy. Everything has an impact on us, our thinking, our actions, and what we are willing to label as ‘okay’. Cumulative effect, yes?
johannes9126says
@ Nerd #231 and so on…
“Sorry, it’s been done. Quit lying to yourself, then you can quit lying to us. We know better.”
Oh, riiiiight? Studies, please. Oh, wait… You can’t provide these. Studies in the U.S. and Europe are showing that video games neither make you sexist nor violent. Games may be a distraction, a waste of time and sometimes even adictive, but the points you people and Anita are making regarding this topic are utter bullshit.
johannes9126says
Addition: Most people are able to tell phantasy from reality. Comparing the drivel of Ayn Rand that clearly is pointed at the real world to computer games is quite desperate.
Rowan vet-techsays
Johannes9126 translated:
“I like big bouncy boobies and nearly naked women, thus overly sexualized women in games is totes okay and isn’t a sign of a larger issue with my culture in general and you all suck!”
Loftysays
Poor johannes9126 doesn’t want to change for the better, he likes being obnoxious. And he can’t spell “fantasy”, poor sod.
…and apparently expect not to get called out on being dead flat wrong on that point. Once these people stop being openly, repeatedly wrong about that point, I’ll stop correcting them.
Since that quote is mine, let me state directly what I thought I had adequately implied: that wasn’t what I meant by that sentence. In that case, your interpretation that the designers put it in deliberately was irrelevant because I was talking about what the scene was in context. And, in context, they happen to be in their stripper outfits. In context, as far as I can tell, that is to signify that they are stripper employees. That’s it.
We’ve gone round and round and round over what that deliberate choice means, and I’m still waiting for you to state what your precise problem with the scene is beyond “It contains strippers”.
Also, you seem to have changed arguments at some point – which is fine, of course.
Initially, you were arguing that this example wasn’t a problem because it wasn’t a large part of the gameplay, yes?
No. There are two arguments being considered here, as I’ve said before:
1) Sarkeesian’s about the game inviting and encouraging the player to engage in the behaviour of killing the strippers. This was what I was originally talking about, and what the “it’s not a big part of the game” argument was PARTLY meant to address.
2) What I presume is your argument — since you deny caring about that one — which is that this is, nevertheless, a case of sexualized violence that we should reduce if not eliminate from games. I wouldn’t use the “It’s not a big part of the game” argument there because that wouldn’t mean that it isn’t a problematic example, as I had hoped that both my explicit statement of that and my pointing out how your example of how that argument might work really wouldn’t. The argument against what I think is your point is, to narrow it down to the key elements, that they are not presented in a sexualized manner despite being scantily clad, and that even if they were the game doesn’t like that sexualization to the violence, which is what i think is required for sexualized violence.
So, given this, can you actually address the arguments I’m making against YOUR point? Preferably by stating why you think the scene IS sexualized violence?
I suppose the obvious question to that would be: why go to the trouble of making them nude? If they’re not intended to be sexualized, their street clothes would have served just as well, and probably (again, correct me if I am wrong) have been built out of assets used elsewhere in the game.
They actually AREN’T nude, just scantily clad. The one that Sarkeesian focuses on in the video is essentially wearing a bikini, while the other is wearing what amounts to falsies on her nipples and panties. As far as I can tell from looking at other videos in the sequence, they DID build this out of assets used elsewhere in the game … specifically, the models for who you see outside in the main club area, where I have already conceded that yes, those models are sexualized. But it’s not because they are scantily clad, but because they essentially “put on a show”; they dance for the player and flirtatiously interact with them. None of that is on display in this scene; in fact, they are unaware that the player is there, and if they do become aware of their presence they, at most, run away in fear.
You appear to be arguing that the devs were designing nude models for the strippers in this scene, while thinking “Boy, I sure hope no-one thinks these girls are sexy! ‘Cause that goes against the whole nude-stripper-vibe we’re going for here. These are strictly the non-sexy nude strippers.”
Not buying that, myself.
In context, there’s nothing overtly sexual about them, and so they’re no more sexual or sexy that, say, having a scene where you walk along a beach. Also, in the conversation they talk about how badly they’re being used for their sexuality, which is at a minimum designed to make you hate the target and want to kill him (as it demonstrates just how bad a guy he is). As I’ve said repeatedly, if the player takes the opportunity to ogle or thinks of them as sexual in that scene, that’s what they bring to the game, not what the game brings to them.
Now, correct me if I’m wrong… but isn’t the act of ‘stripping’ one that involves wearing some clothing… and removing it? That means that they have clothes on, to some degree, when they are not actively engaging in stripping.
So tell me again how nude strippers aren’t ‘sexualized’? I’d love to share that new bit of stupid with my coworkers who got such a kick out of the last iteration.
They’re actually pretty much dressed as they would appear outside in the club. One of them is essentially in a bikini, the other is wearing a bit less. So they are, in fact, pretty much just dressed as strippers/waitresses in that club would be dressed.
@232,
Why should women care about being seen primarily as sexual objects in media? Oh… I dunno, because that is a reflection of how we’re seen in real life, too? Our primary worth is treated as being how attractive we are to straight men.
Many of the people that Sarkeesian and others criticize — and who criticize them — agree that all women in games ought not merely be reduced to their attractiveness, or to sexual objects. The problem is that in a lot of Sarkeesian’s examples that isn’t what’s happening. In this one, the game seems to be trying very hard to establish them as people, not as merely sexual objects. In Watchdogs, the game again seems to be trying to encourage you to find the slave auction disturbing instead of sexual. And I note that a lot of the responses are pointing to nothing more THAN the nudity or sexy outfits to show that they are being treated as nothing more than that. As I pointed out, if after beating a game I get an option to put a female character into even a sexualized outfit, how does that reduce her merely to a sexual object? If I liked the character, making her sexy is a bonus; it doesn’t mean that I think of her as any less of a great character, as I pointed out wrt Shepard and the cocktail dress.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trollssays
he problem is that in a lot of Sarkeesian’s examples that isn’t what’s happening. I
Classic example of mansplain’. Your opinion is that of an apologizer, a non-listening male who tries to override the analysis of victims of microaggresions caused by bad sexist programming. You are part of the problem. You will only be part of the solution when you stop your mansplainin’. No analysis has to be perfect, and you give the strong impression you want bad sexist programming to continue. Otherwise, you wouldn’t continue your mansplainin’ ad nauseum.
Rowan vet-techsays
They’re actually pretty much dressed as they would appear outside in the club.
Soooo…. you’re saying that they’re dressed up how they’d be in a highly sexualized environment, doing a highly sexualized thing, not how they’d be ‘back stage’…. and somehow this is not them sexualized? Doublereed said that nude strippers in a strip club wouldn’t necessarily be sexualized women. Nude women, in a strip club, not sexy. wtf. And you can’t see how this is absurd? Are you so goddamn verbose that you miss the obvious in your mountains of unnecessary wording?
In this one, the game seems to be trying very hard to establish them as people, not as merely sexual objects.
As I pointed out, if after beating a game I get an option to put a female character into even a sexualized outfit, how does that reduce her merely to a sexual object? If I liked the character, making her sexy is a bonus; it doesn’t mean that I think of her as any less of a great character, as I pointed out wrt Shepard and the cocktail dress.
So what you’re telling me is that you can’t imagine a character being used for multiple things at one time. Someone can be a strong character AND highly sexualized. Your enjoyment of the cocktail dress (which is inappropriate dress for fighting, right?) turns her into a great character AND highly sexualized eye candy for you, which you like. Her worth to you goes up (“is a bonus”) when you get to view her in a fetish outfit.
Anrisays
Verbose Stoic @242:
What I presume is your argument — since you deny caring about that one — which is that this is, nevertheless, a case of sexualized violence that we should reduce if not eliminate from games.
(emphasis added)
Third time:
For the hard of reading such as johannes9126, I don’t want to censor games. I’m hoping that societal attitudes will change to the point that sexualized violence against women would be as marginal and widely reviled someday as a game in which the player assists in a racially motivated lynching would be today.
I am only arguing, in this thread, that it should be acknowledged, not removed.
To continue…
The argument against what I think is your point is, to narrow it down to the key elements, that they are not presented in a sexualized manner despite being scantily clad, and that even if they were the game doesn’t like that sexualization to the violence, which is what i think is required for sexualized violence.
We appear to be disagreeing on the concept that strippers, because of what they are, are inherently sexualized, especially when wearing end-of-a-strip-show outfits (as you have corrected me that they are not nude – thank you), even when not stripping at the moment.
Let me see if I can put it to you this way: is a Klansman in full regalia a significant symbol of racial oppression when just standing on a street corner? Or is he only radicalized when actually burning crosses or lynching someone?
Is the titular character of the game, the Hitman, only frightening when actually killing someone? Or do people recognize him for a killer and flee when they become aware of him?
Also, I’m not entirely sure why I should trust your judgment about what constitutes this link more than I should trust the women pointing it out to me.
In context, there’s nothing overtly sexual about them, and so they’re no more sexual or sexy that, say, having a scene where you walk along a beach. Also, in the conversation they talk about how badly they’re being used for their sexuality, which is at a minimum designed to make you hate the target and want to kill him (as it demonstrates just how bad a guy he is). As I’ve said repeatedly, if the player takes the opportunity to ogle or thinks of them as sexual in that scene, that’s what they bring to the game, not what the game brings to them.
So, they’re sex workers, being used for sex, but aren’t sexualized characters?
Um, ‘k. Again, not buying that.
The point of being sexualized isn’t that the player must find them sexy. Mind, you I’m willing to entertain the notion that the devs might have found them so, and/or might have expected the players to find them so. My argument doesn’t rest on knowing what the devs or players were actually thinking, only what they were willing, by their actions, to accept.
Soooo…. you’re saying that they’re dressed up how they’d be in a highly sexualized environment, doing a highly sexualized thing, not how they’d be ‘back stage’…. and somehow this is not them sexualized?
They’re in the dressing area backstage. It’s perfectly reasonable for them to be wearing the outfits that they’d be dressing in to go on stage. Heck, it’s perfectly reasonable for them to be wearing those things backstage because, well, they have to go on stage and come off of on stage, right?
Doublereed said that nude strippers in a strip club wouldn’t necessarily be sexualized women. Nude women, in a strip club, not sexy. wtf.
“Sexy” does not mean “sexualized”. In order for characters to be sexualized, I think we can presume that at least one of two things must be true (add more if you think I’m missing any):
1) The characters must be reduced to their sexuality, without any focus on any other parts of their personality.
2) The outfits must be inappropriately sexual, and so clearly designed to evoke sex in circumstances where they shouldn’t be, and presented as if that isn’t inappropriate, so that the audience is encouraged to think of it as reasonable and expected, even for that sort of character.
1) is true of the women in the club, but not in the scene Sarkeesian shows. 2) is not true of either case; strippers are appropriately dressed as strippers in a context where they’d be dressed as strippers.
You need to address the point I raised earlier: By what seems to be your logic, there is no difference in sexualization between a case where a woman is being propositioned for a private show or being interviewed by a detective about the suspected murder of her co-worker as long as they are both dressed as strippers. Is this what you mean to imply?
So what you’re telling me is that you can’t imagine a character being used for multiple things at one time. Someone can be a strong character AND highly sexualized. Your enjoyment of the cocktail dress (which is inappropriate dress for fighting, right?) turns her into a great character AND highly sexualized eye candy for you, which you like. Her worth to you goes up (“is a bonus”) when you get to view her in a fetish outfit.
In Mass Effect you never wear the dress while actually fighting. It’s only for walking around the ship.
Shepard IS a great character. That I also get to dress her in a way that is visually appealing to me — even if that appeal is sexual — is only a bonus, but doesn’t change her character. Thus, is she “highly sexualized”? I say not, in line with what I say above: doing this does not reduce her to nothing more than her sex appeal, and I am quite aware that it isn’t appropriate dress, but the game does not present it as such; it is something you can do, but making that choice, again, means that everyone realizes that it’s not typical clothing.
@247,
Go watch the video. The character model swap really does highlight the absurdity. That character *totally* isn’t sexualized, right?
I’ll concede that that character probably is. I fail to see how that impacts anything I’ve said, especially given that I’ve already said that the strippers in Hitman were sexualized out in the club. The argument isn’t that it never happens, but that it’s prevalence and its impact may be being overstated when Sarkeesian runs off into massive claims about it using examples that don’t actually imply what she says they imply.
I am only arguing, in this thread, that it should be acknowledged, not removed.
If you look at your comparisons, I think it reasonable to conclude that you — as with Sarkeesian — want us to acknowledge them as the first step to removing them. At any rate, whether or not they ARE those cases is what’s in dispute here.
We appear to be disagreeing on the concept that strippers, because of what they are, are inherently sexualized, especially when wearing end-of-a-strip-show outfits (as you have corrected me that they are not nude – thank you), even when not stripping at the moment.
The argument you’d have to make here, pretty much, is that ANY representation of a stripper is inherently sexualized, pretty much no matter what they’re wearing or doing. Or, at a minimum, that representing a stripper as they’d look as a stripper is inherently sexualizing and therefore any such scene is a sexualized scene, and that therefore any violence towards them is sexualized violence. This, however, suggests that representing strippers as strippers and how strippers would look must be sexualizing, and if we want to avoid that we couldn’t represent them or present them in works at all. Even if true, the cure seems worse than the disease. Thus, a more grounded suggestion would be to present them as at least MORE than just that in some way. I argue that this scene, at least, does that.
So let me reiterate the question: do you believe that the level of sexualization is the same if you have a stripper in a stripper outfit being propositioned for a private show as if you had that same character model being interviewed by a detective about the murder of her co-worker?
Also, I’m not entirely sure why I should trust your judgment about what constitutes this link more than I should trust the women pointing it out to me.
You shouldn’t trust either of us. That’s what we need objective evidence and arguments for. That’s what I’m claiming Sarkeesian lacks or misrepresents.
Both sides need more than “This is how it looks to me”, but I’ve pointed out in detail why I don’t think it should count, and so am at least TRYING to go beyond that.
So, they’re sex workers, being used for sex, but aren’t sexualized characters?
As I said, men generally don’t find women complaining about being ogled a turn-on, and the conversation about the sex is, well, pretty much that.
My argument doesn’t rest on knowing what the devs or players were actually thinking, only what they were willing, by their actions, to accept.
So what is it that you think the devs or players are willing to accept? That there are women dressed as strippers in a strip club? That strippers and strip clubs exist? The player is not encouraged to think that the exploitation is a good thing because it’s being done by the person that they’re supposed to be killing, and the tone isn’t such that the player is supposed to then feel SYMPATHY for their target (it’d better be described as giving a reason why the player is the only one that CAN actually take them out). So, from that specific scene, what problematic things are players and devs accepting?
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trollssays
Still mansplainin’ Verbose Stoic. Try silence, as you need to listen, not preach.
throwaway, butcher of tongues, mauler of metaphorsays
VS @250
If you look at your comparisons, I think it reasonable to conclude that you — as with Sarkeesian — want us to acknowledge them as the first step to removing them.
Hence your motivation. You have no desire to see them removed because you a) enjoy them b) benefit from them. So you work against removal. What, don’t like that? Turnabouts fair play, as they say.
That’s a good video.
I’m surprised how much straight-up pornography is put into those games. It’s just bizarre and condescending.
“Women as reward” in video games, and young males feeling that they’re entitled to sex if they just learn the right combination* of words and actions?
Could there be … a connection!?
(* left, left, x-button, y-button, right, right, right, turbo)
Gotta enclose the whole country in a plexiglass globe and boost the whole thing into orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
No. 3 belongs in a different thread….
Well, Milo Yiannopoulos has declared victory, because in this video Sarkeesian looks tired and fat. He says. I don’t see it, but hey, OK, assholes gotta project.
Luckily, someone has prepared a .GIF from this very video to sum up my feelings for the witless Milo Yiannopoulos.
I know fat and tired, being both. Sarkeesian is neither. That refutes the intellectual “facts” of MY’s argument (*Waaaa*). Your last sentence is the correct assessment of the post.
When she got to the bit about “trophyism” Trump popped to mind, The ragmuffin who trumpets his masculinity by pointing at the beauty of the woman he’s shacking with. And who tries to mirror it (darkly) by running that competition where women are awarded a trophy based on their beauty.
agggg
I paused the vid there, so … BRB
I’m not a doctor, but I hear imodium can help with that.
Milo Yiannopoulos declares a lot of things.
Just read a few comments from (reasonable) gamers (let’s just take them at their word) on the Huffington Post article, and the biggest problem I see is that they keep making the same incorrect and insubstantial arguments:
1. She’s cherry picking the worst games.
2. She’s picking on an easy target (she should be making videos on the oppression of women in the Middle East).
3. She never shows any of the positive examples (she does)
4. I’m a girl gamer and I’m not offended by these games.
5. Duh, they’re pandering their almost exclusively male demographic.
6. Why beat up on video games while books, movies, TV show, music, do all the same things?
It’s almost as though they could find nothing of real substance to complain about in the video…
That goes back go her first video. Pathetic, unintellectual, immature, misogynistic, responses….
I just wish the videos came out quicker, but I understand why they don’t. The series is amazing, and yeah, I’ve yet to see critics with substantial counters to them myself…
I think this one is her best video so far.
I’d look tired too if I was dealing with assholes 24/7/365.
She speaks concisely, clearly and to the point. She does especially well with the concepts of objectification and male entitlement.
Tacitus @ 11
Of the arguments only number 1 isn’t completely ridiculous. It’s falsifiable, not immediately falsified by watching the video or checking Sarkeesian’s Wikipedia page and it attacks the substance of the video. Still, it’s probably without merit.
Ice Swimmer (#16)
It doesn’t really, though. The availability of less-than-the-worst examples does not diminish Sarkeesian’s point that these tropes exist and are pervasive—quite the opposite. It’s actually a reference to the ad hominem about how she’s trying to spread some agenda. In fact, if you say “so what?” to the accusation in number one, I guarantee that’s the response you’ll get. Moreover, I’m sure if she didn’t show “the worst” then the same people would somehow hold that against her, too.
@16 Ice Swimmer
Actually #1 is funny because it reveals the strange logic of these people. It only makes sense if you think she is launching an attack against all video games or something. But she isn’t, she is just identifying tropes and discussing them. She doesn’t make any statistical claim about industry-wide prevalence as far as I can remember, so it doesn’t matter how often a trope appears in games. And so cherry picking would be impossible. So it actually doesn’t attack the substance of the video.
Correct me if I’m wrong, of course.
I mean, it’s like going over to TV Tropes.org and complaining that every single page is cherry picking. The complaint doesn’t make any sense.
Oh, boy. Samus as the thumbnail screenshot! She knows exactly what she’s doing. Love it.
I’d actually disagree with you on number 1, Ice Swimmer. The popularity of the games is a red herring; the point is the clear pattern across the sheer number of them. Every Jim Crow routine or racist joke could’ve been a flop, and this wouldn’t have made the racist tropes any less of an element.
It’s basically just a variant of sophisticated theology, which isn’t even an argument so much as a schoolyard taunt. None of the games that feminists are able to criticize are ever sophisticated games, they’re just low-hanging fruit being selectively plucked because the feminists know that the good games would clearly demonstrate just how far out of their depth they really are. Bawk bawk!
Ok, number 1 is less good that I thought. She lists popular game franchises with pernicious tropes. Anyway, my point wasn’t that Sarkeesian is wrong, it was that there isn’t much that you can put against her, if you are intellectually honest.
I know a lot of people here are saying this might be true to throw the opposition a bone, but it’s not true. Resident Evil. GTA. MGS. Mario and Zelda. Metroid. God of War. Mass Effect. Hitman. Witcher. Come on. She’s talking about some of the most influential and profitable games on the market. Rank game franchises by sales, and I bet she’s talking about at least 5 of the top 20. This is not cherry picking. This is commenting on massively popular culture.
@22, Ice Swimmer
Oh ya I didn’t think that was what you were saying :)
Now that I’ve watched more, she does sometimes make some claims of statistical fact. But she doesn’t say or imply that the sample she has shown is what we should use to verify those statistical claims.
I may be misunderstanding, but I always felt most criticism of her work was at best pre-emptive. To my mind she isn’t saying, “This is why games are bad.” She isn’t even saying, “These are things that are bad in games.” She seems to me to be saying, “These are plausible categories that we can place a certain class of (bad things in games) in, providing a common language for continuing discussion.”
The pre-emptive nature being, once you agree that enough of the examples are plausible to justify the creation of the category, you have essentially admitted there are problematic issues with at least some games AND further discussion is indeed warranted.
And I’d think you’d have to be a grand master of double-think to reject categorically that no example of significance can be found resembling any of the tropes she has identified. No true Scotsman doesn’t seem adequate to cover the mental gymnastics involved in throwing two out of three AAA games under the bus.
Another solid video by Ms. Sarkeesian. I don’t know where she finds the resilience to shrug off the crap flung her way.
Also, I’ll just continue my crush on her from a distance. *admires*
The responses in 11 were read by a funny looking cartoon robot in the year 3000. They were so overflowing with teh stoopid that it actually erased its Asimov protocol programming to the point it wanted to “kill all humans.” Anita has some powerful kung fu to be able to produce vids like this in the midst of a hurricane of shitbaggery. Some day her work will pay off…some day.
Equations, huh? That reminds me of the time when I almost became a PUA. I thought almost exactly like that back then. Not about anyone owing me sex per se, though, more along the lines of “you throw the right behaviour patterns in, the desired effects come out”. And the PUAs promised to have all the answers, like all good cults do.
I was kinda surprised that she cited Alice as a good example, though. I found her costumes just as sexy as any other examples :D
So long as one has something higher than a grade 2 listening comprehension, it is easy enough to see that she actually has a fair bit of praise for the Metroid games here, as well as the Resident Evil games, specifically for their portrayal of strong capable female protagonists who (in the default versions) were actually sensibly dressed.
It’s almost as if, *gasp*, a game, like any other work of art or popular culture, can have both good and bad elements within it simultaneously, and doesn’t solely have to segregate into a paragon of perfection bin on one hand, and a crass junk bin on the other.
Like how not all the CGI in Lord of the Rings was good and not all the CGI in The Hobbit was terrible.
(She also praised that Alice game, too)
I am not sure that we should put to much value in these videos. It seems that much of what is included within them is fabricated or selectively chosen. If one tackles her assertions step by step, very little of assertions stand up to scrutiny.
nevilleneville, do you have anything factual to back up your assertions? If One looks at your post One sees the signs of hurt brogamer feelings.
nevilleneville @ 30,
Please give some specific examples. In fact you could tackle her assertions step by step, otherwise it will appear that your own assertion doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuRSaLZidWI
Yes, have a gander. Plenty of issues with the critiques. As for being a gamerbro or whatever they are called, i’m certainly not one of them. Why you get annoyed at someone who disagrees with you……. I am not sure, but it doesn’t help the conversation.
That video nevillenveville just linked is a thunderf00t video. Just to give people a heads up on the kind of credibility that’s being brought in.
Attacking the messenger, not the message. That is hardly an argument. But you know that. There are plenty of other vids not made by the “Wrong”type of person. Address the matter at hand, not the horse it rode in on.
thunderf00t is a very specific “wrong” person, with a long history here, so I figured I’d warn people. But I’ll let the regulars sort it out for you.
Oh I know, but that doesn’t change anything. But this is a place for adults, not a creche. If we avoided everything that wasn’t to our tastes, we wouldn’t get up in the morning. Address the issues, otherwise there isn’t an argument to be made. But here is another little insight for you, without your bete noire.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVFLCpz8_jc
Sorry, nevilleneville, I’m really not interested in arguing with you about Anita Sarkeesian. I got about three seconds into your second link and lost interest when the guy started whining about the fact that she calls her series a “conversation”. Y’all are way too obsessive about this, and it’s tedious.
I wasn’t looking for an argument per se, I was replying to an earlier message. So you avoid criticism of a point on the basis that……. you don’t have a good rebuttal. That is cool. Thanks for proving a point to me.
nevilleneville (#37)
Since you haven’t been addressing jack shit, only linking to certain professional misogynists, is this your admission you don’t have an argument?
For someone not looking for an argument, you sure want the last word, don’t you?
If you were a genuine adult you would know that linkwanking is not an argument. A grown up can put into his/her own words and do some fucking typing to make their own case. The video showed a long list of women presented as squeaky toys devoid of personal will for Pavlov’s Dudebros to get all Drooly Andrews over. Some were more gratuitous than others but all defending a valid point about a problem inherent in old boys club programming companies. It’s fair warning to a growing crowd that is far past just finding it all puerile and tiresome and wanting to do something about it by not supporting said franchises. The salient point is sitting out there in midfield with a fucking marching band and police escort, so how are you going to defend not cluing in, Mr. Bête Noire Holmes?
Err… wow. I’ve somehow managed to avoid the games with women as XP dispensers. That’s a bit weird.
Interestingly, I can usually think of a few criticisms over the course of a video which then get addressed toward the end, but in this one I didn’t pick up on anything where I thought she went off base.
@nevilleneville,
Honestly, I haven’t watched the entire video you linked to, because I remember it from over a year ago when it was originally shown to be clueless and can’t be bothered with it, but I’ll point out a couple of issues from the description:
Essentially, “she’s cherrypicking,” which could be a valid point as has been mentioned upthread, if she was attempting to argue that the entire game or all games were irredeemably sexist. However, she argues that sexist tropes exist. That’s basically her argument. Everything else is pointing them out and describing them. That they make up about 1% of the game doesn’t make that any less true, but the fact that mr f00t brings it up does imply that, unlike a good skeptic, he took no care to ensure he knew what he was arguing against before he started his argument.
Umm… firstly, this is false – Sarkeesian’s representation of the game used video clips that a great many of her critics will gladly inform you was stolen – STOLEN!! – from other youtube accounts. Hence, at least one person viewed the game as she represented it. Secondly, it’s worth noting that, again, f00t shows his ignorance of his opponent’s position. Her claim is not that everyone views it that way, that most do, or even that many do. Her claim is that it is there, which it is.
It’s not at all like that. In any real world situation, even in a utopian society, we all have something approximating free will and the power the choose our own actions. I could, if I had the skill and desire to do so, pick the pocket of every person in the building in which I’m currently typing and create a crime problem right here. It’s also possible that I could do that in a game, but that game would first need to give me the ability to do so. In a game, you have the power to perform only those actions which are coded into the game. If they are not coded in, you cannot perform them. This is not a comparison made by a rational actor, considering and dissecting an opposing viewpoint, it’s kneejerk bullshittery spewed out with no comprehension of the viewpoint he claims to “BUST.”
The fact that he made such a pathetic argument makes me wonder if my high opinion of his earlier videos was down to the simplicity of arguing against creationists and the ease of appearing impressive in with such simple opponents, or if it was simply because I was too young and naive to fully comprehend skepticism at the time. The more I see of his recent attempts, I suspect it was the latter. Seriously, understanding the thing you’re arguing against is skepticism 101, surely? So how does he manage to fail at it so comprehensively with this topic? The fact that an audience, supposedly of skeptics, laps this insipid bullshit up is just breathtaking to me.
Christ, i can taste the salt in those tears from here. I see no valid points, just a lot of words and frustration. As i said, calling people dude bros and misogynists and lacking factual evidence doesn’t constitute a point. As my links show, the practice of ignoring pertinent information and just listening to rhetoric isn’t the course of action a skeptical mind should pursue.
Athywren – Frustration Familiarity Panda
Maybe people don’t agree with all he has said, yet at the same time don’t want to live in a hugbox where everyone tries their hardest to be the most right on and at the same time avoid the glaring truth because they want the warmth of group acceptance.
Bitter rambling can’t avert eyes from the obvious flaws in the videos, and the position itself.
How is it you contact PZ these days to ask him to clean up troll barf?
Huh… maybe I should just stop assuming people genuinely want a discussion when they say they want a discussion.
The man demonstrates clear ignorance of his opponent’s position. That’s not something to agree or disagree over.
My point is a simple one. We shouldn’t just blindly support someone’s views, however sympathetic we are to them, if neither evidence for the assertions is ably made or the individual is actively pushing an agenda for personal benefit. I think that is an acceptable point.
nevilleneville, you’re still reacting like a brogamer with hurt feefees. Show us some clear reasoning instead of tone trolling and thunderfool linking and you might be answered seriously.
lol nevillenville that video isn’t even a critique about the video in question. It’s off-topic. Of course, I suppose your point was just to declare victory without even using your own words, which is just sad. You could at least rephrase his points or something to involve your cognition rather than just copying links and posting vagueries. Makes you nothing more than a really dull troll.
I mean geez, usually trolls at least make me angry or annoyed. But you’re not even trying here. 2/10.
Oh look, I found a video of nevilleneville having a chat with some like-minded pals.
Athywren,
Well, let’s not let the opportunity go to waste, then, shall we? So, from 43:
There are two problems here. The first problem is that both in her arguments and even in the idea of “trope” itself the implication is that this is common or normal, not that this happens at some point in some very small minority of the media. Going beyond the videos themselves (which do this), the whole “Gamers are over” movement is commenting that these sorts of tropes are rife in both gaming media and in gaming culture. So if she uses an example that 1% of a game that’s in a genre that’s a minority of the games out there, she’s misrepresenting how common these things are in gaming in general. Which isn’t to say that they don’t exist and aren’t even problematic at times, but that the problem may not be as big and she implies it is.
The second problem is that the way she states it misrepresents the actual game, which is a trap you fall into as well. She presents it as being a case where the game allows and encourages players to kill and sexualize the bodies of the strippers (and women in general) while taken as described what it really means is that the game has a strip club level — not unreasonable given its subject matter — and that you can treat everyone inside the strip club the way you can treat them everywhere else in the game. So any demand to take that out and not allow it is a demand to either take it out of the entire game, or to treat these characters specially, either by not having strippers in a strip club, having them be fully-dressed when they wouldn’t be, or denying the player the ability to kill them and hide their bodies. But the implication is that this was put in specially to allow for the problematic tropes she references, which is almost certainly not the case.
For her argument to matter, it has to be the case that we ought to CARE about what she’s talking about, and this merely being there for a very small part of the game and it being merely emergent behaviour from what is reasonable given the game series itself and its general interactions that probably aren’t problematic on its own really does give us reasons to wonder why we should care.
Also note that he claims to have looked for it and didn’t find it in most of the more popular walkthoughs, which means that sure, you can do it, but there’s no evidence that most people actually do, which means they wouldn’t see it at all, and so again it’s hard to see it as a problem. This is particularly problematic since Sarkeesian explicitly states that the game ENCOURAGES people to do these things and yet, seemingly, most people DON’T. Either the game completely fails at its goal or it doesn’t encourage as much as she implies.
Get we talk about the actual content of the video posted, not the video from more than a year ago?
We’ve had more than enough time to talk about the Hitman reference. Even if you disagree with the reference, it’s not at all relevant to the new video. Are you saying that you disagree with one of her references in this video, or is this a distraction thing?
I have yet to see evidence to back up your assertions and bad misogynist opinion, and all you have is links to a professional misogynist. All the intellect argument of a gnat.
nevilleneville is stupid and wrong, but he’s going to work harder to get banned as a troll — although linking to Thunderf00t and Sargon of Akkad is a good start.
Really…”cherry picking” is a stupid argument here. It’s like declaring that there’s no problem in Ferguson because there are more black people walking around alive than dead black people lying in the street. The fact is that Sarkeesian backs up her claim that many video games rely on lazy, sexist tropes by showing a lot of very popular video games relying on lazy, sexist tropes.
Arg, I am so tired of people that refuse to argue their own points, like nevilleneville above, and would rather post links to videos. You are in a comment section, if you want people to reply to the content you have to actually put some work into it, and make your own arguments, otherwise I might as well go comment on the video. It gives me no reason to engage with you, you are not making an argument.
Use links to cite sources, to add extra information. They should not your full argument. Also, why are videos so popular when it comes to gamers that dislike Feminist Frequency? Can none of them write an article? I am going to scream the next time someone sends me to a rambling, hour long video to make a point.
When Sarkeesian sets out to talk about sexism in video games, I don’t know why she talk about video games with sexism in them.
If I were pointing out sexism in video games, I wouldn’t talk about video games with sexism in them.
I’d talk about video games without sexism in them.
@57 Saad — I see what you’re doing there! It’s almost as if you destroyed Verbose Stoic’s exhaustive apologetics with an itta-bitty polemical jiu-jitsu. Slow….clap…..
These complaints about “cherry-picking” ring hollow when she keeps providing examples from bestselling games in major franchises. And it’s completely fine with me if people disagree with specific points. Media criticism inherently has a lot of subjectivity, so naturally people will disagree with her about, e.g., her analysis of the fact that you can kill the strippers in game X. That’s totally fine. But there’s just no reasonable way to disagree with her overarching thesis.
Cat Mara @ 6
I enjoyed the “gif” so much, i did a quick conversion to actual gif file format.
http://s26.postimg.org/xqlds3u7t/Anita_sigh.gif
I suppose if i weren’t lazy and in a hury at the moment, i’d do it without a web service that leaves it’s silly watermark.
This is most certainly not true. “Trope” does not in any way imply “common” or “normal”. Tropes are literary devices that can be of any frequency.
When it comes to media, the issue isn’t “normal”, it is “normalization”. A problematic trope can exist in just a single example of media, the rarest possible of the rare, but if that example of media is a blockbuster with an audience of millions, then that is an issue.
Metroid. God of War. Grand Theft Auto. Resident Evil.
Those are some might BIG cherries….
48 @ nevilleneville,
Great! A wonderful point, glad you brought it up!
We don’t blindly support one anothers’ views here – perhaps you’ve seen some of the arguments that have been had here? – we encourage free thought. Hence the name of the community, actually.
See, we don’t blindly support one another. We just think that you’re wrong. We suggest that you get out of your ‘hugbox’ (what an insulting term, why are you using it if you just want reasonable discourse?) and perhaps try on a different pair of glasses for awhile?
Don’t link to videos as an argument – use the videos as support. Make your points clearly, compactly, and with a minimum of fuss. No loaded words (like ‘hugbox’, ‘blindly support’, ‘agenda for personal benefit’, and other assumptions). Engage replies directly and clearly. Avoid needless diversion. Learn and grow! \o/
Welcome to Pharyngula, happy posting!
Verbose Stoic @ 52:
So… your point is that the game designers spent their time and money to develop these resources in the hope that they would never be used?
Is that what you’re saying?
Should we assume that you believe that the sexualized costumes and situations actually mentioned in the video (that this thread is, yanno, supposedly actually about) were also created without intent to be used?
Because otherwise, your argument begins to seem to be (at the risk of putting words in your mouth): “Yeah, the developers want people to use women this way, but most players don’t bother.”
Which, of course, is fine… so long as you understand that it directly contradicts the oft-repeated excuse for sexualizing women in video games: that the target demographic wants it.
Is your argument just “That wasn’t a great example of what she’s talking about” ? Ok, if that’s the case, pick another and let’s get on with the conversation.
So, maybe I’m confused about what you’re actually arguing.
Verbose Stoic @ 52
Video games are art and art affects people. It can just give a little nudge in a certain direction but to claim it doesn’t affect people in any way is an ignorant position. Also the US population is 300+ million. If a game sells 3 million copies that’s 1% of the US population so it’s hard to say what kind of affect one game has. But consider the larger picture and how popular the video games she used as examples are. Enough nudges in a certain direction will bring a reaction.
I enjoyed the video but it felt a bit dry and monotone like a Ben Stein lecture. Everything was presented matter-of-factly like a lecture. After it was over I watched the Game Overthinker (on the Screw Attack channel) videos about the state of video games. They have different opinions but Overthinker had more emotion in his voice (and about 1/5 as long). FF makes a good case and I agree with much of what she said and I’m glad I didn’t play many of the games she listed. But I was really getting bored at the end. You didn’t need to watch the video, just listen to it. That way you can multitask.
If she had a lot of emotion in her voice, she would then be dismissed as an overly emotional woman having hysterics.
I get that the “cherrypicking” argument is a bullshit response, but it’s also wrong.
Grand Theft Auto, Metroid, Metal Gear, God of War, Resident Evil, and The Witcher are massive franchises. These are mainstream, flagship games that sell millions of copies.
She went straight to the top shelf and found plenty of examples.
That.
No matter what she says, does, or looks like, she will be criticized by the gamerdoods. Personally I though the presentation was competently delivered. This is not an exercise in public entertainment.
There are litteraly hundreds of videogames where you can go on a killing-spree with every imaginable weapon. The impact on society is basically nil. The same way video games that depict women as trophies have basically zero influence on real behaviour.
Besides the depiction of women like in the witcher games are erotic, not pornographic.
Your opinion. Not ours.
johannes9126, #70
There is no ingrained, established culture of going on killing sprees. There is one of misogyny.
Would you defend depiction of black people as inferior or as property of white people by saying it also has basically “zero influence on real behaviour”?
Just what is it about women that it is to this day considered just fine to portray them in ways that it’s considered indefensible to portray other marginalized groups in?
Actually, I should really be asking just what is it about men that so many of them continue to defend misogyny to this day.
And it’s not even about erotic vs. pornographic. It’s about being shown as equal human beings vs. mere (sexualized) accessories for male protagonists (and thus for the male gamers taking on the role of the protagonist).
Since when was the threshold for thoughtful critique of cultural artefacts set so high? Games are cultural products, just like books, movies, and TV shows. People subject books, movies, and TV shows to all sorts of critique and criticism all the frickin’ time, even if nobody actually thinks that the specific books, movies, and TV shows in question are having a significant (or even meaningful) “impact on society”. You want to be considered a worthwhile, grown-up art form, you have to accept that people are going to subject your output to criticism.
What is it about games that is supposed to make them uniquely immune from the normal business of criticism?
A single sample from a small subset of a population is not a good way to describe that population. Perfectly true. Only the entire Tropes vs Women series includes a long list of video games. Lots of samples from lots of different subsets making up the population. All of them problematic. Which would suggest that sexism in gaming really is a problem.
Obsessing over one mention of Hitman won’t help because, at least in the way Thunderfoot argued, it doesn’t address the actual point being made and is, funnily enough, just one sample from a much larger population.
Anri, #64
Perhaps that’s exactly what it is. The Sexist Option, built in the hopes that it would never have to be used but act as a deterrent instead. It certainly deters me from ever touching franchises like GTA or Witcher. It also deters a lot of people, not just women, from enjoying gaming as much as they otherwise might.
It’s a remarkable scheme with only two problems:
– It’s bullshit
– They didn’t even get the part where it was never going to be used right
So, Saad, you are basically saying that women shouldn’t have the right to have consensual sex with a male they desire (like depicted in the Witcher franchise) for whatever reason? A right they in fact should have if they are equal to males.
And also you are imlying that a depiction of enslavement of blacks in video games or other media would unleash a desire to hurry to the next slave market?
Amphiox @61:
From TVTropes, the front page:
We can quibble over how common it has to be, but it definitely needs to be something that audiences understand and expect in that media, even if it isn’t always present. But even notwithstanding that, for Sarkeesian’s points to work the elements DO have to be common and normal. If the examples she gives are the only examples that have it, it wouldn’t say anything about gaming as a whole, and wouldn’t be something we’d worry about. To take her points as being ones that matter, we have to believe that these are the tip of the iceburg. They may well be the worst and most obvious, but we have to accept that, in general, these sorts of depictions are common in games for us to worry about them being present in the examples she cites. Or, at least, that’s how I interpret her arguments; if you have another view, feel free to point it out.
Why? The only immediate argument I can see that has any real weight is that if that game does it and is popular, then other games will do it as well, and so it will become “normal”, but her videos don’t describe that as being her main issue; she seems to be trying to show that these things are ALREADY normal. The only other point is that any game that has it is essentially supporting a point that is itself problematic, which is an argument that she DEFINITELY tries to make, but then this gets back to whether or not the game actually does present that or encourage it in the way that she argues it does in order to make her case. But, in either case, all of her videos do not present these things as the “rarest possible of the rare” but as sadly common. When it isn’t as common as she implies, that strikes at her credibility.
So let me insert a reply to Anri @64 here, because it’s relevant to this part:
No, I’m saying that the game designers didn’t actually spend time and money developing the ability to do this, which means that what she implies about the game is misleading. The only resources they needed to develop for the scenes she specifically cites are the models of the dancers, which they probably had to do the instant they decided to include a strip club in one of their games. All of the other behaviour is emergent, and totally in line with what you can do to all other civilians and bystanders in every other area of the game. Thus, as she states that the game encourages the behaviour, it doesn’t do so in any way other than to allow you to treat the strippers the same way as you do everyone else. It’s also presented as being a bigger part of the game than it really is; it’s one small part of one area or set of missions, and so hardly representative of the game itself.
So, to someone who have never played that game, it looks like she badly misrepresented it to make her case. An even worse example is her complaint about Dragon Age: Origins, with the City Elf storyline where she calls it a typical damsel in distress storyline. To be fair, the male City Elf storyline pretty much is. But that’s only one storyline out of something like eight, and more importantly if you play that as a FEMALE protagonist it’s precisely the sort of subversion of the damsel in distress story that she wants … and she never, ever mentions that that is how it works, even when giving examples of subversions that she likes. Which implies that either she was unaware of that storyline — which suggests a massive research failure on her part, because I knew it before I played the game and that was one of the reasons I chose to play as a female City Elf — or that she was aware but refuses to mention it, and so refused to give the game CREDIT for doing what she wanted, and so seems to be avoiding examples that would show that her arguments aren’t as universal or common as she implies.
This means that in evaluating her examples, I have to know the details of the games myself, because I can’t trust her presentation, as it seems to be often misleading. Thus, to conclude as Dr. Myers did that she’s showing that games rely on these sexist tropes, I have to go look to see if they really do rely on it. In the “Hitman” and “Dragon Age: Origins” cases, that seems to be completely false.
For this video, I’ll concede that she more or less accurately describes what happens in the games. I’m a little leery about the Conan and the Resident Evil examples (the XP might be for rescuing people not for the implied sex in the former, and as it looks like the DLC is simply a costume pack the character being “forced” into the ninja costume doesn’t seem credible), but I’m willing to grant her those since there might be things to talk about even if she’s wrong and even if they are just optional. However, this part seems to be overstating the case:
In Mass Effect 2, if you have the DLC with Kasumi, you get the evening dress, which you can make your default costume. I liked how my female Shepard looked in it, so I had her running around in it all of the time, even in ME3. That in no way reduced her from a capable character to a sexual object. It simply ADDED sexually appealing to her already long list of good qualities. The same thing in general applies to the costumes, especially the ones you earn after beating the game. If you didn’t already find them capable and skilled after beating them in the default costume, that won’t be changed by you dressing them up in a way that’s attractive. So I’m STRONGLY skeptical of this line of argumentation, which feeds into the “entitlement” argument that I also find dubious.
johannes9126 @76:
You are aware that the male that all these women desire is the PC, right? And that the women are all computer characters? PC/NPC – only one of them has any real choice in the matter.
There were only a few examples in the latest video of non-consentual contact. All those women overcome with gratitude at being rescued, or just overcome by the manly manliness of the man, may have been consenting. But that doesn’t make any difference to the point about how they are being depicted.
Do you really think putting a sex-starved nymphette in your game isn’t sexist because she is consenting??
Colin J @78,
I don’t think that putting a sex-starved nymphette in your game is sexist. I think that putting in ONLY sex-starved nymphettes or having all women become that for the MC or having them all either be that or very reserved and demure is sexist, but not merely having that as a character.
That there is sexism in games or even problematic things is not really in question; most people accept that. Where most of the disagreement with Sarkeesian is — or, at least, the disagreement that’s worth considering — is over how much and what the implications of that are. I can see that, for example, using sexual depictions as rewards in a game — even if optional — is a problem not because of the implications Sarkeesian harps on, but because of the point that she VERY lightly touches on in that if we presume that these are reasons to play or buy the game, men might find it such a reason but women wouldn’t. Thus I’d be perfectly willing to, say, add the ability to dress the male characters up in whatever THEY found appealing, as long as it was just as optional as it is in most of those games for women., or that we provide whatever rewards women might find appealing even if men wouldn’t. But at that point, I’ve skipped 90% of her arguments and yet think I’ve covered most of the real and pressing objections.
The problem isn’t so much the specific example, but that it’s an example of how she misrepresents how representative those games are and those games themselves. Despite being a constant gamer for about 30 years, I’ve played maybe 5% of the games she cites. And whether intentional or not, her examples often portray the examples as being things that occur throughout the game despite them being VERY small parts of it. To return to Hitman, I like to use it as an example because as a game I never played I got the impression from her video that this was TYPICAL of how women are treated in the game, that this was indeed something encouraged and that you were supposed to do, and that it was only the worst and most obvious example. On watching the reply video, I was struck by how misleading her presentation was of it, which undermines her point and undermines her credibility.
Which, to me, is the real problem with the “cherry picking”. I shouldn’t have to watch someone else’s video to understand what is going on in that game. To return to the Dragon Age example, she should have presented the storyline fairly, pointing out that the female protagonist line has the exact opposite connotation, even if as she did for Mass Effect she pointed out that most players probably take the male protagonist line. But this all strikes me as her emphasizing the negative and hiding the positive, which does not make me ready to accept that she’s presenting the OTHER games I haven’t played fairly.
Sorry, that last quote there was to komarov, not Colin J.
I hate this all or nothing approach that so many people seem to take. The idea that Sarkeesian is condeming all the games she mentions and that you’r either with her or against her. The idea that if you can come up with a redeeming feature for one of the games she mentions then she must be wrong. Or, on the other hand, being detered “…from ever touching franchises like GTA or Witcher”.
Didn’t Sarkeesian specifically say in the first video that she enjoys playing some of the games that she criticises in the series? She has certainly brought up a number of games that I’ve played and enjoyed. I can acknowledge her points and still play, and enjoy, those games. If they employ questionable themes, cliched settings and lazy plot devices then those are strikes against them but it doesn’t say everything about those games. There can be redeeming features.
The thing is, Sarkeesian doesn’t have to mention redeeming features because that’s not what her series is about. She’s not a game reviewer trying to give a balanced analysis of a particular game. She’s identifying examples – many, many examples – of the use of sexist tropes, and instances where a game isn’t being blatantly sexist really aren’t relevant. The Witcher 3 might include (some) strong, independant female characters but that doesn’t change it’s use of sexual conquest as a trophy. One character’s backstory in Dragon Age might subvert certain tropes but that doesn’t change the fact that another character is an out-and-out damsel. And the prevalence of strip club settings in SO. MANY. GAMES. is worth discussing regardless of any positive points you could make about some of those games.
I really don’t understand why so many people get upset at the thought of even discussing these issues.
Shorter version: Sarkeesian is not a games reviewer. She doesn’t have to give a balanced assessment of each game she mentions. She just has to back up her claim that the sexist tropes she identifies are prevalent. Which she does in spades.
johannes9126, #76
I’m not talking about whether the fictional woman character on screen is being depicted as acting via her consent or not. That’s not the issue. The issue is about what roles women are cast into in many of these major games to begin with, how often they’re nothing but an accessory to be used by the gamer, how often they’re pointlessly sexualized, how often they’re shown to be helpless victims, as have been covered in previous FF videos.
No, I’m not. I’m not against movies or video games about the Civil War for example. I’m also not against a movie that deals with the topic of sex slavery or prostitution.
You’re misunderstanding analogy with black people here. I’m not against a video game that deals with the topic of prostitution or sex work or with the history of black oppression. That’s different. The proper analogy would be video games that show black people via negative stereotypes (like portraying them mostly as “thugs” or showing them to always be taking a back seat to white characters).
What the hell are you talking about? How is that not entirely voyeuristic?
I don’t even think that dress is a good example (as it’s a classy dress), but your description of your motives is entirely voyeuristic. It’s not a pornographic game where that kind of voyeur reward would actually make sense. In a game like Mass Effect, it’s just bizarre and inappropriate and I have no idea why you would bother to defend it.
And I’m not surprised that you find the entitlement argument dubious, because apparently you don’t find it at all strange to have random sexualized imagery catered to you even when it makes no sense. The whole point is that women’s bodies are not just for male eyes to consume.
@Rowan #67
Who’s asking for “a lot”? You don’t have to bounce from one extreme to the other. How about “some” does that exist in your view? I watch several educational series on YouTube and all of them put more emotion into their presentation than her. She did a great job, but that doesn’t mean she can’t do better. Even if this is not meant as entertainment you have to keep your audience engaged. She has a passion for her cause, a cause I support, but we’re not really seeing her passion in this video.
I’d have to watch the video again but I’m pretty sure the whole thing was her on the right side of the screen narrating while the video game footage was on the left. How about switching sides with each alternating point to help people stay focused?
doublereed @84,
I’m not sure how familiar you are with the series, but the reason you have that choice is because it’s necessary for Kasumi’s recruitment mission, as you have to infiltrate a party. Once you’re given the costume, you can then wear it like anything else you can wear in the game. So it being present in the game isn’t a “male gaze” sort of thing, but a requirement. In fact, you get a formal outfit for your male Shepard as well.
Also, there’s no expectation that the game is going to provide this for me. If a game lets me choose the appearance and clothes for my character, I’m going to choose the set that appeals to me, for whatever reasons I want. If that includes “Hey, that makes my character look hot!” then I don’t apologize for that. Which is why I defend the inclusion of such options as long as they are optional and, oh, BTW, argued against the entitlement line you’re taking against me by pointing out that it was in general an issue that there was nothing similar put in the game FOR WOMEN. In short, you are arguing that I’m arguing from male entitlement when I was clear that I felt that it was an issue that the rewards were only targeted at men. If I expected games to cater to MY whims, I wouldn’t do that, now would I?
But the key point is that Sarkeesian explicitly states that this REDUCES the character to nothing more than a sex objection, and you seem to support that interpretation, and my point was that it really doesn’t do that. That option being available or not, or my taking it or not, does NOT change my impression of or how I played Shepard AS A CHARACTER. She was still a hardass combat veteran dedicated to her crew and willing to tell everyone else to shove it. That she did that in an evening dress didn’t change that. So why would you or Sarkeesian think it should?
@86
Not really. She didn’t bring up the evening dress in Mass Effect. You did.
Sarkeesian brought up blatant fetish outfits that are commonly costume choices for the male gaze of viewers, wholly inappropriate to anything they would ever do. Actually they’re wholly inappropriate to anything anyone would ever do except go to a sexy halloween party.
You were completely unclear that you believe women should be catered to as well. If that’s your position, then I think that’s fine. But then I fail to see where you disagree with Sarkeesian at all. Sarkeesian basically addresses this specifically saying that the weird outfits for men in games are more like joke outfits rather than sexualized outfits.
doublereed @87,
Sorry, that was in the next comment. But I do think you jumped the gun a bit. And I used that as an example of choosing an alternative appearance for attractiveness reasons, which is what you jumped on at that point. I agree that the costumes don’t fit what they’re doing, but again don’t see that as a problem in and of itself as long as the conditions I gave are met.
That being said, here is where I disagree with her, to repost the quote:
To which my comment is that it in no way does that, because the characters still remain capable and strong characters, they just turn into, to use your turn of phrase, strong capable characters with an added voyeuristic element. Since much of her objections rely on this reduction occurring, I find those arguments dubious.
Colin J,
The problem is that while she doesn’t have to be a games expert, she does have to make sure that she presents the examples fairly. For example, she uses Hitman as an example of there being so many strip clubs despite that sequence, from what I’ve read and seen, being the only one that had one IN THE ENTIRE SERIES. That a game like Hitman would end up in a strip club at some point was pretty much a given. And when she presents the negatives of a game and then later talks about how things could be better and games that do it better, then it would be nice for her to give those games a shout-out for what they did well. When she doesn’t — as was the case with Dragon Age: Origins, as the female line is EXACTLY the sort of subversion that she wants to see in games — then either she isn’t aware that that occurred in that game (which shows a lack of research) or she doesn’t WANT to portray that game as doing things well (which isn’t honest). Personally, my bet is on the former, but as I said it does mean that I can’t take her examples at face value, or the impressions she gives either; I have to do the research myself.
@88 Verbose Stoic
Are you serious? They’re literal fetish outfits. They’re outfits for sex fetishes. You don’t think putting security operative Sherry Burkin in a schoolgirl outfit objectifies her inappropriately? Again, you don’t see this treatment on male characters.
Remember, the trope is “women as rewards.” Your reward in the game is a fetish outfit for the woman. It’s making sexual thrill a trophy to be won by the game. That’s the trope. Making women’s bodies a reward.
So I scanned the comments and didn’t see it, so I’d like to pop in here and say:
Using “hugbox” pejoratively like that is a giant fucking red flag that I’m dealing with some channer asshole who also uses “sperglord” or “aspie” as insults. The hugbox is a particular piece of equipment meant to help people with a form of severe anxiety caused by autism focus.
So fuck you, troll, and fuck your channer friends who shit all over people with legitimate disabilities.
Also, one last one:
I hate when people muddle the waters in discussions of sexism in media by arguing as though the character at any point “chose” to look that way. She’s not real. She’s the product of other people, and she *doesn’t* have fucking agency, no matter how many times she kicks ass or takes names. That’s why sexy costumes are problematic, and why something like Bayonetta exists in a grey area. It *does* matter whether a woman or a man chose to stick that character in that tiny outfit, and there’s pretty much no amount of “that’s not REAL equality” whinging that changes that fact.
@Verbose Stoic:
I’d argue that, rather than “I’ve played 5% of the games she cites” being the meaningful metric, “Almost everyone has played at least one of these games she cites” should be how we’re approaching this.
Here’s the thing, I don’t agree with Sarkeesian on all of her points. Sometimes she does overgeneralize, I think, although I can agree with many of her criticisms. But the backlash against her videos is typically so over-the-top vicious, that I simply have to default to her “side” (when “sides” are at all necessary). I don’t have to agree on every single point she makes or with every example she gives to see that many of her detractors are just beyond any sense and reason.
– She’s right about the “reward”-aspect to the Metroid endings for sure. I just wonder whether Samus’ awesomeness as a tough, powerful character otherwise “makes up for it” or something. Although, really, that isn’t the point. There’s no need for a “trade-off” like that. Plus, ever since Other M, that aspect of Samus has been somewhat bruised, considering we were apparently never meant to interpret Samus as this tough, independent and unflappable bounty hunter.
– The “hero reward with the princess’ hand in marriage”-thing is not really an issue with video games so much as it is with fantasy/fable/fairy tale tropes, although the two obviously overlap where fantasy video games are concerned.
– Ride to Hell isn’t exactly a good example to use, considering how laughable that game is. I heartily recommend Yahtzee’s review of that atrocity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWxEwdGpIPQ
There are plenty of other games that are not utter fringe garbage that employ these tropes and she gives lots of other examples, to be fair.
– The master of unlocking, yay! :-D
– The fuck? Playboy magazines? Weird. Never expected that. Some sort of pseudo-Playboy, sure, I guess, but an actual collaboration?
– The Stanley Parable? Yeah! It’s awesome. :-)
– Oh dear. She talks about male entitlement and qualifies her statements to ensure nobody will claim she calls all men potential date-rapists or whatever. What part of that do you think will be the first thing that’s conveniently lost when her more rabid critics start deconstructing this video to mine for quotes?
– Hey, I like mainstream pornography…
– I was hoping she would bring up an example of a game that might work to counteract some of these tropes at the end there. She just mentioned that they could exist. Surely, some already do? I dunno?
The above are just a few thoughts I had while watching. That’s why they’re a bit disjointed, like my brain. Anyway, overall? Good video.
If I’m not mistaken, the whole “bounty hunter” thing for Samus was lost in translation from Japanese. Like I think Americans described what a bounty hunter was to Nintendo and they were like “No no, she doesn’t do anything like that.” I think she’s supposed to be a special-ops mercenary or something.
It’s perfectly fine with me if you disagree with her presentation of a particular game. This kind of media criticism has a certain amount of inherent subjectivity and there’s plenty of room for disagreement about particular points. Honestly the critique of the Hitman example sounds pretty reasonable.
But her overarching point in that sub-series had to do with the use of sexualized women NPC’s with little or no background or personality as decoration to titillate the presumed straight male player, as documented by a great many examples. And the fact that game designers do this routinely is pretty brazenly obvious to anyone who actually plays the sorts of games she’s talking about.
If someone created a video that complained that boss fights in games today suck, you wouldn’t try to refute it by pointing out that boss fights are only a small percentage of the content of most games. That makes no sense.
Verbose Stoic @ 77:
They didn’t decide to put a strip club in the game? It just kinda… happened?
Or did they just never actually playtested that bit and thus had no idea what would happen there?
Or did they just assume that no-one would go in there?
Because unless you’re arguing one of these, they did indeed spend time and resources in creating strippers you could brutalize, which is exactly what was argued in the video.
Let me put it to you this way: they could have put the strippers where they couldn’t be gotten to to be brutalized. I imagine that rather a number of players would have found that frustrating.
Ask your self what was being frustrated.
As for your argument that it’s a small part of the game, what level of brutalizing sexualized defenseless women are you comfy with? It doesn’t have to be an exact answer, just something like “Well, beating up three strippers is more or less ok, but I dunno, a dozen? That’s pushing it!” I ask just so we know where you stand on the ‘small part’ issue.
Verbose Stoic @89:
No. The problem is that you don’t understand what her examples are.
You seem to think that Sarkeesian is saying “Hitman is a sexist game. The Witcher is a sexist game.” She’s not. She’s saying “This sexist trope is common in computer games. Here are examples from game A, game B, game C, game D, game E, game F…” Her examples have to show the existence of that trope in specific games. Whatever else is in the game is irrelevant. She doesn’t have to be “fair” to the game because the game isn’t her example. The example is the element within the game and if you want to claim that she’s being dishonest then you have to demonstrate that that element doesn’t exist. At all.
With respect to Dragon Age, maybe Sarkeesian isn’t aware of the alternative backstory. That would be a terrible lack of research if her video series was called “Dragon Age vs Women”. But since Dragon Age is only one of dozens of games she refers to, not being aware of all 10(?) different backstories is fine. Or maybe she is aware of it but she doesn’t want to mention it because it’s TOTALLY FUCKING IRRELEVANT. The good things in a game don’t erase the bad things, or make them off limits for discussion.
Sarkeesian has done separate videos about games that do things well. She hasn’t covered Dragon Age as far as I know, but so what? She hasn’t covered a lot of games.
You should try actually watching Sarkeesian’s videos rather than getting your talking points from TheFoot.
Re: Verbose Stoic #79/#80
I’d refer you to the responses given by several others in the meantime. The general points of any response I could give have already been made.
I do understand your complaint about misrepresenting Hitman as a whole. Having played some earlier instances of the game I already knew that the locations are very varied and so automatically assumed this would be just one mission out of many with different backgrounds. This may not be clear to someone not familiar with Hitman titles.
However, when she discusses a videoclip I think Sarkeesian always makes it reasonably clear whether a trope is a common or repeating element or something temporary that crops up once in a game and ends there.
—
Re: Colin J (#81)
Please don’t read too much into my never-ever-style comment. Just to clarify, this is (naturally) my personal opinion and was reinforced by, not based on, what I’ve seen in the tropes videos. Perhaps a matter of taste, but I am not keen at all on game mechanics (rare or not, optional or not) that would have the player use or abuse women (or caricatures thereof) for whatever benefit it may bring. There are other reasons for me to avoid these games in particular but this one was the proverbial last straw.
In general I’d go with the disclaimer from the Tropes-videos. It’s possible to enjoy games even when there are problematic elements. I’m just adding my own limits as to how much I’m willing to accept before looking elsewhere for entertainment.
doublereed @90,
Okay, first of all, as I already said, I think that male characters should get that, too. So, hey, in the same sort of character packs add a “fireman” option which I was assured in the past was the same sort of thing for women. Again, the problem that I agree with is the one that she — and you — are giving very short shrift: that these are rewards that appeal to men and they don’t give any similar rewards that appeal to only women, meaning that they either cater to men too much or assume that women won’t want to play the game. I want that fixed.
Second, I’m not getting into a discussion over “inappropriate”, because that’s debatable and depends on what you mean by that.
So all we have left is “objectification”. And then we can turn back to the quote I was originally replying to, which says that allowing a player to put them in these outfits after completing the game reduces them to, essentially, sex objects, which I think completely false. If you’ve played as those characters through an entire game, they don’t suddenly turn into nothing more than sex objects because you put them into a schoolgirl outfit on their second playthrough. Either you viewed them as a character during the first run or you didn’t; this doesn’t change that.
The objection here looks like one that I’ve seen commonly raised, which seems predicated on the idea that if a female character appears in ANY sexualized context, then that’s all she is, that she can’t be a good and deep character AND also be, say, in a sexual fetish outfit. But if that latter can be, say, for a male gamer the icing on the cake for a well-developed character, then the charges of “reduced to a sexual object” ring hollow; surely almost anyone can see that if you have a deeply developed and interesting character that also happens to be hot that doesn’t mean that their hotness must trump the rest of their qualities. This was actually the point of raising the “Shepard” example, and I note that your big response there was to move on to the overly fetishy costume examples, while I’d argue that the principle is the same.
And I find that whole line of reasoning dubious, mostly because a) you only get it on a second playthrough and b) few are going to try to finish the game, especially one they dislike, to get that reward. You can argue that it makes women’s bodies a reward, but it’s not one that is as important to most players as it needs to be to make the links that she requires.
BinJabreel @92,
But having played one game where this appears and noting that most of the games you play DON’T have this seems to strike against the importance of the example. If it isn’t common, then why should we care if it appears in some games? Especially if they aren’t bad in and of themselves?
To be honest, for most of her stuff it is the case that the basic trope is common. Whether the examples are problematic or not is the issue, and also it would be nice if she noted that a lot of even popular games do better with this and are getting better at this all the time.
Anri @96,
Yes, they decided to put a strip club level in the game … in one game out of something like 3 or 4 at that point, with 2 levels out of something like 20 just in that game, in a series associated with shady and criminal dealings that are also associated with strip clubs in general. Honestly, it’s surprising that the game didn’t do that MORE often than they did.
The Hitman games are games set in a dark and gritty genre where the areas are populated with the sorts of NPCs that you’d expect to see in that area, and the player is indeed free to kill any NPCs they come across, for a penalty. Given a strip club level, there probably would be strippers in appropriate areas, meaning that then the player would be able to do that. Given that, you can indeed say that they put strippers in the game that you could brutalize, but that’s misleading because what they REALLY did was put strippers into the game in an environment where you would expect to see them, and allowed the player to treat them like any other NPC in the game, helpless or not (there is a distinction between “Civilian” and “Non-Target” from the footage I’ve watched, which means the the first are the helpless targets and the latter are ones that can fight back). So, yes, if they had made it so that out of all of the NPCs in the game THESE ones couldn’t be killed, the small percentage of players who a) got that far and b) tried to kill them would have been frustrated, for the obvious reason that the game would have, for no really good reason, made them EXCEPTIONS to how the game works. So not for the reasons that you’re obviously implying here; not because they really, really want to hurt scantily clad women, but because a game that had little to no real moral restrictions suddenly inserted it into this mission.
Ah, this is a “Have you stopped beating your wife?” kind of question, isn’t it [grin]?
The point is that the game designers didn’t run out and add tons of resources just to allow players to do that. Instead, they added environment appropriate NPCs and let them be treated the same way all other NPCs can be treated. You don’t have to like that sort of game — I, personally, don’t — but you have to acknowledge that, in context, the claims of encouragement and of them deliberately creating the game to allow this are misleading, at best.
Colin J @97.
No, her examples have to do more than, for example, show that a game contains a damsel in distress. For her arguments to work, her examples have to be cases where the game uses the trope in a problematic way. And that requires context. So, even WITHOUT looking at what she herself SAYS about the example, it has to be the case that it’s a problem. In the Dragon Age Origins context, it’s clear that the usage there is NOT a problematic example, and I’d even go so far to say that, in context, it’s a BRILLIANT way of providing the sort of subversions of the damsel in distress trope that she claims to want, as it takes the same basic storyline — there’s a wedding, and the arrogant human son of a … lord kidnaps the some of the women as party favours for their own party — and plays into the traditional damsel in distress role OR into a female “free yourself” fantasy depending on whether the PC is male or female. They COULD have simply had it so that you ended up rescuing your cousin whether male or female, but they didn’t. Bioware also subvert this AGAIN later in the game where the PC is captured and, given the right circumstances, can break themselves out or be rescued by their love interests regardless of the gender of the PC. I’ll forgive her for missing that last one, but for the first one as it’s the flip side of the storyline she uses as an example the BEST interpretation is that her research was incredibly shallow, while it would be reasonable to believe that in those games she’s looking for things to criticize, and so not evaluating them fairly.
So, in context, I think that it was a bad example of what she was trying to get across in the first place, and it gets worse when she talks about the subversions she wants to see in another video, describes what that would entail … and misses that the female City Elf origin story is pretty much what she wanted. Throwing the bone there would at least show that she did even a minor amount of research, but she didn’t even do that.
For Hitman, the example does technically fit her definition of “Women as Background Decoration”. But my objection there is not to its inclusion as that, but to what she SAYS about that game, and the intent of the designers. In context, it’s horribly misleading, if not outright false, for all the reasons I’ve gone on about to everyone’s ad nauseum [grin].
So, I can’t trust her examples, because she presents them misleadingly, in my opinion … and I have reasons to think that.
You’re right, I haven’t watched her videos … instead, I’ve read each transcript, multiple times. TheFoot, for example, didn’t ever mention the Dragon Age point that, as you’ve seen, is the one that bothers me probably the most. So, uh, you probably shouldn’t make assumptions about what someone has or hasn’t done [grin].
@ Verbose Stoic, various
Just curious … when would you consider the myriad of sexist tropes that the series has illustrated so far to be used in a problematic way?
When you feel unconfortable about them?
When the parent/close relative of a child feels uncomfortable about them?
When the parent/close relative of a girl who constantly gets these “this is what it means for you to be a woman / this is how you should act as a woman” messages feels uncomfortable about them? (And don’t start about “these are series for adults” … the series has also shown many samples from “all ages” titles, like the well-known Damsel in Distress trope and the super-lame Mrs. Character trope.)
Or maybe … just maybe (and I admit … this is a wild idea to hold) when one or more actual women tell you that they feel uncomfortable about them?
As far as I have noticed so far, FF doesn’t claim that all games that contain any of the tropes discussed are inherently sexist; nor does she claim that the makers of the games are willingly including these sexist tropes. What she illustrates with this series is that one of the most modern forms of media/art in our society is just as “vulnerable” to these sexist tropes as other popular forms of media and art and that hardly anybody seems to think twice about the inclusion of these tropes in the medium.
She has also, repeatedly, mentioned that the presence of these tropes do not make the whole work unenjoyable. While if you hear the Tfoot-brigade ranting, you’d think that she was denouncing each featured game as irredeemably blemished by the presence of even one second of one the discussed tropes.
Allow me to illustrate with an example from a less modern medium. I’m a major Star Wars fan, and when I was an early pubescent teen I was of course fasinated by Leia’s gold bikini scene. In retrospect, I fully realise that was a sexist scene which only was there for the purpose of providing eye-candy (and look good on the promotional poster).
Did it diminish the over-all character of Leia as a strong woman, probably not. But Leia’s previous and later exploits don’t make the gold bikini less sexist. Add to that the fact that Leia was the Smurfette amongst the Star Warriors and there you have it … even one of the greatest stories ever told was subject to the inclusion of sexist tropes.
Verbose Stoic doesn’t have a problem with women characters used as sex toys, got it.
Oink, Oink,
Verbal Stoic is a Male Chauvinist Pig, got it…..
That’s not really the structure of her argument. She lays out the common usage of the trope, and then describes why having the trope be in common usage is problematic in of itself.
I don’t think every example of the trope being used has to be problematic. In fact, I’d say that’s rarely true. It’s more about representation.
Like Damsel in Distress isn’t inherently terrible. People get kidnapped or whatever. It’s not like bad stuff doesn’t happen to women to make them powerless in real life or something. Of course it does. But it is problematic when this is such a common way we see women in media. Individual instances of Damsel in Distress isn’t really an issue (although it might make it boring and cliche storytelling). It’s when it’s more widespread and common in media that it becomes problematic.
Verbose Stoic @ 100:
(emphasis added)
Should I presume “We believe brutalizing defenseless sexualized women is bad and we don’t want it in our game” is not a really good reason? At least in the minds of the developers and players alike?
And they could have easily set up a physical restriction, rather than a moral one – the strippers are simply in a place where you can’t, try as you might, get to them to hurt them. Or would that be less fun, do you think?
Or have a cutscene where they run off at the first sign of trouble. Or would players want to chase them down, do you think?
Or have the club just not be open at the moment – as many ‘worthy opponents’ with penises as you like, setting up, counting their money, whatever, just no defenseless, sexualized women. Or do you think there’d be a complaint about a strip club with no strippers?
No, you could have easily said “I think brutalizing sexualized women is bad, and I think it’s repulsive when game designers set it up to happen. They shouldn’t have done that, IMHO.”
But you didn’t.
And they did deliberately create the assets within game to allow this – strip clubs don’t just accidentally appear in video games unless they are designed and put there.
No, no, and no.
Her argument is the use of the trope in games *in general* is problematic. That only requires that a significant fraction of her individual examples be problematic. It doesn’t even require, necessarily, a majority of the samples to be problematic, if the problem is sufficiently serious.
What she’s doing is typical scholarship for literary analysis. Present to topic, show a representative spread of examples, then discuss the impact of the whole. Individual examples can be, individually, both good and bad. Indeed her presentation would be weaker if she only showed the most problematic examples, and not the less problematic ones.
I find it interesting and frustrating that in a post about Ms. Sarkeesian’s latest video on video games, we’re still talking about her first video on video games. It does not reflect well on Ms. Sarkeesian’s critics when they cannot even be bothered to watch her latest video before criticising her for it.
@ CK
If you have seen one video or tweet of her, you have seen all videos or tweets of her. She makes some good points, overexerts some other points and mixes it with quite some bullshit (and has been thoroughly criticised for the bullshit parts, even if the valid criticism is dismissed by some people here, even by PZ himself, as “Trolling”).
And I’m totally sure that you can detail what exactly is bullshit and why these trips are not actually problematic and why using sex mini games to get exp is totes okay, right?
I’m just astounded and find it hilarious that you accuse *us* of being dismissive when you won’t even watch her videos and instead entirely rely on the opinions of other people.
How do you know the criticism is actually valid when you haven’t seen the actual video?
The moment you see someone say a statement like this, you know they are not interested in a serious or honest discussion of the subject matter.
And you also know that should they say anything insightful at all about the subject, it is purely by accident.
So apparently Sarkeesian has produced hours and hours of video arguing the ‘same point’* over and over again using ever more examples by way of evidence. Which would imply that these tropes really are common, even ubiquitous. Now if only you could understand why they are problematic, too, we’d be sorted.
*Her arguments are more nuanced than you give her credit for. I guess you’ll have to take my word for that if you’re unwilling to actually look at those arguments yourself.
johannes9126, #109
State the specific issues you have with the content of her criticism (include the video and exactly what she’s saying that’s bullshit) or fuck off.
Everyone I’ve seen so far that comes here to criticize her FF videos never explains exactly what the issues are.
Alex the Pretty Good @102,
For her purposes? When they are used in a way that objectively supports the feminist arguments and arguments of harm that she is trying to make in her videos. Which means, for example, that if an example starts as a traditional trope but that set-up is used to subvert it or to provide the basis for a subversion of it, then it doesn’t count. The Dragon Age example, to my mind, is one of those cases, as the set-up is used to subvert the traditional damsel trope when the protagonist is female, and so I think it is instead a brilliant way to do what Sarkeesian claims to want games to do.
Comfort isn’t a factor here. Sarkeesian is not merely doing an editorial about what bugs her. She is making what can definitely be considered an academic argument, and an academic argument needs objective facts and arguments. If it doesn’t have them, then it’s not a good argument, and not what she, at least, is trying to do.
On problematic instances themselves, for the damsel in distress trope:
1) The representation of women in the game is pretty much only as damsels in distress.
2) Overall, the representation of women in the genre is as damsels in distress.
3) The character is portrayed, personality-wise, as nothing more than a damsel character, with nothing beyond that.
2) is changing, at least in the genres I play (for Western RPGs, for example, the ability to play as female protagonists was long established and so works against that model). For an example of 3), think of the character in the Tomb Raider reboot who was, from what I’ve heard, nothing more than that (and, for many players, annoyingly so). The Dragon Age Origins case is not one of those. Applying that to the “brutalizing sexualized women” example of Hitman, that’s also false for that game, from what I’ve been told: those characters are a small part of the game, and you can attack various civilians, male or female, sexualized or not.
Beyond that, the only way for her to make her claim is to tie it strongly to the feminist theory she espouses, which often fails because it relies on assuming the psychology of game players which often comes across as inaccurate.
She is explicit that she thinks these being in games is WORSE than it being in other media, and often DOES talk as if the game designers are deliberately setting it up — that’s my whole objection to the Hitman example, after all — and that either the tropes shouldn’t be there or that the game itself is problematic because of that. She does disclaim it but in at least some cases that disclaimer seems to be buried under her rhetoric.
I agree that the Star Wars movies should have included more female characters, although given how old it was I’m more forgiving of the originals than of the prequels, especially considering how competent and strong Leia was in them when compared to Amidala. On the gold bikini, I don’t mind things being added as fanservice, but have already commented that there’s an issue if you only add fanservice for men and not for women. At a minimum, it suggests that you don’t really have an interest in attracting the female audience. Now, there’s nothing wrong with making something and aiming it at a particular audience, be it male/female, or a particular race, or whatever, but there IS an issue with all of the works in a genre or media doing that. Unless there is something particular to that genre that means that it will likely NEVER appeal strongly to that demographic — romance novels for women and perhaps pornography for men — then you really have to wonder why you can’t appeal to that demographic, too.
doublereed @105,
So, as said above, it’s about three main arguments:
1) The prevalence of the trope in gaming in general.
2) The prevalence of the trope in a game, to the extent of how women are represented.
3) Problematic uses of the trope in the game itself.
The problem is that some of her examples don’t really fit into any of the categories, or at least in a problematic way. The Dragon Age example, for example, is one where 2 and 3 clearly don’t fit. It could be an example of the overuse of the trope, but it’s hard to consider that a serious problem when the only evidence for that is that the idea is USED in the game. But I have a more detailed discussion of that on my blog and why the damsel in distress line IS used, but I’ll say that I think the fix to 1) is to include more female protagonists … which she explicitly denies. But, hey, that’s something that we can argue over, at least, but again given the context of the whole game the Dragon Age example is still a VERY odd choice, especially since, again, the subversions of that trope in the game are not at all mentioned when she explicitly sets out to talk about how to subvert the trope. At a minimum, she grabbed something she didn’t understand fully to use as an example of the problem without knowing how they tried to solve it. The Hitman example as an example of sexualized violence isn’t great as well, because that level being such a small part of the game it fails 2, it isn’t the case that it’s set-up to provide it and so it isn’t — despite her assertions — an example of 3, and for 1 it would have to be the case that it does this to try to exploit sexualized violence, but again the game actually includes strip clubs and so the sexualized violence LESS than you’d expect given its subject matter. It’s a case where adding a strip club level and making it consistent with the game and realistic seems to be what Hitman OUGHT to be doing, not as an example of them sliding something in to get “sexualized violence” benefits.
And those are the examples of the games that I know or have heard about. Again, I have to conclude that I ought not trust that her examples support her arguments the way she seems to want them to.
And since I talked about Hitman again, let’s include Anri @106,
Do you think that being able to kill women who are strippers is worse than being able to kill women who are business persons, bank tellers, joggers, and so on? Because you can only say that they are sexualized because they’re dressed like strippers … which makes sense, since they ARE strippers in their place of work. The game lets you, from what I understand, kill defenseless women and people ALL THE TIME. Why is it worse when they happen to be strippers?
Most of your arguments here have been insinuations about what people playing the game would think, which as far as I can tell are completely wrong. You essentially are saying that if the game had restricted the game so that the strippers here couldn’t have been killed, gamers would have been upset because it would have meant that they couldn’t kill strippers. This is false. First, as TFoot pointed out, most gamers didn’t actually ever kill them, and the game is structured in such a way that unless you really, really, really wanted to kill strippers the ideal option in terms of gameplay efficiency and even in terms of bragging rights is to sneak past them, not attack them. Second, the open world of Hitman is what appeals to them, so ANY clearly artificial restrictions would annoy gamers. Third, any restrictions that are clearly based on the fact that one ought not MORALLY commit that action would be frustrating in a game that insists that you can determine the morality of your character and act as nice or as nasty as you want (within reasonable game parameters). Finally, gamers in the past have reacted the same way to other arbitrary restrictions. For example, I believe that it was either one of the Fallouts or one of the Elder Scrolls games where every NPC was killable … except children. Gamers complained, not because they really, really, really wanted to kill children but because they found the arbitrary moral restriction violated the terms of the game that insisted that they weren’t going to do that. Also, gamers complain bitterly about having decisions made for them in cutscenes; if they wanted to let them go, that should be their choice, not the choice of the game. Finally, gamers complain bitterly about chest high walls that limit their movement into areas that they should be able to get into in an open world. So all of your solutions would generate frustration because they’d go against the sort of game that should be — open world, open morality — NOT because seeing scantily clad women that they couldn’t kill would frustrate gamers in some way.
Which I won’t, because that’s not what’s happening in the game, as I’ve said repeatedly. The game is letting you brutalize innocent people IN GENERAL, and these happen to be people that you’d see there. Killing innocent people is not something I like, but it is popular for some people, and I’m not going to judge that, especially since with RPGs I can see how doing that might enhance a role playing experience if you’re playing someone who is evil. So, no, this is indeed a “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?” question.
Even if you disagree with some of the specific examples, by your first statement you imply that there is something to change. Which makes me think that you totally agree with her overall point, you just disagree with some of her examples.
I don’t understand why you don’t just say that then. Like I haven’t played Hitman, but from the gameplay, I was under the impression that the strippers are treated just like any other bystander, and aren’t actually sexualized for the player at all. It’s not like they’re putting on a show for the player (unlike some of her other examples). In fact it kind of looked like the opposite because it all happens in the backroom where they’re just milling around. If that’s the case, then yea I don’t think that’s a good example of the trope.
But she’s giving several different examples there from several different franchises. I can disagree with some of her examples as being representative while still recognizing the problematic nature of the trope and the widespread usage of the trope.
doublereed @116,
No, it’s more that I don’t think she gets EVERYTHING wrong, just lots of things (too many to go into detail here). My overall impression of her series so far is that the things she gets right are not novel or insightful and are things that many others inside gaming have pointed out far better than she has, and that the things she says that are novel and would be insightful are wrong. Taking this video, I agree that these sorts of rewards being so male-audience-centric is a problem. She very, very lightly touches on that. What her entire video is about, though, is about the problem of these things being used as rewards AT ALL, attached to numerous feminist talking points like entitlement … and, as you know, I am at best dubious on those points.
For those specific examples, I talk about them mostly because they strike at the quality of her effort. For Dragon Age, I consider it a problem with her research — ie it’s quite shallow — while for Hitman it’s an indication that she’s being misleading in her examples. In the latter, TFoot calls her a liar over that, which might be a bit harsh, but either she’s being dishonest or she doesn’t know what the game is like. Neither of those should be things that we just pass off in a serious work with “Well, she gets some things right”.
@Verbose Stoic
I’ve been meaning to respond to your response to me for a while, but I’ve been too busy for a proper response and I’m really tired right now, so it’ll have to wait.
I just want to add something to your “but the City Elf origin subverts the damsel in distress trope if you play a female character” argument. Shianni. No matter what you do or which gender you play as, you still have to fight through the place to save her and kill Vaughan for raping her (or take his bribe and walk away if you happen to take that particularly unsatisfying choice). So, while of course your character is able to kick butt, handily subverting the damsel in distress trope because apparently it’s more fun for the player to do the ass kicking rather than wait for rescue or something (who knew?!), there’s still some pretty clear damselling going on right there. The only real difference is that she’s your best friend, rather than the fiancée you met half an hour earlier.
Athywren @118,
Sure. But in the video, Sarkeesian is explicit that she considers the damsel trope — or at least the problematic aspects of it — to be a woman being depowered for the story arc of the male protagonist, which isn’t the case here, and Shianni is not damseled in the game except for the part where she’s captured, because the incident starts with her hitting the nobleman with a wine bottle, and in the later mandatory Alienage scene she remains a leader of the City Elves, and in the end game she’s an important combat leader in the Alienage stage of the end battle. Add in that the game subverts it there AND in the “MC captured” scene later, and Dragon Age Origins, in context, is just a REALLY bad example to use, unless you mention the subversions as examples of it getting it right. Which she doesn’t in the video where she talks about subversions.
Overall, again, Dragon Age Origins is a better example of how to do the Damsel in Distress trope RIGHT than it is as an example of how to do it WRONG. So unless you think that using it at ALL is bad, it’s not a good example to use.
But F00t doesn’t just dismiss certain examples, he says the whole thing is pointless exercise and goes on about how the whole thing is stupid to analyze. He goes much much farther than you in ridiculous and stupid ways. Why would you bring up F00t at all? It just makes you look like a dumbass.
So, the things that you disagree with are the precise things that are new to you? Doesn’t that give you pause? Because that sounds precisely like you’re dismissing ideas simply because they’re new or uncomfortable.
This seems like you don’t want to consider new ideas and are just in general close-minded.
No, you’re confusing me. Before you were saying the male entitlement point is fine, it’s just the reduction of women to objects which you didn’t agree with. The video is not about objectification per se. It’s about women as rewards. Relating that to trophyism and male entitlement is a straight line, and doesn’t require women to be reduced to mere objects.
Making sex and women’s bodies as rewards is playing directly into the idea that women are vessels of sexuality for men to consume, so I don’t understand how any of this is dubious.
She makes specific references to male entitlement in our culture. Are you saying catcalling and men’s demands for women’s affections like that doesn’t exist? Because once again, saying male entitlement is a “feminist talking point” makes you look like a dumbass much like F00t.
This does not sound like a coherent position at all. Please explain what your position actually is, because I am sick of guessing. And for the love of God, be more concise. You’re saying incredibly little with those giant walls of text.
You know, the more I read those anti-Sarkeesian arguments, the more I notice that it looks like they are all relying on one or two cases that maybe are honest mistakes* and hammer on them as if these are the whole of the series is based on those examples … and in the meantime ignore the many (often dozens) of other examples of the same trope shown in each video.
And I couldn’t shake the feeling there’s something very familiar about that behaviour … and then it struck me why the anti-Sarkeesian brigade keeps hammering on one sample from an earlier video. The “Hitman” scene is to the RMAs as Nebraska Man is to the creationists.
Food for thought …
* “Mistakes” in a sense of “to the uninitiated watcher, they might be understood as scenes being representative of the wole game” not in the sense of “they aren’t an example of the trope.”
FWIW, I’m no gamer so most of the titles presented are unknown to me, but I (and yes, I realise that personal anecdata is only a sample-size of one) never got the impression that ms. Sarkeesian presented those scenes as “This is the only thing you do in those games: comit violence towards women in particular”
doublereed @120,
_I_ didn’t bring him up. That was the OTHER person who started it, and you’ll note that Athywren replied to that by replying to the summary of the video, and it was THAT reply that I started from. I don’t agree with everything he says either — as I proved by saying that I think his comment on her being a liar was entirely reasonable. But, then again, that DOESN’T mean that everything he says is wrong either.
As another example, he goes on a rant talking about how the game DOES penalize you for killing civilians, with the loss of points, ignoring that Sarkeesian actually DID see that, and instead argued that it wasn’t much of a penalty and was one that you could avoid by hiding the body. But that he’s wrong there in no way changes that she does badly misrepresent the game there in what she explicitly says about it.
Of course, that must be it! It couldn’t be that they’re just wrong, right? Please.
Unless you consider the male entitlement point to be nothing more than “These sorts of rewards would only appeal to men and not women”, I explicitly argued against that point, which is why you insisted that I believed IN male entitlement until I said that I think these things should be there for women to, and having no equivalent rewards for women was a problem. And on the deeper point:
I disagree that it’s a straight line. I interpreted her point more that women in sexual situations as a reward linked to trophyism and male entitlement ITSELF in a straight line, and I think that’s dubious at best. That you gain a trophy for it is NOT the same sort of trophy as a trophy wife, and that it’s a reward does not in any way imply that anyone thinks — consciously or unconsciously — that they’re entitled to seeing women that way.
Um, you realize that this IS the objectification point? If she’s a character that’s dressed sexily or that you can have sex with, even as a reward, that doesn’t mean that that’s all she is, and that’s what you need to argue that she’s a vessel of sexuality for men to consume. That’s what I find dubious there; it depends greatly on the presentation in-game, and the RE examples are, in fact, not that sort of presentation OBVIOUSLY.
No, I’m saying that the link between the reward examples she cites and those behaviours are dubious at best and that she has in no way demonstrated that there is one, for the reasons I cited. Again, to make that move she needs the objectification point to stand up … you know, that point that you’re trying to ignore?
Again, the one valid claim, to my mind, that she has is that the rewards in the game are too targeted to what a male audience wants to see. Anything beyond that I don’t agree with.
Alex the Pretty Good @121,
I have and have commented on other problems than that, and said why I find those examples to be an indicative problem. To summarize: I can’t trust ANY of her examples unless I know it myself because of how she misrepresents these. I could go into more detail on the other issues, but that’s probably best saved for my own blog.
I have a game called Worms Crazy Golf. It’s crazy golf… with Worms characters. There are coins you can pick up, and a crate in every level. They give you access to unlocks. There’s also a score to aim for that gives you a little bonus. In order to unlock the next hole, you have to complete the hole you’re playing at or under par. You cannot collect all the coins or the crate and reach the hole at or under par in the vast majority of cases. That means that, in most cases, collecting all the coins or picking up the crate means that you can’t unlock the next level on that attempt – essentially, you are penalised for pursuing those goals. Does that mean that they are not goals?
(Don’t get me wrong, there’s a clear difference here as those are explicit goals, while there is no “kill the strippers” achievement or side mission as far as I can remember, but the point doesn’t really require it to be spelled out. The point is that points only count if you’re counting points, and you’re not always counting points, and so penalties only count when you’re counting points.)
You’re right, though, that his being wrong about that wouldn’t change the fact that she badly misrepresented the game if she did. Speaking as someone who played (and enjoyed, actually) that, and all previous Hitman games, I strongly disagree that she misrepresented it, any more than I would be misrepresenting Worms Crazy Golf if I told you that you can collect coins in it in a video about the weird tendency of games to have coins or coin substitutes dotted all over the place for no apparent reason.
On Sarkeesian:
On Thunderfool:
One or two cases of overstatement by Sarkeesian: CANNOT BE TRUSTED.
Constant hyperbole and an admitted error from Tfoot: Meh, well, he isn’t wrong about everything!
Endlessly. Fascinating.
Verbose Stoic @ 115:
Not quite right, some of my arguments have been assumptions (oh, no, wait, let’s use ‘insinuations’, ’cause it sounds way worse) *ahem* insinuations about what content the developers wanted the players to experience, based on the content they put into the game. I’m insinuating that without having put a strip club with strippers into the game, that the players would not have been able to brutalize strippers. I’m insinuating that since the devs did, the players can. I’m insinuating that if the devs thought a game in which you can brutalize strippers was bad, they wouldn’t have gone out and made one.
So, yes, I’m insinuating intent on the part of the devs – the intent to include the content they actually included.
I’m then further insinuating that the devs are attempting to include content the players would want to play. I’m insinuating that if the devs thought your average player would be repulsed by given content, they would not have spent time and effort including it in the game.
Apparently, neither the devs, the average player, nor you think this content is objectionable enough to merit not having time and effort spent on it. That’s my insinuation.
Many women find the link between being sexualized and being the target of violence disturbing. Many women find that the common trope of women’s sexuality being linked to violence – especially towards the women in question – to be disturbing. Many women find the concept of women as objects for the target of violence or sexual aggression to be disturbing – moreso when combined. Some of them have even made videos about occurrences of these things in popular culture.
But hell, I dunno, maybe they don’t know what they’re talking about. They’re just women, after all.
I asked the question because one of your objections to the characterization of the game was that brutalizing strippers wasn’t a major part of the game. So, I took that to mean that if it had been, that might have been bad. So, I was just asking you, based on what you said, how much of the game would have to be about doing that to be bad?
As you don’t think it’s bad in this case, it’s clearly a non-zero answer, but since you seem to think it would be bad in some amount, I was just asking you to take a stab at what your comfort level would be.
In other words, you’ve said you’re ok with this being in the game, ’cause it’s just a little bit. I’m asking “how much is a little bit?”
If you don’t have an answer to that, that’s fine, just say that and I’ll drop it. But quit saying it’s an unanswerable question. if the answer happens to make you look bad, well, that might not be a function of the question, but of the answer.
Really? The one thing you didn’t address in my comment was where I asked you to concisely state your position.
Okay, but do you agree that male entitlement is a real thing and not a “feminist talking point”? Like do you agree that there are a lot of men in society that act as if men are entitled to women’s bodies? This is the part that you’re confusing me on, and this is why I want to state your position.
Because she’s relating these generalized tropes in media to real life problems for women. That’s the “so what” of her videos.
@126 Anri
How much violence against women do you want in your games? Because practically every fighting game or beat em up or violent game in general has female characters. So I guess that’s a nonzero amount. How about violence in general? Do you just hate all media with violence in it?
How much rape do you want in your media? Or is that a ridiculous question because it obviously depends on the context and treatment that is depicted?
Yes, that’s an unanswerable question. Obviously.
doublereed @ 128:
Against sexualized, helpless women, especially for no discernible purpose? Very, very little, verging on none. I don’t like performing it, and I don’t like games that attempt to manipulate me by showing others doing it.
Yes, and I dislike the ones with sexualized, helpless female characters. Which, of course, typically (but not always) doesn’t include fighters.
Yes, it is, and no, I don’t.
I dislike gratuitous violence against women, especially helpless ones, especially in a sexual context. I tend to avoid stuff like that – and (more to the point) recognize it for what it is when it’s there, and don’t pretend it’s inevitable or accidental, or that there wasn’t a choice by a creator to put it there.
I sure as hell don’t go around arguing it doesn’t exist, or that something that is a glaring example of it really isn’t because reasons.
Very little.
Yes, it’s context-dependent.
If only we had been discussing a specific context, such as, oh I dunno, a video made about, let’s say, a particular scene in, just hypothetically, a specific game. Then we’d have something to go on, contextually, wouldn’t we?
You got me, I cannot even write a reply to your post at all.
I’m not asking for games to be free of violence, even sexualized violence.
I’m just asking that it be recognized for what it is when it turns up, and not explained away as nothing in particular again and again and again and again…
doublereed @127,
I don’t have a lot of time to reply at the moment, but let me try to clarify this: I think that she is evaluating this with certain points in mind, and interprets games in light of that, and the link from games to those specific feminist points is often dubious and forced. So I think that she interprets games and the intent of gamers and designers in light of this and gets it wrong — because they don’t think the way she implies they do — and that because of those issues she often misunderstands the current state of games. I’d care about this less if she wasn’t being seen as such a strong force in games, because to me those misunderstandings lead her to suggest things that are really, really bad for gaming.
I’m not going to comment at all on the specific feminist points; whether they are valid or not, the link to games and the filter they apply to games is what I’m arguing about.
You guys still act as if a videogame had influence on real world behaviour. This has never been proven for violence or sexualized offenses. Gamers are not audience, they are players. Players that can make choices in their games.
If these choices offend you, don’t play these games. I like playing violent games like Skyrim, where you can chop off heads of male and female opponents all the time (indeed the Elder scrolls universe is mostly egalitarian regarding sexes). Do you see me running around with a battleaxe in real life? Won’t happen.
So it boils all down to that Anita is making videos about things that offend her. But guess what? In our free society you don’t have the right not to be offended. Don’t judge people who like to play games where Kratos or Gerald are sexualized to pleasure countless naked women.
And you can and will be criticized for your violent misogynic tastes, and if you don’t like the criticism, shut the fuck up about your freedom (which implies no criticism) as people can also have and express their educated opinions. I find your opinions emotional and uneducated.
Since Ms. Sarkeesian is so wrong about the strippers in every major shooter, please point me to the top shelf title that has male strippers in it.
Go ahead, I’ll wait.
I say this as a regular player of GTA V/Online, with a woman avatar. There are no male sex workers, and no male strippers. In GTA IV, an add-on was about a gay entrepreneur who ran two nightclubs in liberty City, one gay and one hetero. Despite the name of the add-on, “The Ballad of Big Gay Tony” featured only one nightclub which could be entered. No xp for guessing which one.
Anyway. I was waiting for that example of the male strippers.
*crickets*
@ Nerd
Of course anybody can criticise me for playing bullshit, or having some violent tastes, I never said otherwise. But don’t claim that I am uneducated, or claim that I am a bad, violent or misogynistic person. Actually I am a feminist. There is a line between having opinions/being emotional and sticking to the facts. This line is constantly blurred here.
You can have your own opinions, but you can’t have your own facts.
johannes9126 @ 131:
Actually, I’m acting as if video games reflect current societal attitudes, that they are the derivative party, not the other way around.
Using video games (and other popular culture examples) helps point out tropes and ways of thinking.
My point is not that these video games make people want to go out and objectify women. My point is that they would not be popular if the objectification of women didn’t already exist. Pointing it out in one place highlights its existence elsewhere.
@ CaitieCat
Can’t depict male strippers in videogames. Since they earn much less than their female counterparts, that would be exploitation…
No seriously, good point you are making. But since these games are designed mostly for male audience anyway, there are basically no male strippers. In real life there are less mals strippers, too.
@ Anri
So basically you say that the games where magic, aliens or zombies are encountered are so popular because these things really exist?
And what is bad again about depicting real world attitude in video games? Besides, most of the examples Anita picks in her videos and tweets are actually behaviour and actions of the bad guys.
@ Saad #113
Liana Kerzner on Metaleater wrote a 5-part series about the Feminist Frequency videos, and she has more insight than me regarding games and the gaming industry.
johannes9126 @ 137:
By god, yes! Yes, I must be!
Because magic, aliens, and zombies are totes equal to violence against women!
I mean, you’d have to be a total fucking moron not to see the perfect equivalence there!
Thank you, thank you for that stunning insight – I bow before your clearly superior intellect and trust your posts will go from strength to strength!
A very good point. For example, the “Women as Reward” video, where the bad guys are rewarded with… ok, try again.
Or the example I’ve been arguing in this very thread, Hitman, where the titular character, who is totally not the PC…
*ahem*
Anyway, your point is well-taken. After all, when they’re writing the villain in a video game, they get an actual villain to do it. If they include, let’s say, Lex Luthor as a bad guy, they always get Lex himself to do the work, It’s completely not anything coming out of the writer’s own heads, nosireebob.
@ Anri
Oh, yes, the Hitman thing. Where you actually are not supposed to kill strippers, but due to the interactive game world you actually can.
And yes, violence against women and magic – as long as they are happening in video games- are totally the same. They are both pixels and code. You know, just like nobody really dies in World of Warcraft.
johannes9126 @ 140:
Gotcha, it just happened that way. If the devs had actually been somehow in control of the gameworld, they would never have permitted that kind of repulsive behavior, but whattya gonna do?
I mean, whores will be whores, amirite? They get in the damn way.
Hey, you’re right.
In exactly the same way that all of art and literature is just squiggles and bits of color. It just sorta happens on its own, it’s never actually created by anyone, and never has anything to say about the creator or the world they live in, physically or mentally.
@ Anri
“They get in the damn way.”
No they don’t. And if Anita had acutally played that game herself instead of “relying” on other persons playthroughs you and her might even have noticed this.
@johannes9126
But…
… you quite clearly are uneducated, at least as far as logic or skepticism go.
Magic, aliens, and zombies are not what you could call attitudes. There is nothing philosophical about them. There is no particular ethical implication to the existence of these things in games. They cannot, simply by existing in a game, make you think something specific. It does not, as you would know if you had even the most basic understanding of logic, follow from the fact that the ideas presented in games reflect societal attitudes that aliens are real.
And you apparently don’t understand that there’s a difference between direct 1:1 causation and subtle influence. No, playing GTA will not suddenly make Jimmy McGamerson pick up a gun and murder his class at school. However, ideas can be expressed in games – and in any media – and ideas (I desperately hope you can understand this concept?) can influence people. If I spent an hour reading a book about pirates, it would be absurd to assume that I would run off and join the first band of pirates I met, however, if I read Atlas Shrugged, while being under the influence of youthful ignorance and arrogance, I might end up as a libertarian. Of course, that’s a pretty overt example, but it’s still clear that media (and games are a form of media) can influence people by introducing them to ideas, or reinforcing ones that they already hold for whatever reason.
Oh good grief, it’s yet another logic impaired gamer boy trying to claim that the sexism in games really isn’t sexism.
You are a very poor feminist. Sexism is offensive. You claiming that Anita is being emotional is sexism. I find her to be very monotone and stoic as she gives example after example of the sexist tropes, complete with actual, real game playthroughs. The fact that you want to whinge on about your stupid games shows that perhaps it is you who can’t see clearly because you are too emotionally attached to your games, at the expense of actual real live people who make up 51% of the population. (ie women, for the hard of thinking)
johannes9126 @ 142:
Ah, sorry.
I was under the impression that they could break your stealth by noticing you, and therefore cause you a problem. You know, get in the way.
Since (according to you) they don’t, there’s no reason to be able to do violence to them at all, I suppose. No point for them being in the game, in fact.
Wouldn’t you agree?
@ Athywren
Bullshit. Depiction of violence in media or news-reports mainly centering on violence make people more afraid of violence in the long run, not more violent.
Apart from that do video games create an interactive environment where the players have to develop their own meaning, their own ideas. They have the choice to be misogynists or mass murderers – or to be not, mostly considering their own morality and the circumstances of the game.
@ Anri
“Wouldn’t you agree?”
A stripclub without strippers? Kinda strange ideas you have there.
@ 131 CaitieCat
Just playing devil’s advocate, but Fallout New Vegas had male strippers in it (that you also could kill if you had the fancy).
johannes9126 @ 147:
Oh, I thought you said they don’t get in the way. Sorry that I misunderstood your assertion that they don’t get in the way to mean that they don’t get in the way.
…okay, I’m confused, since you didn’t mean what you actually said, what did you actually mean?
In any case, like I said, there was just no way they couldn’t have a strip club. The creators had no creative control, the strip club just kinda… happened. No-one’s decision. Really.
Who chose to put a strip club in the game at all?
Who chose to put a playable level in the strip club?
Wait, wait, wait. You guys want to censor game-developers from depicting real-world situations? Realistic conversations between strippers? The fact that strip-clubs are often run by the more shady side of society? If you are so easily offended, maybe you should play PacMan. But don’t play Mrs. PacMan, since that game is sexualized and objectifying, too. At least according to FeministFrequency.
johannes9126 @ 151:
Let’s see if johannes9126 has basic reading comprehension, shall we?
Me at #129:
For the hard of reading such as johannes9126, I don’t want to censor games. I’m hoping that societal attitudes will change to the point that sexualized violence against women would be as marginal and widely reviled someday as a game in which the player assists in a racially motivated lynching would be today.
@johannes9126, 146
Ok, I’m a little confused here. Are you saying that it’s bullshit that playing GTA won’t make someone murder people because violence in media or the news makes people afraid of violence, or that it’s bullshit that ideas can be expressed because violence in media or the news makes people afraid of violence?
Normally I’d be able to work this out, but neither of those options makes the slightest bit of sense on any level. I’d suspect it was the one about GTA not making people commit murder, but the only way that could be the case is if you’re only skimming through comments, looking for key words to disagree with rather than doing that thing where you actually read and then think about what you’ve read before deciding if a response is necessary, and what kind. I don’t know, is that “reading and thinking” thing just too emotional for a true skeptic?
Well, this one is actually on the inofficial list of problems the gaming industry has, or at least on the list of inexplicable and silly things, so you might have skipped over that argument. On top of that games are not exactly overburdened with realism – that’s part of the appeal – so again, you might have skipped it.
Except for what appears to be a majority of cases where the players actually don’t have that choice, where no real alternatives exist. For all the interactivity, most games still roll along a fixed track where certain things just happen. The most obvious example is the generic Damsel in distress, where it is inevitable that the woman needs to be rescued. Or whenever female NPCs are slaughtered, kidnapped, abused, etc., which tends include some added degree of sexualisation and / or helplessness not applied to their male counterparts. PC characters may just automatically play along with this. Where actual ‘choices’ are presented they don’t necessarily include what might be regarded as a moral option. These things just happen so the game can move along.
Guess you didn’t watch the Mrs Character video either. Mrs Character is to diversity what a postit note labelled “Chocolate” is to candy: The underlying idea may be good but the execution is so bad it only made things worse.
@Anri
This is literally a contradiction in terms. You can’t say it’s context dependent, and then dismiss the context as “explaining away.” You’re dismissing the context he’s giving, but saying that context matters.
I mean, he’s literally giving you the context, and you responded with “well how much of the game needs to be brutalizing strippers to be bad.” That’s why the question is stupid. You deleted the context, making it an unanswerable question.
Then when I phrase similar questions at you, suddenly you’re talking about context here and context there. All you did was avoid the question just like he did.
@Anri
To throw your own words back at you:
Frankly, the reason I’d give the Hitman example a pass is because I don’t think the strippers were actually sexualized (from what I saw from Anita’s video). They’re just treated as bystanders and obstacles you have to avoid. They aren’t background decoration by any means, so it doesn’t properly fit the trope. They’re treated like people, which, you know, strippers actually are.
If the game forced to watch the strippers do a dance or something like that, then yea wtf. But from what I saw they seemed to be treated like human beings and not an object to be gawked at.
doublereed @ 155:
I’m not saying no context matters, I’m saying I disagree with this specific instance of context as explaining away this particular instance of brutalizing women. That’s why context matters, to determine just what the hell’s going on in a particular game. A large-breasted woman in a tight-fitting outfit (for example, Chun-Li from the Street Fighter series) is arguably sexualized. Beating her as an active participant in a fighting game would be different context than beating her while she is unable to fight back at all. Y’know, like in the game which was the specific context we were discussing.
Having a different tolerance for violence against the character because of the context is both understandable and reasonable. On my part, and on the part of Verbose Stoic.
Um, no, I left it open as to context. An answer just like the one I gave above, talking about similar situations (the same character, in fact), in two different contexts would be an answer to my question. Verbose Stoic specifically said that they were ok with this content, in this context, because it was just a little bit of the game. I was checking to see what they actually meant by just a bit. When the question was turned around on me, I gave an answer that was both general (could be applied to many situations) and also addressed the specific context (the helpless strippers in Hitman).
Well, and from my answer – which was that I don’t think beating up helpless sexualized women is a good thing – can you determine what my reaction to the specific context being discussed is?
If so, I’ve answered the question, haven’t i?
I even game some examples of answers that would have made me perfectly happy, including “That’s not something I’ve got a hard idea of.” How in the hell can I give example answers to an unanswerable question?
If Verbose Stoic didn’t want to use any of the possible answers, either the ones that I gave or one that they came up with, that’s not really my problem. I get that saying “Well, I guess I don’t mind it if a few helpless women are brutalized in the name of good gameplay” sounds shitty, but if it’s an honest answer, own it.
It’s an answer.
To the question.
If someone finds themselves not liking their own answers to difficult questions, well, folks, welcome to the real, complex, adult world.
doublereed
Oy, do you even hear the words coming out of your keyboard? Is the stripper a playable character? Is she naked? Claiming a stripper isn’t sexualized might be the most stupid comment so far on this thread of derp.
“stripper” isn’t the category of people that is or is not being sexual used. WOMEN are being specialized, and the means of that sexualization is being portrayed are strippers.
@ Tethys
It is of no importance if the strippers are playable, or naked, or clad in bikinis. The tightasses here would still claim that a playable stripper is sexualization.
They however failed to demonstrate how sexusalization in games is a bad thing or has some negative impact on the real world, since it is a victimless crime and just a fantasy.
I think another point that is often being intentionally missed is that most of these tropes aren’t always harmful all by themselves. The problem is that they’re so overused, and have become the few ways players actually interact with in-game women, that this limitation in interaction is what causes some of the biggest problems. “Women as background decoration” isn’t a problem in itself since most NPCs are mere background decoration, but when that becomes one of the very few interactions any women characters have with the game and the player character, there is a rather significant problem.
I have not played Hitman, but I would imagine that if there had been significant interaction with NPC women outside of things like the encounter in the video, Sarkeesian’s critics would’ve brought it up. Pointing out that it is a very small portion of the game doesn’t actually take away from her original point, unless you can also point to some other part of the game where women are not just mere props.
Johannes
Foolish boy, it makes all the difference in the world. Contrary to your belief that we are tightasses, you are actually speaking with a group of pretty open, sex positive people. We would be fine with sexual content, as long as it is equal opportunity. I think the game might be far more interesting if the stripper could also be an assassin who morphs into a dragon and flames dudes who disrespect her. Problem solved! You get to see nekkid women, and they won’t just be decorative.
The game doesn’t treat strippers in any meaningful way from what I saw. That’s just the occupation and outfit. They’re just treated as a bystander. And she’s not decoration, but an obstacle because all bystanders are obstacles. I just don’t see why that necessarily sexualized.
I fail to see how being playable matters in any way.
Like the game isn’t like “ooo la la look at these strippers” it’s like “okay you have to get around these strippers undetected somehow.”
Where’s the sexualization exactly?
Are you blind?
Whatever. The game treats strippers as human beings and bystanders. It doesn’t treat them as eye candy but as obstacles.
Saying “are you blind” or “it’s obvious” frankly gives me a very sex negative vibe that I’m not at all comfortable with.
@ Tethys
For some people here or in the mid of Anita playing as a stripper or a female character dressed like a stripper, powerful as it may be, is still oppression.
Athywren @124,
So, on your Worms point, keeping in mind that you know the game much better than I do, here’s a description of how the game works from the wiki:
Essentially, the game rewards you for not killing bystanders. If depriving some of a reward isn’t considered enough to impact the behaviour of the players, then the video linked here doesn’t have a link between getting trophies for, say, having sex with prostitutes and the player choosing to do that. So, if that’s an accurate description of how the game works in that scene, and if it is argued that setting up the reward structure isn’t enough to discourage people from killing the strippers, then it doesn’t seem like Sarkeesian has a point in THIS video. She can’t really maintain both points.
Also, that would be more than enough to disprove what I was actually complaining about, which is Sarkeesian’s explicitly saying that the game is set up to provide that experience. It clearly isn’t. Here’s exactly what she says while showing that clip of Hitman (note that in the transcript it doesn’t, in fact, say that this is the clip she’s showing here, but that’s likely because it only captures the spoken word elements):
So, from the representation of the game as I understand it, none of this is true. Two missions, at most, is not a series. The game is actually set up for you to AVOID these situations (the easier path avoids this area entirely), so it’s not inviting to explore or exploit them. The player can indeed resist treating them that way, because the game discourages treating them that way (even the conversation between them discourages you from killing them indiscriminately, as it is designed to at least try to evoke sympathy and empathy). As I’ve said repeatedly, they weren’t placed there for that purpose; they’re there because it’s actually appropriate for them TO be there. Since you aren’t encouraged to kill them and in fact are discouraged FROM doing that, you’re clearly not meant to derive a perverse pleasure from doing something the game actually goes to lengths to have players avoid doing. Since the characters are dressed in environment appropriate attire and are treated like any other, the link — at least in the designers’ minds — from the sexualization to the violence doesn’t exist; from the game’s perspective, you’re not supposed to think of them in any more sexual a way than you would any other civilian in the game (which doesn’t mean that their outfits won’t evoke that, of course). In this game, the in-game consequences — if I’m interpreting the wiki right — are precisely as strong as the in-game consequences for not using women as rewards in the games she cites, which means that they’d have the same impact on behaviour, as I said above.
Now, maybe she didn’t really think that this game was a really good example of that … but it’s safe to say that if she used it as the example, she must either have thought it would or else couldn’t actually find anything that looked like treateing women as objects for sexualized violence better than this did. Either doesn’t really help her case.
But as I don’t play these sorts of games, maybe I’m missing something. Since you do, I’d appreciate you telling me what I’m missing.
From my perspective, it would be more like making a video that talks about how ridiculous some of the rewards for doing special things are, and noting that in a golf game if you get a hole in one the game calls it “You won the car!” … ignoring that it is indeed a common reward for getting a hole in one on professional golf courses to win a car.
@doublereed, 168
Are those categories mutually exclusive?
@johannes9126, 169
You might be more convincing if you argued against positions held, rather than positions you’ve invented. Just for future reference.
anteprepro @125,
I don’t trust him, either. I went to look up whether what he was saying made sense or not (I even went to count the instances of strip clubs in that game). But there are a number of differences between his stuff and Sarkeesian’s:
1) As has been pointed out in this thread, Sarkeesian relies a LOT on listing tons and tons of examples to prove her point. If she’s misrepresenting them, that strikes directly at her thesis.
2) In order to check TFoot’s case, what you’d need to do is watch the relevant video — which I always encourage. To check HER case, I’d have to play all of those games to that point. Thus, if something TFoot says sounds funny, I’m very much inclined to go and check that to see if she really said that, whereas for her my choices in most cases are to either accept it or dismiss it outright. Because her stuff is harder to check, there’s a greater burden on her to do the research and present the examples fairly.
3) As has also been pointed out in this thread, I think, TFoot is unlikely to have any real influence on gaming culture or gaming as a whole. Sarkeesian, however, is, and is doing that through the summary of the arguments and examples. It’s easy for me to say that you should watch the video for that argument but don’t take him TOO seriously, but not so easy to do that for her.
The sexualization is accomplished through the VISUAL PRESENTATION of the strippers in the game. Hence the question, “are you blind”? Is very pertinent here.
That the game treats them as human beings is irrelevant. Sexualization is most commonly done to human beings, rather than animals or rocks.
That they are bystanders is also irrelevant to the question of the sexualization. Bystanders can be either sexualized or not sexualized, so the status in no way absolves the game designers of the charge.
That they are an obstacle to overcome is similarly IRRELEVANT. The same game mechanic of avoiding being seen can be accomplished with pillars mounted with security cameras, so WHY choice of strippers with a SEXUALIZED VISUAL PRESENTATION?
As for your last statement, what those blindness have to do with gender? What a disgusting intellectually dishonest false equivalency.
@ Athywren #171
“You might be more convincing if you argued against positions held, rather than positions you’ve invented. Just for future reference.”
So I take it you haven’t paid much attention to Anitas videos, then?
@ Amphiox #173
“That they are an obstacle to overcome is similarly IRRELEVANT. The same game mechanic of avoiding being seen can be accomplished with pillars mounted with security cameras, so WHY choice of strippers with a SEXUALIZED VISUAL PRESENTATION?”
Wouldn’t make sense to have a strip-club with security cameras instead of strippers, would it?
Anri @126,
I was quite clear in the original comment and set of comments what you were insinuating. You were insinuating that the designers of the game put that in the game, and the players of the game who would be upset at its exclusion would be upset because it wouldn’t allow for an experience like … well, let me let Sarkeesian describe it:
In context, the game is, in fact, nothing like that.
This is why your question is a “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?” question, because to answer it I’d have to accept that it is sexualized violence in the manner that Sarkeesian — and presumably you — think of it. And I think it isn’t.
Also note that my comments on its prevalence was to refute this part of Sarkeesian’s explicit statements:
As I said earlier to Athywren, it’s not a series, and they aren’t invited to do that in that game. Thus, from the full argument, Sarkeesian has no case for its inclusion in that statement … but it’s what plays when she says that.
And this is precisely what I say is NOT happening in this game. The characters are not sexualized because the outfits they are wearing are context-appropriate. The context is actually underused in the game series and game itself, not overused as a way to subtly do that. There is no link between their sexuality and the PC wanting to kill them. The PC is actually discouraged FROM beating them up and killing them. As an example of what you talk about, it’s pretty much about as dubious as you possibly can get, because all of the things that you could complain about are firmly justified by the game series and context itself. So all you’re left with is arguing that they’re strippers dressed as strippers and are NPCs and so NO violence against them can ever be reasonable … which is utterly ridiculous, and also risks simply cutting strippers out of all representation in games entirely.
If it had been more frequent, it would have made a better argument for the claim that this was something the game invited players to do. Since it’s such a small part of the game, you can’t make that argument.
ck,
The hitman’s handler — essentially, boss — is a woman throughout the series. So it STILL wouldn’t be a good example. The strippers in this scene are just as much background objects as anyone else is in the game.
@Verbose Stoic
In Worms, collecting coins deprives you of the reward of unlocking the next hole. Therefore, you’re obviously not supposed to collect them.
Or… you only need to unlock the hole once. You only collect the bonuses once. If you don’t collect the reward the first time, you can replay the level and get it a second time. Worms impedes your progress through the game if you don’t complete the level at or under par, but Hitman is just as willing to let you pass to the next level after a bloodbath as it is if you get through without a touching a single person other than the target, or being spotted. There are other rewards in Hitman, by the way. One is to complete the level wearing only your default clothes, without changing, while another is to collect all possible disguises in the level. Completing one challenge makes it impossible to complete the other in the same playthrough. Therefore, neither is supposed to be completed, right? You can’t really maintain both points.
Well, let’s go through it then:
Well, that’s true. You might not have received an invitation in the mail, allowing you to call this one false semantically, but the point of games is to explore the situations presented to you.
(By the way, I’d point out that this is not addressing Hitman specifically, but a collection of titles that had been referred to in the video, so arguing that the strip club level is not one of a series doesn’t really counter it.)
Also true. Everything in a game is a thing to be acted upon. Even skirting around them – and you do have to skirt around them unless you want a bloodbath because of the way the area is designed – is acting upon them.
Yeah, ok, debatable. Were they put there specifically with the conscious intention of their being used to derive a perverse pleasure? Maybe not. She might be guilty of overly strong wording or attempted mind reading there.
True. You’ll tend to need to get a new disguise to lower the alert level – I don’t think you can just wait for it in Hitman – but this is true. The point penalty is small, easily counteracted by hiding the body, and only means a thing if you’re going for the high score, the silent assassin bonus is only awarded once, and failing to achieve it in later playthroughs doesn’t revoke it, so you’re not going to miss out on that. It’s also probably worth noting that there’s an achievement for killing alert guards and restoring the alert status to normal – an achievement which is very much incompatible with the silent assassin and high score goals… you’re obviously just not supposed to get that one, right?
So, rather than none of it being true, most of it is true, and a little is debatable.
If you want some of the achivements, sure. If you want other achievements, no.
What, the easier path through the area where several armed guards – who will notice that you’re not supposed to be there and attempt to kill you before you make it through – are sitting around and playing pool? Yeah. That path is pretty easy. Doesn’t effect your score at all either. Nope.
This is true. Not particularly relevant, but true.
The player can resist a lot of things. If you want the pacifist achievement in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, you have to avoid killing people at all, at any point through the game. There’s a point in the game where a bunch of private military thugs raid a “hotel” where people essentially live on shelves with a matress and a curtain. They kill everyone. People with nothing. People whose home you have spent the last few minutes exploring, hearing them talk amongst each other, argue, play checkers. A lot players would probably want to kill every last one of those mercenaries, but if you want the pacifist achievement, you can’t. You have to resist the urge to do so if you want to get that achievement, just as you have to for the silent assassin achievements. That doesn’t mean that you fail if you don’t resist, though. If you kill those Belltower arseholes, you miss out on the pacifist achievement. If you kill the strippers, or pretty much anyone else in the level, you miss out on the silent assassin achievement. In neither case does it stop you from completing the level or the game, or meaningfully penalise you unless you’re trying to get those achievements.
Sure, but why is it appropriate for you to be heading through their changing rooms? Sure, it’s necessary to take that route, because the supposedly easier route is full of guards who will spot you, but why is that the case? Was it accidental, or was the level designed with sneaking through that spot in mind?
Sure, if you make sure to focus closely enough, it’s perfectly reasonable to expect strippers to be in a strip club’s changing rooms, but ignoring all of the questions around that isn’t reasonable.
What you keep saying is that it’s appropriate for them to be there, because it’s a strip club, but you’re refusing to consider why you‘re there in their changing room. The level was designed that way. Why? Hell, the only nod you’ve given to why you’re there in the strip club at all is that it’s inevitable for a game tackling the subject matter that Hitman does, which apparently doesn’t raise any kind of flag for you that there might be some kind of… umm, what’s the word… smope? Flope? Wnope? Ah, you know – a kind of trend going on.
See, now you’re engaging in the same mind reading that is the source of my one and only criticism of Sarkeesian’s argument in this case. Of course, in her case, the argument that “[p]layers are meant to derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual female characters” isn’t all that important to the overall point.
The video you’re arguing against doesn’t tackle women as rewards. And you’re not interpreting the wiki right, fyi. But even if you were, doesn’t that directly counter your argument that you’re actively dissuaded from doing so? You can’t really maintain both points.
She wasn’t using the game as a whole – she was using that element of the game. Which is why the repeated accusations of cherrypicking are meaningless and demonstrate an ignorance of the argument being made. Speaking of demonstrating an ignorance of the argument being made, she also had other examples.
You’re missing the content, the context, the attitude and the atmosphere. You’re also missing the fact that I, as a fan of the Hitman games who enjoyed Absolution and still plays it sometimes, am not defending the game against the accusation of containing tropes, while you, someone who hasn’t played it and apparently doesn’t play games like it, are defending it despite working only from a wiki. I don’t normally put much stock in personal experience arguments, but there are times when they’re relevant.
I love these games, so I’m not just going to wave away legitimate criticisms of them based on a wiki. I’m also a big fan of the Splinter Cell games, but that doesn’t mean I’ll deny that their use and portrayal of “enhanced interrogation” in Conviction, for example, is deeply flawed.
…how does that relate to objectives or bonuses outside of the main path? What are you arguing here? That a common reward for visiting a strip club and murdering the owner is a trip to the changing rooms?
Also, as a quick side note, is it wrong that “from my perspective…” made me think of this?
…why? What difference does that make? Yet again, the argument was not that Hitman is a sexist game which is full of sexist tropes, it was that women as background decoration is a sexist trope, and examples of it can be found in Hitman, among other games.
Just out of curiosity, do you also believe that actual women in actual strip clubs are not sexualised? Because their outfits are also context appropriate.
Funny story – she’s your first target in Absolution. You break into her safehouse and surprise her in the shower. There’s more to it than that, obviously, but spoilers.
Right. So I don’t think the presentation is sexualized. Just because a figure is nude or a stripper doesn’t mean it’s sexualized. That’s what I mean. They aren’t actually presented that way.
And you just stating that the presentation necessarily is sexual because of their outfit really gives me the slut shaming and sex negative vibe I don’t like.
Some of the previous suggestions, like making them unable to be interacted with, is actually way worse. Then they literally would be nothing but eye candy for you to gawk at and decoration.
Either way, I don’t think this conversation is really going anywhere. You’re still being like “Just look it’s obvious” and I don’t get it.
That they are an obstacle is relevant to the idea that they are background decoration. They are not. You have to avoid them. It isn’t eye candy. You interact with them like any other bystander or human being.
@doublereed, 178
They’re not actually all that much of an obstacle, though. You have to duck behind a wall but, other than that, it takes more effort to get their attention than to avoid it. Not much more, admittedly, but you do actually have to go out of your way to be spotted by them.
I haven’t played it so I have no idea about that.
doublereed
Maybe you should quit pretending that presenting women in games as sex workers is somehow not sexualized. We are trying to get you to notice that your precious games contain huge amounts of sexism and misogyny. You acknowlege that they are just obstacles, and then keep claiming that Anita’s analysis is somehow wrong. At this point you are just as blind as the black man who tried to hold a southern pride rally around the confederate flag in Minnesota.
johannes
Quote it or GTFO. We aren’t oppressed by boobies. We are oppressed by male game developers using female boobies and bodies to sell their sexist dreck. How about you address the actual point rather than whinging and building straw arguments? A stripper/assassin/dragon as a playable character solves the background decor issue by giving the female roles agency, It would also be far more creative and interesting than the same old games as Barney Stinson teenage boy fantasy dreck.,
Verbose Stoic @ 175:
Which would be an excellent point against what I was arguing… if that’s what I was arguing. Here’s what I actually said to summarize my point:
Anita’s welcome to impute whatever unpleasant desires the devs and players had in creating or playing the game. I’m primarily concentrating on the fact that it was placed in the game, on purpose, by the devs, and that many players, including yourself, are just fine with that, even though it is clearly a case of brutalizing sexualized helpless women.
I don’t think you have to accept that it is sexualized violence in any particular way.
I’m just trying to get you to admit that it’s violence against sexualized, helpless women, and that you’re ok with it. And then to maybe consider how much of it would be required to say it wasn’t ok.
In short, you’re conflating Anita’s arguments with mine. Until I start re-stating her arguments, please don’t do that – you’re going to get my arguments wrong every time.
I’m not conflating you with other people I’m arguing with. Please extend to me that same courtesy.
No, I’m arguing that it was a conscious decision to put them into the game, and that the people that accept that level of violence against helpless sexualized women own it.
I’m not saying it’s unacceptable.
I’m saying I don’t care to accept this instance of it.
I’m asking the people who do to acknowledge that it is what it is, and to be ok with it.
And that if they’re uncomfortable with acknowledging that, they might wanna examine why they are.
Really, I’ve said this several times.
I was asking what ‘more frequent’ meant in your opinion.
If you are saying – as you seem to be – that if that sort of violence would have made you uncomfortable if it had been more frequent, that’s fine, and a perfectly reasonable thing to say.
I was asking you to take a stab at vocalizing what ‘more frequent’ means to you.
If its something you don’t have a firm grip on because it’s something you haven’t really taken a hard look at, fine, say that.
But if its a question you don’t want to consider because you feel it makes you look bad to answer it honestly, well, that’s not a problem with the question.
As I said upthread, its impossible to give example answers (or my own answer) to an unanswerable question. Since I can – and have – its not. Not liking your answer is not the same thing as the question being unanswerable.
So you don’t actually know what they look like, how they are presented, or how they specifically they interact with gameplay?
And you have the nerve to argue that it is “just” an obstacle and not “background decoration”? And have the nerve to argue that something cannot be both?
Are you blind AND dumb? Or have you, who never played the game, not actually bothered to look at that segment, read the text and listen to the background sound effects?
They are nude AND strippers AND actively working at a strip club, and you, who haven’t played the game, want to argue that isn’t sexualized?
No I am not stating that, you pitiful liar. I never said a presentation of nudity or sex workers is “necessarily” sexual. I said THIS SPECIFIC ONE IS. The combination of visual presentation and circumstance of context makes it so. And you who have never played the game have the nerve to dishonestly try to distract with abstractions and continue to employ your false equivalencies.
I am done talking to you. I only engage so much with the deliberately intellectually dishonest.
Ugh. So a game can never be set in a strip club or contain sex workers and not sexualize them? (are strippers considered sex workers? I thought they’re just strippers.)
But yea, if you’re operating under that assumption that literally any portrayal of strippers is sexualizing and sexist, then yea I totally disagree. But I see zero way a game could include such thing in a positive way if hitman doesn’t apply, considering they’re humanized in those games.
And dude, I know the games contain plenty of sexism. I don’t disagree with any of Anita’s major points. I just think the hitman example is bad. And I stated before in this conversation that I was going from what gameplay I saw in her video.
But whatever. I must be intellectually dishonest or something. That’s why I said the conversation was getting pointless. You saying that they’re obviously sexualized and me not really getting why you’re saying that. Of course you consider me intellectually dishonest. Stupid way to have a conversation, and I don’t see a resolution.
Just because they’re nude and strippers in a strip club doesn’t mean they’re sexualized. I just disagree, and think that’s a pretty puritanical view.
Actually Doublereed, I think that you cannot understand because you have zero experience with being objectified, or female. You can’t see the background toxic sexism, because it is common as dirt in our culture. You think it is completely unremarkable that games have been marketed exclusively toward a male demographic, and fail to make the connection that those games serve to perpetuate misogyny as normal behavior. The strippers sell sexual gratification, and they sell it almost exclusively to men you dolt. Apparently you are of the opinion that it’s only sexual if you actively try to derive sexual gratification from them, and nothing else counts as sex or sexualized. Because how women are depicted just magically poofs into existence and the poor mens can’t help drawing porn and abusive violent scenarios that involve strippers and prostitutes.
doublereed
And there it is, the utter blindness of male privilege. “I choose to not notice it therefore it isn’t worth talking about.”
The mansplainin’ from those opposed to AS’s analysis is reaching toxic levels. Guys, here is your problem. If I will consider whether something is sexist or not, do I listen to males explaining why nothing is sexist, or to those who are on the receiving end of your sexism? The latter will always prevail. Your mansplainin’ is diminished a thousand fold in my consideration, that of a 60+ year old fat/bald male. Want to get anywhere, start by acknowledging what you are doing, and why it is wrong. Until then, don’t bother.
*30 seconds of open mouthed silent WTF*
I have shared these two sentences with many of my female coworkers. We have come to a consensus that this may be one of THE stupidest things we have ever heard. Ever.
I am personally forced to wonder what exactly you think the purpose of a strip club is, and how they go about making money, because that statement of yours tells me that you clearly don’t know.
I mean, to further this…. why must they be naked? Why can’t they be fully clothed in loose jeans and t-shirts, and still be strippers in a strip club?
It’s just interpretive dance done without clothes. Fine arts all the way down. Nothing to see here people.
Note the unspoken implication here.
HIS personal opinion on what is and is not sexualization immediately and automatically invalidates Sarkeesian’s opinion on the same subject. HIS opinion is the only one that matters, the only one that counts. The opinions of women don’t count.
@doublereed
Well you might not be intellectually dishonest, but if you’re capable of reading this…
…and responding to it with this…
…there’s clearly some disconnect there, and if it’s not a result of dishonesty, then it’s definitely a massive failure of some kind.
—
Aaaanyway, I only popped back in to add to add a little comment on the matter of whether players are supposed to be attacking the strippers and dragging their bodies around. I decided I was going to watch the “Women as Background Decoration” videos again, since I was only going from memory and that’s a really good way to screw things up.
Interestingly enough, Sarkeesian says something almost immediately before that part that Verbose Stoic has made such a point of quoting. I can’t help but wonder why it wasn’t included in that quote, honestly, considering how clear it makes it that any implication of their abuse being an overt objective is merely the result of imprecise language… oh wait, maybe that’s why.
She then goes on to talk briefly about how players engage with games, which I won’t quote but will link to here, and then gets onto the “series of possible scenarios involving vulnerable, eroticized female players” bit that’s been quoted.
I have to admit, I also found it pretty interesting to notice just how little of those videos actually referenced Hitman at all. I’d somehow managed to get it in my head that it was the majority of them – probably because people seem to argue exclusively about Hitman when they’re arguing this subject – which I guess just goes to show how fallible memory can be.
Noticed that days ago. Typical mansplainin’. And treated their posts accordingly.
Speaking of which, it is not for nothing that “obstacle” and “object” have the same latin root.
Even if that ludicrous claim that because the strippers are “obstacles” they can’t be background (I guess every slapstick comedy routine that has the protagonist falling over the ming vase in the background is now invalid), all it means is that Anita should have put that one specific example in a different video in the series.
@Nerd, 194
To be fair, not all of doublereed’s posts have been mansplainy… seemingly just the ones about Hitman for some reason. It’s actually a bit confusing considering they apparently haven’t played it, so I don’t really understand what would drive all that weirdness.
Since doublereed has acknowledged they haven’t played Hitman, that is explained due to using secondary sources of information for the game play. Without attribution to that source, that is a dishonest practice, and can’t be explained away. Typical of mansplainin’.
Verbose Stoic and Johanness9126 are simply mansplainin’ at the end of the day, using different methods. The end result is the same. Believe them without evidence, not AS with evidence.
Well, they could be sharing a Caffe Latte in a Starbucks and comiserate about how the management doesn’t turn on the heating in the changing room. While still wearing their street clothing.
Or be shown doing grocery shopping.
You know, like people.
Athywren @193,
This is a good comment here, because it’ll let us get down to brass tacks on this and ignore some of the sidetrack over trophies:
I didn’t that part because, well, it isn’t actually all that relevant to the discussion. I completely agree that games can implicitly and even EXPLICITLY encourage behaviours that are player-optional. I can even agree with the latest video that providing trophies for doing it can be a way to do that (the problem with that, though, is for at least repetitive ones players tend to ignore the content of the trophy itself, which is what she needs in this video). The issue, then is if in the Hitman case that’s what’s actually done. And it’s important to get the Hitman case right, because that’s what she deliberately chose to run while saying this, so the implication certainly is that she thinks this is a good example.
So, then, my question for you — and it isn’t mocking or sarcastic, but is serious — is to tell me, since I don’t play the game, how the game implicitly or explicitly encourages players to kill the strippers. Your Worms Golf example talks about trophies, points or achievements … do you get any of these for killing them? Your response to the point about resisting it is to give the perfectly agreeable point that even things that are hard to resist can be resisted, but what’s in THAT sequence that makes it hard to resist? If I picked up that game and got that far, what is it about it that would make it hard for me to resist killing them? You even said that sneaking past them is relatively easy, and if one needs to trigger an alert going the other way, from what you said, would be the easier method.
I can’t get this from Sarkeesian because she doesn’t actually SAY how Hitman does it. If you watch the video, all you get is the impression that this game, in general, does everything she talks about, but nothing about how.
Let me at least leave the rest of 176 until we get past this, because it’s the more important point anyway.
Anri @182,
Um, but that’s the point that my “It isn’t a big part of the game” was aimed at, and you replied to me. So if that isn’t what you’re arguing, then my argument, the one that spawned you continually asking me how much brutalization of sexualized women was okay, obviously doesn’t apply to it, and was never meant to reply to it … but, then, it means that you weren’t addressing what I was arguing despite you, in fact, being the one to reply to me on that point. So:
Since my arguments were originally aimed at her arguments, and you replied to my arguments about her arguments, it was perfectly reasonable for me to assume that what you were talking about was, in fact, the arguments I was making. Except here it looks like you inserted your own argument into the picture and then interpreted my responses as responses to it and not to what I was actually arguing, despite my saying that in other comments. So please extend me the courtesy of not taking arguments against another argument and then translating them to your argument as if that was what I was arguing.
I replied to this: I don’t see how this is an example of at least problematic depictions of that, because I don’t see how the women are meant to be portrayed as simply sexualized and don’t see the link between their sexualization and the violence. You aren’t, as far as I can tell, in any way meant to think of these NPCs any differently than any other NPCs in the game. At a minimum, the game does not present their sexualization as a reason TO brutalize them.
So let me ask you a similar question to what I asked Athywren: what is it about the situation that makes that link? It has to be more than “They’re there and can be killed”, doesn’t it? And since they do discourage it with gameplay mechanics — you lose points — even if that discouragement might be insufficient, relying on there being a common real-world link between the two isn’t really sufficient, because the game could be easily seen as trying to subvert that expectation. So, to your mind, what is it about this that makes it so that the player is supposed to either see or accept a link between sex and violence in that specific example? I argue that the context works against that, you disagree: why?
Nerd of Redhead @197,
Ignoring that the argument is that the evidence she’s giving, in at least that specific case, is not evidence, and which evidence has been provided for, including the evidence she herself gives.
Tethys @186,
Look, what Sarkeesian is doing is not simply an opinion piece. She’s not just looking at games and pointing out what she likes and doesn’t like. She’s trying to build an academic study out of this, something that can be used in schools (literally; that’s one of the unlocked rewards on the Kickstarter). If you’re trying to build an academic case, as she is, you can’t rely on “Well, you just don’t have the right perspective”. It might be true, but the case has to be made such that even if you don’t have the right perspective you can see that the points hold. As I said earlier, for her strong points, the ones that we should really be worried about, she doesn’t have that evidence.
For example, looking over some other playthroughs, I think that Hitman: Absolution DOES treat strippers in that negative way in the main club, because while them simply being dancers dancing they seem to allow for a lot more direct interaction in a sexual way. Is this good or bad? I can’t say. In an open game like Hitman, it might be seen as too much of a limit to not put it in, but then again you are a Hitman so it doesn’t really need to be there, either. That part, from my admittedly quick and shallow skimming, is a far better example of Women as Background Decoration than the Watchdogs case is. From what I can see of the Dressing Room part, though, that’s not the case. I was looking through those to see if I could get a full transcript of the conversation there, but the player is not encouraged to think of them as sexual objects for their pleasure, but instead as people who are scared and frustrated by the position that their boss has put them in, and that there’s nothing the police can do because he pays them off with THEIR bodies. If you pay attention to the conversation, it’s hard for me to see how anyone wouldn’t think of them sympathetically, and not as just sexual objects.
Anyway, that was a bit of a digression (but I think a useful one to explain my position). But the overall point is this: just because I don’t see that as being an example doesn’t mean that it isn’t … but just because others see it AS one doesn’t mean that it’s an example either. It is of course perfectly reasonable for others to feel that it is a problem and be bothered by it, but it’s also perfectly reasonable for me to not see it as one as well. Our experiences are our experiences, and no one can say which ones are, a priori, to be preferred. But presumably there is a truth of the matter here beyond what our own experiences tell us, and that’s what Sarkeesian needs to get at, and what requires evidence and argumentation.
She shows evidence, unlike you. You have nothing to say other than you don’t like her conclusions. Typical of mansplainin’. Except you use five hundred words to say something you could say in fifty.
Verbose Stoic @ 200:
Ok, my apologies, it looked to me as if I was asking you a direct question about your reaction to the game.
How should I have phrased the question “How much is too much?” to let you know that what I was asking was “How much is too much?”
Well, if we can’t agree that nude strippers are pretty much inherently sexualized, we’re never going to agree on anything else. In terms of asking how these NPC’s differ from others, I not familiar enough with the game to know how many other NPC’s are presented in the nude, doing sex work.
I’m presuming from your assertions that this is a ‘small part of the game’ that the answer is “very few, if any”. Which, I guess, is you answer as to what makes these NPC’s different from the rest.
Verbose Stoic
RLY? You interpreted my comment explaining why doublereed might not notice the large amount of sexism and misogyny in games as a matter of perspective? I was following the new commenting rules, while tying to make him really think about WHY he doesn’t find the common as dirt trope in games of strippers or prostitutes or just naked women in general as anything strange or unremarkable. I’m not going to spend any time on which category of sexist trope it should be filed under before you admit that Anita has a valid point. Go read some data on the correlations between aggression and violence and exposure to violent media.
Anri @203,
There’s still a disconnect here. Let me state it as clearly as I possibly can:
There are two points under discussion here: whether the game invites or encourages killing the strippers, and whether or not that violence counts as sexualized violence or not. The first argument is the one that is straight from Sarkeesian, which you say you are not addressing, the second is, I believe, the one you ARE actually addressing. The “it isn’t very common” argument addresses the FIRST argument, and only partly, as one of the reasons for us to think that the game doesn’t encourage this is that despite them being able to get away with including it much more often than they do, the game series typically HASN’T. The “the strippers are not simply sexualized and the game doesn’t seem to create any link between the sexualization and the violence” addresses the second point. Thus, your continually repeated question ends up being one that addresses the point that you claim to not be addressing, while you aren’t really addressing the point that IS supposed to address the point you claim to be addressing.
Is that clearer?
Tethys @204,
Presuming that doublereed has looked at Sarkeesian’s comments and the video, my comments on the game, and Athywren’s comments on the game, if doublereed doesn’t see that it isn’t going to defend Sarkeesian to say that it might be due to a lack of being objectified in real life that causes that. As Sarkeesian is doing an academic treatment, she’s going to have to be able to demonstrate it to people who do not have those experiences and, presumably, are not massively predisposed to disregarding the argument. There is no evidence that doublereed is so predisposed, so doublereed ought to be able to see it if Sarkeesian and the people defending the point in this thread provided the appropriate evidence.
As for those correlations, they are just that: correlations. And gaming has already dismissed — for good reason — the idea that violence in games in and of themselves can cause any real or lasting change in attitudes or behaviour wrt violence. If you’re trying to rely on that to make your case for the sexist tropes, you DEFINITELY need to present really strong evidence.
For the record, as I’ve said earlier sometimes Sarkeesian has valid points. I just don’t think she does in the cases we’re talking about, but unfortunately those tend to be the more unique ones and the ones that we really would have a pressing need to make radical changes to fix if they were valid.
You keep saying this, but have yet to provide a shred of supporting data. I just linked you to a an entire textbook full of studies that show that exposure to violence and sexism in media has negative effects on social behavior, especially for boys, and the effects were still measurable 30 years later. Saying that there aren’t any real consequences to violence and misogyny in media is actually quite disingenuous, considering that the military has long used video games to desensitize/ train soldiers to purposefully shoot and kill people with various weaponry from guns to jet fighters.
In my comment #206 please read quite disingenuous as —– I wish I could turn into a dragon and flambe every single asshole whose entire argument is “Sexism? I don’t see it as sexism because as a cis/het/dude I like looking at naked women, therefore it isn’t sexist.”
There’s an easy answer if you don’t like these games. Just don’t buy them.
And the easy answer is almost always completely useless at addressing the problem of society wide sexism.
If you don’t like the threads here criticizing your misogyny, don’t read/post here. Read your own post and behave accordingly.
An even simpler and far more effective solution to games full of sexist stereotypes, is for game developers to not make games full of sexist stereotypes.
God, #208
That’s the answer to a question nobody is asking here.
She’s wrong though about gender being a social construct. It is not. It is how the world presents itself to us; and how we perceive all things in it: in binaries, in oppositions. Here’s what the TAO has to say about yin and yang -the female and the male- and their interactions in the world. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulGnc0BfPWQ
God?
Really?
The Shark has been Jumped.
So, WeToldYouSo1@213-
You’re saying that ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ are completely identical across every single culture in the history of the entirety of the human species?
Because I can prove, easily, that it’s not. Which means that ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ are, indeed, social constructs.
Teachers tried to actively make me ‘act like a girl’. I identify as a woman. I’ve never felt like I wasn’t female. But I’m physically active, hate sitting around and talking, not afraid of reptiles or amphibians, aggressive, loud, outspoken. All traits viewed as ‘masculine’.
So… you’re wrong. You might want to choose a different screen name, because gloating when you’re beyond ignorant is just embarrassing.
Verbose Stoic @ 205:
I’m not claiming the game encourages brutalizing strippers, I’m claiming that it was included, deliberately, as a design decision, by the devs. That’s the premise that I’ve been working with, and stating explicitly, from the start. This appears to differ from Anita’s point that there is active encouragement within the game to do so, which (apparently) is incorrect.
So, no, my argument about the presence of that action in the game is not “straight from” anything other than my own points.
In answer to this, you appeared to make the argument that it was acceptable because there wasn’t all that much of it in the game.
I then asked you – nastily, no argument there, but answerably – to qualify what you meant by that.
I don’t see the point you raise as separate, as one depends on the other.
This question hinges, as far as I am concerned, in large part on if one would consider the strippers in question to be sexualized when being targets of violence. As I said, if we can’t agree on that, there’s no point in having the argument further. I asked if any other NPC’s were presented nude and helpless to emphasize the point that there was something exceptional about these NPC’s, specifically in a sexual dimension.
If beating hell out of nude, helpless people in many situations is common in the game, the strippers are nothing unique, and my argument fails.
If beating hell out of nude, helpless (ostensibly attractive) women is common throughout the game, then it isn’t a “small part” and your argument fails.
If the answer is neither of these two (which it is my – second hand – impression that it is), then we have a point of contention, and quite possibly just an argument about degree. Hence my trying to determine what degree you’re comfortable with.
. . .
God @ 208:
Hey, good point!
And if you don’t like a shop with a “no blacks” policy, just don’t shop there! Problem solved!
God is wiser than I thought, folks. I may have to give up my atheism if he keeps showing solutions this insightful…
Sarkeesian’s videos always seem to attract the most, let’s just say “interesting”, critics. Between vague insinuations of “fabrications”, painfully verbose retreads of stupid shit TFoot has garbled about completely different videos, ridiculous insistence that strippers aren’t “sexualized”, general assholish pseudo-arguments, and whatever the fuck WeToldYouSo1 is supposed to be doing, you get to experience the full Rainbow of Internet Nuisance.
Anri @217,
I’m not claiming you were. I’m pointing out that that was what _I_ was talking about when I made the point that you keep questioning me on. Again, that point was never meant to argue against what you were talking about.
So let’s move on to more substantive comments:
The thing is that this may give an indication of designer motive, but wouldn’t indicate whether it’s a problem or not. If this was a rare occurrence, but it was clear that in the game the context was such that the link between the sexualization and the violence was made clear, or that the game encouraged you to link the two, then it only being a rare occurrence wouldn’t mean that this was an acceptable, reasonable example. So, for example, if the game used the same models for these strippers as you see outside and can interact with, and had them talk about how their customers were all clueless rubes who humiliated themselves to see a little T&A, that would link that behaviour to them AND, as they’d be mocking you, give you reasons to kill them with that context currently in mind. That’s not how their conversation goes in game. Also, of course, if the game made a habit of putting nude and/or sexily dressed women in positions to be attacked, that would be bad, too.
From what I can see, in the game the characters, essentially, HAPPEN to be nude/scantily dressed, but that’s not made relevant to the action itself, and there’s nothing in the context for the player to make the link between that and the violence they can, if they choose, commit upon them. If there’s any sexualized violence there, it’s not in the game, but solely in the mind of the player.
Tethys @206,
Well, I’ve probably only said it once, maybe twice, but the reason why gamers are going to be skeptical of these claims is that they are the same sort of claims that Jack Thompson made, which I am given to understand have been pretty much discredited. Going from the same argument as he did is going to be mostly dismissed, even if she’s right.
You linked me to a 752 page textbook covering all of social psychology, which presumably includes more than just studies on violence and sexism in the media. Also, the description of the book doesn’t even MENTION studies like you say the book is full of. Thus, for me to see this as evidence, I’d have to go out, buy, and read that entire book. So, no, I think you still have to provide some evidence here, with details of specific studies and how they support your contention here.
Note: Sarkessian herself has actually done that. The problem is that she takes studies of passive media — TV, for example — and then tries to apply that to video games specifically, in fact arguing that because it’s interactive it’d actually be worse. The problem is that this isn’t necessarily true, especially if you want to make a “normalization” argument, as in a movie or a TV show it doesn’t break immersion for me to see other characters doing that if it isn’t something that I would normally accept, but in a game because I have to do it myself if I didn’t see it as normal it WOULD. So it’s easier to condition me to accept these things as normal when I’m a passive observer than when I have to do it myself. Sure, with exposure to enough games I might at least see that as normal in games and so get used to it that way, but then you risk me seeing it as a gameplay element, not as something that applies to real life.
Anyway, let’s look in detail at your claim, so that you can provide your studies:
Obviously, correlations are not causation, and you need causation here: you need to show that playing violent games increases one’s aggression, and that it isn’t the case that people who are more aggressive simply like playing more violent games. Given your comment about the effects being measurable 30 years later, you have to be comparing players to each other, not to their own levels, and that means that you, again, might be finding the rather unstartling fact that more aggressive people like more aggressive games. But if you have better studies, and studies about video games in particular, I’m more than willing to look at them … but, no, I’m NOT going to buy that big textbook to do that, thanks.
Verbose Stoic @ 129:
…you do know that video game characters aren’t real people, and don’t actually do stuff – or wear stuff – not specifically put onto them by the designers, right? (Emergent behavior from procedural sources aside – I’m assuming you’re not arguing this is a case of that, yes?)
The fact that they were presented as nude strippers was a conscious decision made by the dev team. They didn’t just happen to be nude, no. They were made that way. It sounds as if you’re arguing that the devs had no choice in the matter, and that’s just plain wrong.
Someone on (or over) the dev team said “I want to include strippers , and I want them to be nude.”
Anri @220,
You know, after you agreed with doublereed that the context of the situations matters to how they should be assessed, it’s a bit odd that every time I get into talking about the context you keep diving right back to the argument of “The designers added the nude strippers deliberately”. Yes, they did. But does just adding that mean that the example is a problematic one? I argue that it isn’t: their nudeness or stripper-outfitness doesn’t seem to be added to promote the player ogling them, it is appropriate for the setting, the game doesn’t draw attention to that in any way that should promote sexual feelings, and there’s no link from that to the violence that is optional anyway. So if you still think that this example is problematic, could you outline in some detail what bothers you about it? Because I think at this point we all agree that saying “They’re nude and strippers!” isn’t enough, don’t we?
Goodness, if all those nude female bodies in media are actually not there for straight men to oggle at, why are they even there in the first place?
doublereed, #85
Verbose Stoic, #219
These are two of the stupidest things I’ve ever read on or off the internet (and that includes the worst of the YouTube comments).
Giliell @222,
This reply would mean something if I was arguing that nude female bodies are NEVER sexualized. I’m not. I’m arguing that they aren’t sexualized in that specific scene which relies only on the argument that being nude — or scantilty-clad, actually, because in that scene NEITHER of them are nude — does not mean sexualized.
They are clearly sexualized in the scenes outside in the club. There is no real sexual content or context in the scenes in the dressing room.
Saad @223,
My comment is that beyond being scantily clad there is no sexual context in that scene. If you disagree, point it out, noting that the actual conversation between the two women is about how much it sucks to be used as sexualized bribes for the police officers so that their sleazeball boss can get away with things (like, it seems, making some dancers “disappear”).
The mansplainer is back. I will always let those who are subject to microagressions to tell me what is and isn’t microagressions against them. I won’t listen to the oppressors, that mansplain.
Hey, there’s nothing sexualized about them, they’re just strippers, in their work wear, talking about being used as sexy bait, really, nothing to see here, move on.
Either Verbose Stoic is as thick as they seem or they have never ever watched porn.
Giliell @226,
Except the porn example works against you, because the sexualized nature of it is built right into the entire context, not merely what they’re wearing. To make that comparison means that you’d have to consider someone talking to a stripper to be pretty much the same on sexualization scale whether the person was negotiating for a private show or interviewing them because of the suspicious death of their best friend who also worked there. As another example, you’d have to consider the lesbian scene between Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman in “Black Swan” to be essentially a porn scene, because it’s a sex scene between two women that many men would love to see having such a scene … except the context is enough to inspire reviewers to say that no one should find that erotic in any way.
Despite what some may think, men generally don’t find women talking about being objectified and how much they hate it attractive, and that in and of itself would lessen the sexualized impact. Add in what the player is doing at the time, and they are indeed an obstacle to avoid, and their outfits seem to be irrelevant to that role, at least from the game’s perspective. Thus, if they are sexualized or, if killed, are victims of sexualized violence that seems to be something that the player brings to the game, not that the game brings to the player. And for Sarkeesian’s analysis to work, the latter is what she needs to be true.
Verbose Stoic @ 221:
I keep having to say:
…because other people keep saying things like:
…and apparently expect not to get called out on being dead flat wrong on that point. Once these people stop being openly, repeatedly wrong about that point, I’ll stop correcting them.
Also, you seem to have changed arguments at some point – which is fine, of course.
Initially, you were arguing that this example wasn’t a problem because it wasn’t a large part of the gameplay, yes?
Now, you appear to be arguing that it isn’t a problem because despite being strippers, and despite being (I presume – correct me if I am wrong) the only nude character models, the devs didn’t intend for them to be viewed as sexual objects. I’m checking because I don’t want to misunderstand your position.
I suppose the obvious question to that would be: why go to the trouble of making them nude? If they’re not intended to be sexualized, their street clothes would have served just as well, and probably (again, correct me if I am wrong) have been built out of assets used elsewhere in the game.
You appear to be arguing that the devs were designing nude models for the strippers in this scene, while thinking “Boy, I sure hope no-one thinks these girls are sexy! ‘Cause that goes against the whole nude-stripper-vibe we’re going for here. These are strictly the non-sexy nude strippers.”
Not buying that, myself.
Now, correct me if I’m wrong… but isn’t the act of ‘stripping’ one that involves wearing some clothing… and removing it? That means that they have clothes on, to some degree, when they are not actively engaging in stripping.
So tell me again how nude strippers aren’t ‘sexualized’? I’d love to share that new bit of stupid with my coworkers who got such a kick out of the last iteration.
A lot of discussion still going on here. Of course there is no point debating that games often contain sexualized male and female characters and are mostly targeted at (youthful) male gamers. But this is a choice the game designers make and they have every right to do so.
Why? Because no one could prove that sexualized games or visuals have an impact in real life (same goes with violence). Or did anyone see Anita – after allegedly playing 1000s of hours of sexually perverted games – groping mens or womens buttocks in the train?
So quit pretending that pixel-sexualization is a bad thing and quit trying to censor game design – as already happened, like in Dragon Age 3.
Sorry, it’s been done. Quit lying to yourself, then you can quit lying to us. We know better.
Why should women care about being seen primarily as sexual objects in media? Oh… I dunno, because that is a reflection of how we’re seen in real life, too? Our primary worth is treated as being how attractive we are to straight men. If we aren’t attractive, what we say has no merit. If we’re too attractive, then we’re airhead bimbos and what we say has no merit. We women have a shelf life, and once we hit 30 it’s all downhill from there.
Also, as an FYI, most of the males in games aren’t sexualised. They’re idealized and there’s a big difference between how male characters are portrayed and treated.
johannes9126 @ 230:
As I said to you, waaaay back @ 152:
Hard of reading, indeed.
The argument I’m making isn’t that games create this attitude, it’s that they reflect it. They’re a symptom, not a cause. By highlighting the symptom, we bring attention to the cause.
This isn’t hard to understand… unless you’re actively trying not to.
What the hell is it with this irrational notion that, because a game cannot turn you into something you are not, that it cannot have any impact at all?
I am not dead. Does that mean I haven’t been sick for the past two weeks? No. Because something not having a large impact is totally different from it having no impact. Every book we read, every conversation we have has an impact upon us. Maybe not a large one, but an impact nonetheless. We are not the islands of libertarian will that so many anti-rational gamers like to believe.
Athywren
For this to be true you’d have to be born with all your ideas and values already in your brain and nothing can ever change that.
Or you’d have to be a computer and unless somebody exactly tells you something and that somebody has “administrator access”, this doesn’t have any impact on you at fucking all.
User Account ControlDo you want to allow this app to make changes to your ideology?
Program name: The Collected Works of Ayn Rand
Yes | No
Johannes:
Such idiocy. Everything has an impact on us, our thinking, our actions, and what we are willing to label as ‘okay’. Cumulative effect, yes?
@ Nerd #231 and so on…
“Sorry, it’s been done. Quit lying to yourself, then you can quit lying to us. We know better.”
Oh, riiiiight? Studies, please. Oh, wait… You can’t provide these. Studies in the U.S. and Europe are showing that video games neither make you sexist nor violent. Games may be a distraction, a waste of time and sometimes even adictive, but the points you people and Anita are making regarding this topic are utter bullshit.
Addition: Most people are able to tell phantasy from reality. Comparing the drivel of Ayn Rand that clearly is pointed at the real world to computer games is quite desperate.
Johannes9126 translated:
“I like big bouncy boobies and nearly naked women, thus overly sexualized women in games is totes okay and isn’t a sign of a larger issue with my culture in general and you all suck!”
Poor johannes9126 doesn’t want to change for the better, he likes being obnoxious. And he can’t spell “fantasy”, poor sod.
Anri @228,
Since that quote is mine, let me state directly what I thought I had adequately implied: that wasn’t what I meant by that sentence. In that case, your interpretation that the designers put it in deliberately was irrelevant because I was talking about what the scene was in context. And, in context, they happen to be in their stripper outfits. In context, as far as I can tell, that is to signify that they are stripper employees. That’s it.
We’ve gone round and round and round over what that deliberate choice means, and I’m still waiting for you to state what your precise problem with the scene is beyond “It contains strippers”.
No. There are two arguments being considered here, as I’ve said before:
1) Sarkeesian’s about the game inviting and encouraging the player to engage in the behaviour of killing the strippers. This was what I was originally talking about, and what the “it’s not a big part of the game” argument was PARTLY meant to address.
2) What I presume is your argument — since you deny caring about that one — which is that this is, nevertheless, a case of sexualized violence that we should reduce if not eliminate from games. I wouldn’t use the “It’s not a big part of the game” argument there because that wouldn’t mean that it isn’t a problematic example, as I had hoped that both my explicit statement of that and my pointing out how your example of how that argument might work really wouldn’t. The argument against what I think is your point is, to narrow it down to the key elements, that they are not presented in a sexualized manner despite being scantily clad, and that even if they were the game doesn’t like that sexualization to the violence, which is what i think is required for sexualized violence.
So, given this, can you actually address the arguments I’m making against YOUR point? Preferably by stating why you think the scene IS sexualized violence?
They actually AREN’T nude, just scantily clad. The one that Sarkeesian focuses on in the video is essentially wearing a bikini, while the other is wearing what amounts to falsies on her nipples and panties. As far as I can tell from looking at other videos in the sequence, they DID build this out of assets used elsewhere in the game … specifically, the models for who you see outside in the main club area, where I have already conceded that yes, those models are sexualized. But it’s not because they are scantily clad, but because they essentially “put on a show”; they dance for the player and flirtatiously interact with them. None of that is on display in this scene; in fact, they are unaware that the player is there, and if they do become aware of their presence they, at most, run away in fear.
In context, there’s nothing overtly sexual about them, and so they’re no more sexual or sexy that, say, having a scene where you walk along a beach. Also, in the conversation they talk about how badly they’re being used for their sexuality, which is at a minimum designed to make you hate the target and want to kill him (as it demonstrates just how bad a guy he is). As I’ve said repeatedly, if the player takes the opportunity to ogle or thinks of them as sexual in that scene, that’s what they bring to the game, not what the game brings to them.
Rowan vet-tech @229
They’re actually pretty much dressed as they would appear outside in the club. One of them is essentially in a bikini, the other is wearing a bit less. So they are, in fact, pretty much just dressed as strippers/waitresses in that club would be dressed.
@232,
Many of the people that Sarkeesian and others criticize — and who criticize them — agree that all women in games ought not merely be reduced to their attractiveness, or to sexual objects. The problem is that in a lot of Sarkeesian’s examples that isn’t what’s happening. In this one, the game seems to be trying very hard to establish them as people, not as merely sexual objects. In Watchdogs, the game again seems to be trying to encourage you to find the slave auction disturbing instead of sexual. And I note that a lot of the responses are pointing to nothing more THAN the nudity or sexy outfits to show that they are being treated as nothing more than that. As I pointed out, if after beating a game I get an option to put a female character into even a sexualized outfit, how does that reduce her merely to a sexual object? If I liked the character, making her sexy is a bonus; it doesn’t mean that I think of her as any less of a great character, as I pointed out wrt Shepard and the cocktail dress.
Classic example of mansplain’. Your opinion is that of an apologizer, a non-listening male who tries to override the analysis of victims of microaggresions caused by bad sexist programming. You are part of the problem. You will only be part of the solution when you stop your mansplainin’. No analysis has to be perfect, and you give the strong impression you want bad sexist programming to continue. Otherwise, you wouldn’t continue your mansplainin’ ad nauseum.
Soooo…. you’re saying that they’re dressed up how they’d be in a highly sexualized environment, doing a highly sexualized thing, not how they’d be ‘back stage’…. and somehow this is not them sexualized? Doublereed said that nude strippers in a strip club wouldn’t necessarily be sexualized women. Nude women, in a strip club, not sexy. wtf. And you can’t see how this is absurd? Are you so goddamn verbose that you miss the obvious in your mountains of unnecessary wording?
So what you’re telling me is that you can’t imagine a character being used for multiple things at one time. Someone can be a strong character AND highly sexualized. Your enjoyment of the cocktail dress (which is inappropriate dress for fighting, right?) turns her into a great character AND highly sexualized eye candy for you, which you like. Her worth to you goes up (“is a bonus”) when you get to view her in a fetish outfit.
Verbose Stoic @242:
(emphasis added)
Third time:
I am only arguing, in this thread, that it should be acknowledged, not removed.
To continue…
We appear to be disagreeing on the concept that strippers, because of what they are, are inherently sexualized, especially when wearing end-of-a-strip-show outfits (as you have corrected me that they are not nude – thank you), even when not stripping at the moment.
Let me see if I can put it to you this way: is a Klansman in full regalia a significant symbol of racial oppression when just standing on a street corner? Or is he only radicalized when actually burning crosses or lynching someone?
Is the titular character of the game, the Hitman, only frightening when actually killing someone? Or do people recognize him for a killer and flee when they become aware of him?
Also, I’m not entirely sure why I should trust your judgment about what constitutes this link more than I should trust the women pointing it out to me.
So, they’re sex workers, being used for sex, but aren’t sexualized characters?
Um, ‘k. Again, not buying that.
The point of being sexualized isn’t that the player must find them sexy. Mind, you I’m willing to entertain the notion that the devs might have found them so, and/or might have expected the players to find them so. My argument doesn’t rest on knowing what the devs or players were actually thinking, only what they were willing, by their actions, to accept.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/lousycanuck/2015/09/13/illustrating-male-gaze-in-metal-gear-solid-v/
Go watch the video. The character model swap really does highlight the absurdity. That character *totally* isn’t sexualized, right?
Oh Rowan, that’s just that one game!
Stop picking games with sexism as examples.
Rowan vet-tech @245,
They’re in the dressing area backstage. It’s perfectly reasonable for them to be wearing the outfits that they’d be dressing in to go on stage. Heck, it’s perfectly reasonable for them to be wearing those things backstage because, well, they have to go on stage and come off of on stage, right?
“Sexy” does not mean “sexualized”. In order for characters to be sexualized, I think we can presume that at least one of two things must be true (add more if you think I’m missing any):
1) The characters must be reduced to their sexuality, without any focus on any other parts of their personality.
2) The outfits must be inappropriately sexual, and so clearly designed to evoke sex in circumstances where they shouldn’t be, and presented as if that isn’t inappropriate, so that the audience is encouraged to think of it as reasonable and expected, even for that sort of character.
1) is true of the women in the club, but not in the scene Sarkeesian shows. 2) is not true of either case; strippers are appropriately dressed as strippers in a context where they’d be dressed as strippers.
You need to address the point I raised earlier: By what seems to be your logic, there is no difference in sexualization between a case where a woman is being propositioned for a private show or being interviewed by a detective about the suspected murder of her co-worker as long as they are both dressed as strippers. Is this what you mean to imply?
In Mass Effect you never wear the dress while actually fighting. It’s only for walking around the ship.
Shepard IS a great character. That I also get to dress her in a way that is visually appealing to me — even if that appeal is sexual — is only a bonus, but doesn’t change her character. Thus, is she “highly sexualized”? I say not, in line with what I say above: doing this does not reduce her to nothing more than her sex appeal, and I am quite aware that it isn’t appropriate dress, but the game does not present it as such; it is something you can do, but making that choice, again, means that everyone realizes that it’s not typical clothing.
@247,
I’ll concede that that character probably is. I fail to see how that impacts anything I’ve said, especially given that I’ve already said that the strippers in Hitman were sexualized out in the club. The argument isn’t that it never happens, but that it’s prevalence and its impact may be being overstated when Sarkeesian runs off into massive claims about it using examples that don’t actually imply what she says they imply.
Anri @246.
If you look at your comparisons, I think it reasonable to conclude that you — as with Sarkeesian — want us to acknowledge them as the first step to removing them. At any rate, whether or not they ARE those cases is what’s in dispute here.
The argument you’d have to make here, pretty much, is that ANY representation of a stripper is inherently sexualized, pretty much no matter what they’re wearing or doing. Or, at a minimum, that representing a stripper as they’d look as a stripper is inherently sexualizing and therefore any such scene is a sexualized scene, and that therefore any violence towards them is sexualized violence. This, however, suggests that representing strippers as strippers and how strippers would look must be sexualizing, and if we want to avoid that we couldn’t represent them or present them in works at all. Even if true, the cure seems worse than the disease. Thus, a more grounded suggestion would be to present them as at least MORE than just that in some way. I argue that this scene, at least, does that.
So let me reiterate the question: do you believe that the level of sexualization is the same if you have a stripper in a stripper outfit being propositioned for a private show as if you had that same character model being interviewed by a detective about the murder of her co-worker?
You shouldn’t trust either of us. That’s what we need objective evidence and arguments for. That’s what I’m claiming Sarkeesian lacks or misrepresents.
Both sides need more than “This is how it looks to me”, but I’ve pointed out in detail why I don’t think it should count, and so am at least TRYING to go beyond that.
As I said, men generally don’t find women complaining about being ogled a turn-on, and the conversation about the sex is, well, pretty much that.
So what is it that you think the devs or players are willing to accept? That there are women dressed as strippers in a strip club? That strippers and strip clubs exist? The player is not encouraged to think that the exploitation is a good thing because it’s being done by the person that they’re supposed to be killing, and the tone isn’t such that the player is supposed to then feel SYMPATHY for their target (it’d better be described as giving a reason why the player is the only one that CAN actually take them out). So, from that specific scene, what problematic things are players and devs accepting?
Still mansplainin’ Verbose Stoic. Try silence, as you need to listen, not preach.
VS @250
Hence your motivation. You have no desire to see them removed because you a) enjoy them b) benefit from them. So you work against removal. What, don’t like that? Turnabouts fair play, as they say.