I made an account just so I could post this, so know that I believe what I have to say is important for each and every man and women who reads it.
I tried to break it up into readable chunks so your eyes don't glaze over, but please just read it because I can't summarize everything I'm trying to say in a tl;dr.
Thanks to re-watching her videos and a little bit of independent research I now understand her, and why it's so important that gamers of both sexes think deeply about what she saying. Because she's not only trying to tell us that a trope is sexist, she's asking us to understand that the reason for this is that we've accepted a fundamentally biased idea of the world. And this bias while it may seem harmless has led us to believe certain tropes are "normal," when in fact they are evidence of a larger abnormal trend in the world.
First off I think we need to clear up some ideas about the different areas of feminism. Men and women who don't want to claim the label feminist often say they are "humanists" or "gender egalitarians," and often see the primary challenges to equality as social issues like the glass ceiling, access to abortion, and slut-shaming.
Something they may not know however is that these qualities are already aspects of a pre-existing ideology, "Liberal feminism." They focus on the individuals' right to do and say things, with the empowering belief that once a woman can do anything a man does, and without her gender being mentioned, she is able to survive in the world just as well as he is.
This is very compelling and logical to support because it centers around changing our conscious behaviors, and it's clear that many video games embrace this fully, such as having female soldiers in Gears of War, a more vulnerable Laura Croft in the Tomb Raider reboot, and even Samus Aran's genderless portrayal in the original Metroid games.
It's clear however that Anita is not a liberal feminist though, because everything she mentions in her videos is tied to the influence of patriarchy. This marks her as a "Radical feminist" (A loaded word to be sure, but one that I believe has been rather unfairly maligned) who believes that either gender cannot achieve true equality until we examine the underlying system that we consider "normal" in our lives.
Patriarchy refers to a couple factors including men being in positions of power, our media being male dominated, male centric, but most importantly it describes how our world functions by emphasizing which kind of traits are both USEFUL and ENCOURAGED to have. It is a bias so subtle that we forget that there is any other way to live our lives, and so dangerous that it can lead us to demonize feminists just for wanting to create a more equal world.
Surprisingly, you are familiar with these traits. Strength (both physical and mental) is one; another is resilience, coolness under pressure, rationality, and perseverance. You might notice that these are often common traits of protagonists in games, from Solid Snake, to Donkey Kong, to Master Chief. This is because in our patriarchal world, these traits are shown to be the most effective to both survival, and success.
You'll also notice that traits associated with femininity, including being emotionally open, vulnerability, caring, or cooperative, are rarely shown to be useful in game scenarios, even though they can add depth to a character.
This is what Anita is talking about when she says the Damsel in Distress is harmful, because it normalizes the notion that a female can't escape their captors, mostly because to escape would call for masculine skills that she does not have, or even if she does have them (Sheik from Ocarina of time), is still prevented from doing so by the confines of the narrative.
Even more troubling is the sexualization of females in games in ways that serve the player (fan service, skimpy outfits, press X to bone attractive character A) and don't suggest that females can have their own concept of sexuality. I don't believe this is intentional, but I do believe that we write it off as normal when it is really a construction that favors male viewers, and inadvertently belittles female players.
If there is anything that you take from this thread, it's to remember that this is a woman who LOVES games, has grown up playing them, and cared enough to start a kickstarter in order to bring them into our cultural consciousness in a way which has never really been done before. Women like her have been in academics and been championed for their insight and ability to make us reconsider the meaning of stories and enhance our understanding of the human experience; and acting as if she's ruining our fun or doing it for attention is to do a tremendous disservice to games themselves.
Though it was understandable for many gamers to feel threatened by someone saying they wanted to change our games, the criticism she's received seems motivated by a need to protect what we view as "normal," and I think we need to seriously consider WHY we seem so unwilling to believe that what we see in our games and gaming communities is not normal.
The most important thing I want to make clear is this; I am not trying to make gamers feel wrong or sexist for playing or liking games of these type, I am not trying to say that the industry must change (Only that i believe it is in many gamers, both male and female's best interests to do so), and I am not suggesting that that instances of these behaviors could ever cause people to be violent, sexist, or misogynistic. Down that road lies censorship, which i will not travel for I know not where it ends.
My only goal has been the same as Anita's really, to open up as many gamers who are willing to the possibility that what many gamers have come to see as "normal" is in reality the result of a deeply ingrained set of values and beliefs about the world that have gone unchallenged for too long. But maybe if we stop treating each new iteration of Damsel in distress, or murdered loved one as just another rehash of the trope, and instead ask WHY it is so prevalent a trope, and WHY developers feel both the need to use it and to adhere strictly to it, we'll give them a compelling reason to evolve their stories.
I tried to break it up into readable chunks so your eyes don't glaze over, but please just read it because I can't summarize everything I'm trying to say in a tl;dr.
Thanks to re-watching her videos and a little bit of independent research I now understand her, and why it's so important that gamers of both sexes think deeply about what she saying. Because she's not only trying to tell us that a trope is sexist, she's asking us to understand that the reason for this is that we've accepted a fundamentally biased idea of the world. And this bias while it may seem harmless has led us to believe certain tropes are "normal," when in fact they are evidence of a larger abnormal trend in the world.
First off I think we need to clear up some ideas about the different areas of feminism. Men and women who don't want to claim the label feminist often say they are "humanists" or "gender egalitarians," and often see the primary challenges to equality as social issues like the glass ceiling, access to abortion, and slut-shaming.
Something they may not know however is that these qualities are already aspects of a pre-existing ideology, "Liberal feminism." They focus on the individuals' right to do and say things, with the empowering belief that once a woman can do anything a man does, and without her gender being mentioned, she is able to survive in the world just as well as he is.
This is very compelling and logical to support because it centers around changing our conscious behaviors, and it's clear that many video games embrace this fully, such as having female soldiers in Gears of War, a more vulnerable Laura Croft in the Tomb Raider reboot, and even Samus Aran's genderless portrayal in the original Metroid games.
It's clear however that Anita is not a liberal feminist though, because everything she mentions in her videos is tied to the influence of patriarchy. This marks her as a "Radical feminist" (A loaded word to be sure, but one that I believe has been rather unfairly maligned) who believes that either gender cannot achieve true equality until we examine the underlying system that we consider "normal" in our lives.
Patriarchy refers to a couple factors including men being in positions of power, our media being male dominated, male centric, but most importantly it describes how our world functions by emphasizing which kind of traits are both USEFUL and ENCOURAGED to have. It is a bias so subtle that we forget that there is any other way to live our lives, and so dangerous that it can lead us to demonize feminists just for wanting to create a more equal world.
Surprisingly, you are familiar with these traits. Strength (both physical and mental) is one; another is resilience, coolness under pressure, rationality, and perseverance. You might notice that these are often common traits of protagonists in games, from Solid Snake, to Donkey Kong, to Master Chief. This is because in our patriarchal world, these traits are shown to be the most effective to both survival, and success.
You'll also notice that traits associated with femininity, including being emotionally open, vulnerability, caring, or cooperative, are rarely shown to be useful in game scenarios, even though they can add depth to a character.
This is what Anita is talking about when she says the Damsel in Distress is harmful, because it normalizes the notion that a female can't escape their captors, mostly because to escape would call for masculine skills that she does not have, or even if she does have them (Sheik from Ocarina of time), is still prevented from doing so by the confines of the narrative.
Even more troubling is the sexualization of females in games in ways that serve the player (fan service, skimpy outfits, press X to bone attractive character A) and don't suggest that females can have their own concept of sexuality. I don't believe this is intentional, but I do believe that we write it off as normal when it is really a construction that favors male viewers, and inadvertently belittles female players.
If there is anything that you take from this thread, it's to remember that this is a woman who LOVES games, has grown up playing them, and cared enough to start a kickstarter in order to bring them into our cultural consciousness in a way which has never really been done before. Women like her have been in academics and been championed for their insight and ability to make us reconsider the meaning of stories and enhance our understanding of the human experience; and acting as if she's ruining our fun or doing it for attention is to do a tremendous disservice to games themselves.
Though it was understandable for many gamers to feel threatened by someone saying they wanted to change our games, the criticism she's received seems motivated by a need to protect what we view as "normal," and I think we need to seriously consider WHY we seem so unwilling to believe that what we see in our games and gaming communities is not normal.
The most important thing I want to make clear is this; I am not trying to make gamers feel wrong or sexist for playing or liking games of these type, I am not trying to say that the industry must change (Only that i believe it is in many gamers, both male and female's best interests to do so), and I am not suggesting that that instances of these behaviors could ever cause people to be violent, sexist, or misogynistic. Down that road lies censorship, which i will not travel for I know not where it ends.
My only goal has been the same as Anita's really, to open up as many gamers who are willing to the possibility that what many gamers have come to see as "normal" is in reality the result of a deeply ingrained set of values and beliefs about the world that have gone unchallenged for too long. But maybe if we stop treating each new iteration of Damsel in distress, or murdered loved one as just another rehash of the trope, and instead ask WHY it is so prevalent a trope, and WHY developers feel both the need to use it and to adhere strictly to it, we'll give them a compelling reason to evolve their stories.
