Original Comment by: Nathaniel Givens
Bonnie - thanks so much for your response. In light of what you're saying now I think I may have misunderstood some of your points. Before I go head over heels to say that I've totally misjudged your writings I wil say that I'm extremely skeptical when you say that "I'm interested in anthropology, not judgments". If that is indeed the case, however, then perhaps the gulf is not nearly as wide as I had previously thought.
On a frustrated note - you could have really saved me some ranting if this turns out to be the case and you'd posted in the pervious thread!
But now you have me very seriously interested in re-evaluating your work and attempting to read it without seeing any innate sexism. I think this is going to be difficult to do until we clear up some of the things you asserted in your "women monsters" article. Without that article my reading of your subsequent articles would have have found the sexism in a much more tenous light.
So if you don't mind I'd like to briefly bring up some of the things I found most troubling from that article. If the topic turns out to be too broad for this thread perhaps we could carry it over into emai, but I'll at least start it out here.
1. It seemed to me that there was a glaring contradiction in your characterization of the male/female-avatar reltionship. At one point you called this relationship inherently sadistic - which to me was probably the most blatantly sexist premise of the article. Later on, however, you claimed that the fear of surival games derives from the male empathy or even identity with the female avatar. I strongly feel that the second premise has always been my experience. The idea of inflicting injury on the primary character seems so inherently *wrong* to me. I mean, blowing up some of your own guys in the original Command and Conquer (which I always thought was a little sick anyway) is one thing - but when you're playing the main character in a game that's *you* - even if it is a girl. How do you rectify this contradition?
2. There's also, in my mind, an overall question of balance. Since the vast majority of gaming fatalities are male, and since the objective in many games is to protect the female character (the damsel theory) I feel as though you are completely ignoring the positive side of gender stereotypes - or at least the downside for men. The fundamental principle of the "damsel in distress" seems to me not so much to be that girls are weak as that girls are valuable. This makes evolutionary sense. Not that it would be fair - but a species can survive with one male to several females. That's the way it works. And so men have an evolutionary motivation to value women more than their own lives. The associated higher death rate among men is a sustainable genetic boost (by more aggressively weeding out weaker men) to the over all species. What I'm saying is that it seems to me that your gender analysis is very one-sided. You only care about what things mean to the woman. Why are the ramifications for men given no consideration?
3. Your own implicit sexism. This is perhaps the touchiest of my subjects, and since our own dialogue here has been thus far very open and respectful I want to frame this in as un-offensive a way as possible. But I sincerely believe that your writings suffer from two innate sexist tendencies. They are both discusses at length in my most recent post in the previous thread (50th post, I believe).
A - Your narrow definition of power seems male-centric.
B - Your definition of "feminine" seems to strip the concept of meaning.
C - Your conception of the relationship betwen group dynamics and individual capacity seems to emphasize helplessness and powerlessness of women and strips them of their individuality.
A - In the entire piece your quest for strong women seems to focus on one aspect of strength - brute physical power. It is an indisputable fact that as a group men are stronger than women in this sense of the word. Thus, the immediate ramifcation of your narrow definition of "power"is to view women in an inherently unfavorable light. Further down the line, however, the full ramifications of this become apparent. You point out that female monsters are examples of strong feminine characters - inadvertantly but ironcially demonstrating that when a male-centric definition of power is used the only way for women to succeed is to shed their own gender, humanity and identity. The monsters that incite fear have traded their feninity and humanity and individuality for the capacity to inflict harm. They're just barely recognizble zombies, tortured fragments of genuine human individuals. From the myopic view entailed by your conception of power this may be an improvement, but it seems more tragedy than triumph to me. Finally, it's nota result of societal gender stereotypes that leads to this conclusion - but of your own self-imposed constraings. If I were to value my wife by her ability to fight then, despite a few months of Judo, I wouldn't have an appreciation that I do have because I see her in richer, fuller context.
B - You insist that these female monsters are somehow feminine yet powerful. But they have not only shed our particular societal conception of feminity, they have shed humanity and individuality itself. What is left then, to mark them as feminine (as opposed to just female). I don't think that femininity reduces to just boobs, a vagina, and the absene of a Y-chromosome - and I think that would be an impoverished view of feminity. Nay - a stripmined version.
C - The final point is that you seem inordinantly concerned with the implications of our general view of women on women as individuals. To me this reduces the individuality of women because it limits their strenghs and weakneses to that of the group. As I stated in my other posts - I think a lesson of empowerment for women and men is to learn that individuality trumps gender - just as individuality trumps race and religion. No matter how much you seek to advance the or enrich the stereotype of women I think it's more important to teach them that no matter what the group statistics may be - they are bounded only by their OWN acheivements, their own characteristics, and their own passions.
If you'd like to take time to respond in an email, or you'd like me to cool off the other posts while you address these issues I don't mind. Scott has my email. But I would fair rather have a friend than an enemy at the end of the day - and understanding rather than enmity. If it turns out that some of my vitriol was indeed the result of a mutual misunderstanding than I'll appreciate your calm and reasonsed responses all the more. In the meantime, I hope you can read what I've written with an open mind and I look forward to hearing back from you.
-nathaniel
Bonnie - thanks so much for your response. In light of what you're saying now I think I may have misunderstood some of your points. Before I go head over heels to say that I've totally misjudged your writings I wil say that I'm extremely skeptical when you say that "I'm interested in anthropology, not judgments". If that is indeed the case, however, then perhaps the gulf is not nearly as wide as I had previously thought.
On a frustrated note - you could have really saved me some ranting if this turns out to be the case and you'd posted in the pervious thread!
But now you have me very seriously interested in re-evaluating your work and attempting to read it without seeing any innate sexism. I think this is going to be difficult to do until we clear up some of the things you asserted in your "women monsters" article. Without that article my reading of your subsequent articles would have have found the sexism in a much more tenous light.
So if you don't mind I'd like to briefly bring up some of the things I found most troubling from that article. If the topic turns out to be too broad for this thread perhaps we could carry it over into emai, but I'll at least start it out here.
1. It seemed to me that there was a glaring contradiction in your characterization of the male/female-avatar reltionship. At one point you called this relationship inherently sadistic - which to me was probably the most blatantly sexist premise of the article. Later on, however, you claimed that the fear of surival games derives from the male empathy or even identity with the female avatar. I strongly feel that the second premise has always been my experience. The idea of inflicting injury on the primary character seems so inherently *wrong* to me. I mean, blowing up some of your own guys in the original Command and Conquer (which I always thought was a little sick anyway) is one thing - but when you're playing the main character in a game that's *you* - even if it is a girl. How do you rectify this contradition?
2. There's also, in my mind, an overall question of balance. Since the vast majority of gaming fatalities are male, and since the objective in many games is to protect the female character (the damsel theory) I feel as though you are completely ignoring the positive side of gender stereotypes - or at least the downside for men. The fundamental principle of the "damsel in distress" seems to me not so much to be that girls are weak as that girls are valuable. This makes evolutionary sense. Not that it would be fair - but a species can survive with one male to several females. That's the way it works. And so men have an evolutionary motivation to value women more than their own lives. The associated higher death rate among men is a sustainable genetic boost (by more aggressively weeding out weaker men) to the over all species. What I'm saying is that it seems to me that your gender analysis is very one-sided. You only care about what things mean to the woman. Why are the ramifications for men given no consideration?
3. Your own implicit sexism. This is perhaps the touchiest of my subjects, and since our own dialogue here has been thus far very open and respectful I want to frame this in as un-offensive a way as possible. But I sincerely believe that your writings suffer from two innate sexist tendencies. They are both discusses at length in my most recent post in the previous thread (50th post, I believe).
A - Your narrow definition of power seems male-centric.
B - Your definition of "feminine" seems to strip the concept of meaning.
C - Your conception of the relationship betwen group dynamics and individual capacity seems to emphasize helplessness and powerlessness of women and strips them of their individuality.
A - In the entire piece your quest for strong women seems to focus on one aspect of strength - brute physical power. It is an indisputable fact that as a group men are stronger than women in this sense of the word. Thus, the immediate ramifcation of your narrow definition of "power"is to view women in an inherently unfavorable light. Further down the line, however, the full ramifications of this become apparent. You point out that female monsters are examples of strong feminine characters - inadvertantly but ironcially demonstrating that when a male-centric definition of power is used the only way for women to succeed is to shed their own gender, humanity and identity. The monsters that incite fear have traded their feninity and humanity and individuality for the capacity to inflict harm. They're just barely recognizble zombies, tortured fragments of genuine human individuals. From the myopic view entailed by your conception of power this may be an improvement, but it seems more tragedy than triumph to me. Finally, it's nota result of societal gender stereotypes that leads to this conclusion - but of your own self-imposed constraings. If I were to value my wife by her ability to fight then, despite a few months of Judo, I wouldn't have an appreciation that I do have because I see her in richer, fuller context.
B - You insist that these female monsters are somehow feminine yet powerful. But they have not only shed our particular societal conception of feminity, they have shed humanity and individuality itself. What is left then, to mark them as feminine (as opposed to just female). I don't think that femininity reduces to just boobs, a vagina, and the absene of a Y-chromosome - and I think that would be an impoverished view of feminity. Nay - a stripmined version.
C - The final point is that you seem inordinantly concerned with the implications of our general view of women on women as individuals. To me this reduces the individuality of women because it limits their strenghs and weakneses to that of the group. As I stated in my other posts - I think a lesson of empowerment for women and men is to learn that individuality trumps gender - just as individuality trumps race and religion. No matter how much you seek to advance the or enrich the stereotype of women I think it's more important to teach them that no matter what the group statistics may be - they are bounded only by their OWN acheivements, their own characteristics, and their own passions.
If you'd like to take time to respond in an email, or you'd like me to cool off the other posts while you address these issues I don't mind. Scott has my email. But I would fair rather have a friend than an enemy at the end of the day - and understanding rather than enmity. If it turns out that some of my vitriol was indeed the result of a mutual misunderstanding than I'll appreciate your calm and reasonsed responses all the more. In the meantime, I hope you can read what I've written with an open mind and I look forward to hearing back from you.
-nathaniel
), so I'm the last person who's calling sadism bad. It's just a term, unfortunately one that has morally negative connotations in a close-minded society. As for the contradiction you mention: two things. First off, not everyone reacts the same way; some people react one way, some people the other. Second, some people experience both reactions at once. Epecially when you're dealing with human emotional response, it's not as easy to take the scientific route of right and wrong. Often times contradictory sentiments can exist simultaneously in one mind.