Andy Shandy said:
That'll be the one that started when she dared to run a Kickstarter for a video series that examined women in video games, and parts of the internet descended on her like a horde of locusts including shite like a game that revolved around beating her up?
Oh aye, that's her fault.
I don't think her merely starting an examination of women in games is the cause of it exploding so badly.
For example, I personally appreciate that she brought up the subject of how females are addressed in games. I, for one, grew tired of the trite portrayal of horribly written characters. Some dumb bimbo taking a keen interest in you is really illusion breaking in any setting but a bar or brothel. So I like the idea that writing for female characters will become less lazy now that the topic has been reached.
But I find her argument against damsels both flawed and at times sexist. For one the entire point of a damsel story is actually to paint the villain as an evil person who took away the agency of the damsel and the goal of the protagonist to return said agency. Anita erroneously paints it as though the protagonist is somehow objectifying them and instead inserts the definition of the word object as though it were objectification. I found this to be dishonest if not ignorant of the subject matter as it is a good thing to teach us that bad guys objectify and good guys take action from stopping the powerful from doing that to the weak. I found it offensive/sexist when she then began to make the argument that, after she did all the footwork to make it out to be evil, it is somehow ok if it happens to male characters because they're not females.
So I find many of her arguments flawed and misandrist in nature even if I approve of the intention behind it. I do not want a person who is ignorant/dishonest and misandrist in charge of pretty much any product I consume for the same reason I avoid buying goods from a known racist. It bothers me that I continue to see good points sprinkled in with deceptive/sexist ones because other people are quoting her and believing her and they're not distinguishing the good ones from the bad.
So no politics in games then? No GTA? no Bioshock? No Fallout? etc. Bye bye to all of them then because they have politics in them (there are, of course, others, but I went with some of the more popular franchises).
This is ignoring the fact that creating a game for some imaginary average gamer is dumb in itself.
The best games convey a message subtly. They do not beat you over the head with the message until you can't see anything but it. Most of those games have philosophies or social commentaries rather than actual current political pandering.
There is a difference between a game that makes you think about politics and a game that is preaching politics at you. I'm not sure exactly how to word the point that I'm trying to convey but there does seem to be a major distinction. Imagine a game where at the end of it you learn that the protagonist never existed and the world died because the mother aborted the protagonist as a fetus such that the whole game turned out to be anti-choice grandstanding piece. That would be different than a game where certain genes were aborted (think GATTACA) but one slipped through the cracks and those genes somehow allowed the protagonist that had them to save humanity. The subtext becomes more think-heavy and less brow beaten into you. The game and sense of empowerment remains intact.
Hmm, perhaps it's the feeling of sacrificing enjoyment for the politics that I'm trying to express?
So you'd write her off - despite having valid points - because she has said one daft thing (I can't find any sources for her saying that men are all latent rapists or the violence against men is fine)?
She has routinely expressed sexism. Is that not something that would discredit/undermine her ability to adequately portray women in contrast with men? If she produced quality work then I'd praise it and I do like some of the points she makes when valid and well researched. But in the absence of such examples I am forced to remain skeptical of her ability to produce such works.
She has said on multiple occasions that certain things happening to male characters are not equivalent to the same things happening to female characters. The justification being that the latter perpetuates stereotypes that women are weaker than males (Another point of dishonesty since females in the human species are significantly weaker on average than males). These kinds of comments justify actions she had just demonized as being objectifying of females. So she's trying to have it both ways, that it's only bad when it happens to women and that the action is intrinsically evil. It shouldn't be both unless the speaker is sexist and does not value harm directed at men at the same rate as being directed at women.
Her sex negative feminism also only gets extended to women for the same reason as before where a sexy woman is perpetuating the myth of female objectification while male sexuality is somehow a non-issue. I mean, she's not as extreme as Dworkin or anything but she borrows a heck of a lot from her and the refusal to allow her claims to be extended to attack all forms against sexism is a significant criticism if you're only willing to accept my claim that sexism in any form is wrong. Her claims on men providing goods (like dinner) in return for sex is an exchange women currently have to rely on because of it (male entitlement) being a persistent backdrop of society. This makes the incredible leap that women are obligated to have sex even when they do not wish to as a social construct. Ergo, men are rapists because patriarchy is rape by making women reliant on men and sex being a viable currency. In reality, women are in control of their relationships far more than men are and only actual rape is rape. But she keeps relying on Dwokin's philosophies without explicitly acknowledging her influence and actual conclusions of sex as military occupation. How much of Dwokin's work does she have to mirror in her own work before we accept that she ascribes to her work?
I also object to her and anyone's appropriation of the term sexism as requiring power. Not only is that used in scholarship as a provisional definition (a shorter term than having to say institutional sexism every time), but she somehow holds that just because men are the dominant gender with power in society that women do not hold or exercise power in obviously sexist manners. So it both trivializes male victims of sexism + power and trivializes the many accomplishments of women in today's society when Anita says, "There's no such thing as sexism against men. That's because sexism is prejudice + power". This comment literally serves NO purpose except to disenfranchise male victims of sexism. It's a hell of a double standard and not one we should have to take lightly. I also take issue to the diminishing of non-powered sexism. I think a white hobo spitting on a black businessman in the street while calling him the N-Word is still being a racist and committing racism. It does not benefit anyone to eradicate racism as race-based prejudice. It's all vile and wrong.
Of course, none of these things warrant any kind of threats or violence. But being against her as a person just like I'd be against a clan leader getting a position of leadership in a civil war game shouldn't be somehow controversial.
Anyway, it's dawned on me as I posted it, none of this is about Mirror's Edge (particularly since she isn't involved) so I'm going to draw a line under it here.
Currently Mirror's Edge 2 is getting unfairly nuked in the user score department. The reason pertains to people believing she was given elevated access to the game's production.
We are merely discussing why such anger exists and why it isn't necessarily wrong of people to dislike a sexist bigot being part of production. Now, you know and I know that she didn't have anything to do with this game. Also, I am adamantly against reviewing a game you have not played, so I not only find the reviewers' actions ignorant but also dishonest.
The original was really good.
