‘Femshep’ pulls up 773,000 results in a Google search. ‘Broshep’ pulls up 14,800 and ‘Manshep’ 29,800. There is hardly parity in their usage. It’s abundantly clear that the demarcating, othering term is largely only used for the female version of the character, while the male version in simply the default ‘Shepard’.
I’ve caught flak in the past for pointing out that Femshep is a stupid term that others/minimizes the female Sheperd, and establishes the male Shepard as the default - it was wonderful to hear that position articulated so well in Sarkeesian’s video.
It’s also notable that the othering term is only used to demarcate the female Shepard - there’s not a similar epithet for other, often more important, character traits. No ‘BlackShep’ or ‘EngiShep’ or ‘RenegadeShep’ or ‘SoleSurvivorShep’ or whatever. It’s pretty telling that only when it comes to gender do we feel the need to create a subcategory of character to contain the female version.
Femshep is a stupid, othering, term with sexist implications, so hopefully the reaction of the ‘FemShep’ community will be to stop using that term? (Of course, that won’t happen.)
My Shepard had a vagina, but so what? That was far from her defining character trait. She was also a Paragon, a Sole Survivor, and an Engineer, all character traits that had a much bigger impact on her narrative than what she had in her pants (which basically only dictated which embarrassing, poorly-written ‘romances’ she could engage in).
It seems she’s really complaining about the fact that most games are written by men and authors of genres (not just games) write about what’s comfortable and familiar to them. The quote she gives from Pollitt from the New York Times doesn’t seem as controversial when you consider the gender of the games’ authors.
Funny, I’m a man, and yet I’m familiar with several women. It’s almost like they comprise HALF OF HUMANITY. Unless these writers were raised in some weird cloister, there’s no reason why creating a reasonable female character should be beyond them. If you have enough imagination to conceive of and empathize with a space marine or a cartoon bandicoot or whatever, I suspect you could also do so with a person who has a different gender than you.
I’m sorry to see people here criticizing it when they’ve obviously missed the points. I think the only thing that would have made it better is if she’d worn a pink bow.
[quote=“sr105, post:22, topic:14545”]
It seems she’s really complaining about the fact that most games are written by men and authors of genres (not just games) write about what’s comfortable and familiar to them.[/quote]
What a load of baloney, unless you’re suggesting that the writers employed by game studios are so bad that they can only write in their own voice - which is still admitting a flaw in the production.
Why should we continue to listen to her after she was twofaced about even liking video games.Video of her has surfaced of her talking about she doesn’t even like videogames and goes on to what could only be described as gamer-shaming “games are for looosers” type of thing.
Clearly you have never had to appear on camera. Wearing a ton of makeup is necessary, even for men, in order not to wash out and sweat like a maniac under the bright lights. I used to do television production in college as my main activity, and the men used to get all up in arms when we would make them up and powder them - especially if they had bald heads. But if they forewent the makeup, they looked totally gross on the tape.
I watched the whole video. Excellent! Her point extends not just to video games but to fictional characters in general. On tv shows it is so common for there to be a team of 4, 5 men all with interesting characters and one token female who usually has some karate skillz or something so she doesn’t appear to “stereotyped,” though she does the karate while having a smoking hot bod emphasized with little tops and skillful makeup and hair. And inevitably it is the male characters that the show revolves around. Even in a great show like Sons of Anarchy, where they have some great female roles, the drama all centers on the men. I am so tired of it. And if there are women on the show, so often it is soap opera style. I’ve gotten into watching Bones just because there seems to be a good balance of characters and the women have science skilz.
I agree with @novium that this is an Ad Hominem attack that does nothing to undermine a well researched and spot-on critique of how women are portrayed in video games.
From your video - “The evidence seems clear that Anita Sarkeesian has no personal stake in the characterization of women in gaming.”
She seems to have a fairly clear stake. She’s interested in feminism and how women are portrayed in popular culture.
I always thought Ms. Pac-Man was odd. There was nothing gendered about the supposedly “male” character except the name. It kind of goes back to the idea that a “person” is male by default, and being female is something unusual. I seem to recall a link from BoingBoing a few years ago to an article about bathroom signs and default user icons and that sort of thing.
