I disagre that it’s ad hominem, because there are other valid criticisms that have been brought up, but I don’t expect them to get much traction on Boing Boing. This is, after all, the website that promoted getting a privileged white kid $20k, so that she could go to a $900 week-long RPGMaker camp, because her brothers were big meanies. Of all the first-world problems, it seemed like the first-worldiest. Going back to Anita, I feel like I can separate the validity of her critique, from the validity of her methods and whether people were simply suckered, and I don’t know why I feel like I’m in a minority.
Yeah; it started life as the phenomenon where a man condescendingly explains something to a woman who is an expert on the subject–imagine Rush Limbaugh trying to explain why programming is a man’s job, to Grace Hopper–to being, “I, a woman, just told you what I believe to be true; why are you talking?”
Bringing up how much money she raised and asking what she did with it, in the context of a discussion about the content of her videos, is definitely ad hominem. She could be a rotten flim flam artist and still be right. I’m not saying you can’t validly criticize her or what she has done, but that criticism isn’t related to the points she is making.
Then how come there aren’t any open-world games that contain examples of the bad things that these bad chicks engage in?
Seriously, can’t we have Aileen Wuornos and Valerie Solanis manqués in the same game as playable characters? Since we’re talking about crime simulators. Let’s tdo some crimes. Let’s kill the other players who are objectifying the in-game prostitutes, let’s shoot Andy Warhol. Let’s get sushi and not pay.
The awesome as fuck Ella Baker was far more democratic and actually listened to the people the most downtrodden. She also actively supported the freedom summer, which the NAACP has been actively celebrating it this summer, since it’s the 50th anniversary. Were it not for her guidance, SNCC would not have happened. And she asked for nothing in return for her decades of advocacy! No holidays, no major museums, no statues on the DC mall, none of that (not that King did, but he surely felt satisfied at his many accolades). Baker is not even mentioned in the King Museum here in Atlanta… Bayard Rustin gets a passing mention at least.
But, just as much as King, if not more so, it’s Ella Baker and thousands of women like her who made the classical civil rights movement possible… In fact, it’s unlikely that the events kicked off by the Montgomery Bus Boycott would have gone anywhere, had it not been for incredibly brave African American women fighting the system of oppression that preyed on their gender and race.
Clearly, you need to listen to the man himself to see where he stood - his early career was mired in the weirdness of the Nation, but the end of his career… well, have you even read his autobiography? You should. He was a shining star and his death was just as tragics, if not more so than King’s death. I always play this clip for my undergrads, because I can’t think of a better distillation of where X was headed at the end of his life:
As to your larger point, for those of us on the receiving end of any sort of social injustice, it doesn’t feel “extreme” to defend ourselves and to demand common decency and to be utterly PISSED OFF when MEN tell us HOW WE SHOULD FEEL ABOUT THINGS THAT NEGATVIELY AFFECT US! The term “mansplaining” might hurt your feelings, but it hurts to be belittled for my gendered, to be harrassed, to be reduced to how I make men feel, whether that’s being too pretty or not pretty enough. It sucks to be told that my anger at living in a society that does not treat my daughter on equal terms to a boy her age is wrong and needs to change immediately. We aren’t flying planes into buildings, dude, we’re trying to make people see how hurtful and unfair our culture is! Why not just try to push for that too, if, as you say, it’s a goal you share!!! This woman has been SENT DEATH THREATS FOR POINTING OUT SEXISM, AND YOU’RE CONCERNED ABOUT A WORD THAT HURTS YOUR FEELINGS!?! I mean, are you really so thinned skinned?
Until he started to speak out against economic inequality and the war in Vietnam… then he “went to far”… as long as he was angling to have African Americans included in the “American Dream”, and he was letting his skull get cracked on marches, that was fine. But once he started to hone in on other problems in modern society… well… how dare he!
I was just saying: for every point someone makes about men in games being caricatures, disposable shooting targets, or whatever… female characters in games get all that plus overt sexualization, damselling, etc.
We certainly are in a bad way when people can’t (or won’t) even recognize that.
Except the piece he cites was written before the video series started, is concerned that it hasn’t even started even with all the money and doesn’t even mention the plagiarism which is the gist of his “Con artist” argument. The link is there to tell us to validate his point due to the gender of the author, despite containing no relevant information. Her supposed authority on the subject is enough, he didn’t expect anyone to read it. Which I guess is true for most people who read the comment…
The video was not very well researched. A lot of cherry picking, too much cherry picking.
Murdering prositutes gives you money in GTA. Well murdering anyone gives you money. Same for Deus Ex. Actually not murdering anyone in this game will make it easier, so a very bad example again. Same with Red Dead Redemption.
All those examples here are choices made by the PLAYER and not by the GAME DESIGNERS. You are not forced to do anything. You don’t have to go to strip clubs, fondle women, murder them, etc.
I would rather have liked to see some fantasy game examples where women have breasts three times larger than their heads and body armor smaller than their toes. But we haven’t seen anything in this video. Rather we see an example of advertisement, but this is a general problem with advertisement and nothing with games itself.
This video wasn’t “cherry picked”. It’s one in a current series being produced by Sarkeesian. Here’s the episode description:
“In this episode we explore the Women as Background Decoration trope which is the subset of largely insignificant non-playable female characters whose sexuality or victimhood is exploited as a way to infuse edgy, gritty or racy flavoring into game worlds. These sexually objectified female bodies are designed to function as environmental texture while titillating presumed straight male players. Sometimes they’re created to be glorified furniture but they are frequently programmed as minimally interactive sex objects to be used and abused.”
In other words, this particular episode is about examples of female npc’s where men are given the choice to take certain sexualized or misogynistic actions. It’s not about central or fully-playable characters, but about about scenery that only looks human (and the damage people inflict on it). Also discussed is the way in which this trope affects both male and female players outside of game play.
I should also mention - Sarkeesian does discuss that both male and female npc’s are killed for profit. She describes the different manner in which they are killed (how do you kill them, and how do they behave?), and that’s a part of her argument. It isn’t simply monetizing, but a combination of factors that makes her draw her conclusions about the ways in which games treat females.
Here’s a link directly to the post for this installment at youtube. All Sarkesian’s videos are posted there. (Comments are closed.) At that location, you’ll see a full list of the games she referenced in just this episode: all 52 of them.
That’s just silly. It was the GAME DESIGNERS who built in both the ability and the reward systems to allow/encourage players to murder prostitutes for cash or solicit their services to regain health points. In real life, a BJ in a secluded alley is not an effective treatment for bullet wounds.
Those are literally the only ways you can interact with prostitutes in GTA, so you can’t exactly put the blame on the players for choosing to act like violent misogynistic sociopaths within the context of the game. It’s not like your character has the ability to open up a domestic abuse shelter or feed the homeless or help old ladies cross the street.
“If you’re trapped in the dream of the Other, you’re fucked.” – Gilles Deleuze
This thread is typical of the sorts of conversations that arise when discussing women in games (or [insert controversial topic that threatens status quo]). People start bickering over terminology, the credibility of the original content, the relevance of the critique, edge cases, exceptions, and so on and so forth. It’s incredibly tiresome. It strikes me, further, as in some ways quite misguided and unhealthy.
GIlles Deleuze was in many regards a very unconventional philosopher. He has this notion of the line of flight, whereby you leap out of a paralyzing discourse into a new system of thought. He hated the petty quarrelling that would ensue as people dissected the minutiae of different systems of thought and argument. He would merrily discard an entire thread or idea to pursue something new and interesting, the moment he smelled the jackals closing in. In fact, it was sort of a philosophical imperative for him to do so. To get bogged down in these sorts of debates is tantamount to intellectual death. We stop moving forward. We bunker down, entrenched in our own views. Worse, we become beholden to the terms of someone else’s toxic dream.
Who cares whether Anita’s work is ‘well researched’ or ‘credible’? Does it resonate with you? Clearly it does. That’s enough. What difference does it make that the term ‘mansplaining’ is offensive to some? Let them be offended! We have work to do.
Let’s create the games and the works that reflect our own dreams. We owe the detractors nothing. Your thoughts are free. Choose your own discourse. When things start to smell of rot, ditch 'em. Invoke the line of flight, and make something beautiful.
