It has gotten a little frustrating listening to some of my classmates discuss women’s role in the gaming world and in games. Too many folks were quick to dismiss Anita Sarkeesian’s arguments in her Damsel in Distress series by focusing in on miniscule elements of her argument. Reading attempts of people to justify the game industry’s use of harmful tropes but ignoring the over-arching effect that games that utilize the damsel in distress trope got a little sickening. It seems like some people were not even listening to her argument.
The point was not that occasionally the female characters might have positive and redeeming traits, that in fact they may even have character development — the point was that women are systematically pushed to the side to be the reward to a male character’s story.
This frustration was coupled with a class dynamic that is very telling of video game culture. In a class of 22, only 4 of my classmates are women. From anecdotal snippets shared in moodle posts, it is quite clear that the five of us have a similar shared experience of feeling uncomfortable or unwelcome in the gaming world. But in the academic setting of the classroom it seemed like these expereinces were not getting across. I left class that day frustrated that many of my male classmates seemed to still not see it as a large problem.
One last moment of venting. The idea that games negatively portray women is perhaps reflective of the current cultural norms now does not mean that the game industry should not be working toward changing. Culture won’t change unless elements of the culture (gaming for instance) begin to change.
Thanks for that–totally agree. Just wanted to vent along with you to register my frustrations about the “positive and redeeming traits” brought up as “counters” to Sarkeesian’s argument. Many of the traits evoked are often also tied to essentialist views of women having a secret life-giving power of good. A princess character being kidnapped for having something like a magical and secret power of the heart is not a progressive story element. It’s actually quite regressive in that it falls back on very traditional views of women’s values being solely rooted in the emotional realm rather than the rational one. It frustrates me that people fail to realize that these portrayals are problematic.
I completely agree. I had such a difficult time in class yesterday, and then reading other folks blog posts. I have a hard time understanding how people could watch Sarkeesian’s videos and still walk away with that kind of thinking — or in a lot of cases, think she is completely wrong. It isn’t like she is the end-all gospel on feminist critic of video games, but a lot of her points are incredibly valid and presented in a generally unbiased academic format.