If you look at a lot of articles that talk about this subject, you see a lot of the same thing, in my opinion. You see a lot of men and male gamers and the patriarchy being blamed for the depiction of women in video games and the treatment of female gamers. And while that is completely legitimate and true, there's also another side to the coin that people never explore. Now, before I actually start, let me say this. I am, in fact, male. I'm a guy who plays video games, so everything I'm about to say will probably sound like an effort to get the blame and the spotlight off of me and onto something else. But that very attitude (you know, the one that says that if I think the blame doesn't lie totally with people like me who act this way, but also with the reasons they act this way, then I'm just trying to pass the buck) assumes that I, personally, and every other male gamer are to blame for this phenomenon. I, personally, have done nothing to any female gamer. Hell (sorry Lydia), I'm dating one. But since I play video games and I have a penis, I have to apologize for what these other idiots did. That's not ok.
Now, that's not to say that there isn't blame to go around. Over at Kotaku, there are tons of examples and discussions of sexism in gaming, and video games themselves. Blogger Katie Williams wrote this article about an experience she had at last month's E3, where she walked up to multiple booths to play a game slated to come out later, and a representative of each company offered to play the game for her because they assumed that she wouldn't understand or even know how to play because she's a woman. She was even guided to Facebook games instead of PC or console offerings because the assumption was that, as a woman, that's what she'd be interested in. She even says at one point "I was assumed to be eye candy, the pretty face of a publication whose content was provided by people with actual talent." She has a few other posts (which you can find here and here) dealing with subjects like this, even one dealing with questions and backlash from the original.
Continuing on with this theme of women being eye candy, Harris O'Malley wrote another article on Kotaku called Nerds and Male Privilege Part 2: Deconstructing the Arguments. His take on the subject is a bit different, especially considering that he himself is a male gamer. About halfway through the article he says something interesting in response to comments that he received saying that women who wanted better representation in video games (and any men who agreed with them) wanted to end the existence of sexy female video game characters:
"Realizing that drawing all of your female characters with 36DDD tits and posing them in physically impossible ways in order to show off their boobs and ass at the same time while wearing dental floss costumes might be a little offensive to women is hardly the same as saying that you're not allowed to enjoy sexy art or that sexy art shouldn't be allowed. Similarly, campaigning for female characters who are more than "Hero's girlfriend" or "Fan-Service Station Attendant" doesn't mean that there can't be femme fatales or even characters who are there for titillation."
I agree with this. There are really
dumb, meathead male characters in video games who have no real motivation and
feel no emotion other than bloodlust and anger (Kratos, Marcus Fenix, and Duke
Nukem to name a few).note: I'm aware that Duke is a parody and not to be taken
seriously, but I'm listing him anyway But there are characters like Ezio
Auditore, Dante, and Jak that actually
do feel emotion and are multi-dimensional that serve to balance the bad ones
out. Likewise, there are a great deal of really sexy, meathead female
characters in video games with no real motivation other than to be sexy (every
DOA girl, Juri from Street Fighter IV, etc.). But there are actually very few
female characters that balance these out that aren't being argued about every
20 minutes (Samus Aran… that's pretty much the only one I can think of off the
top of my head). I've recently come to the conclusion that that most of the women who write these articles
and make these videos (Anita Sarkeesian, I'll get to you in a minute) aren't
saying that the sexy characters have to go. We can keep them. But I think that
all they want are more characters that are multi-dimensional, fleshed out (pun
intended, thank you very much) characters to balance them out. And if that's the case, then I'm with them. Balance is key, here.
Now, I mentioned Anita Sarkeesian.Yes, I do have a
problem with Anita Sarkeesian. Yes, I do think that her series of videos about
sexism and the portrayal of women in video games is going to be terrible. But
that's not because I just want her to leave us alone and let us guys have our
fun; it's because I've watched her other videos and I'm personally afraid that
she's going to blame everything on men, like she does in many videos of
hers that I've watched. She just seems so quick to blame problems on men
oppressing women and men wanting to control women at every turn, like men are
just wringing their hands at the next opportunity to screw women (in every possible colloquial sense of that word). Like
all we ever think about is "How can I make women look stupid and have sex
with me?". She seems about a step away from saying "If you have a
penis, you're part of the problem." And that is what scares me, not game
devs changing how female characters are written or how they look, in fact I'm
in favor of that.
The objectors are definitely right. There needs to be a change, and it's needed badly. But, before we start blaming people, let's look at what may be behind this, at least to some degree: advertising. Does everyone remember that Carl's Jr. commercial with Paris Hilton eating a cheeseburger while wet, soapy and writhing around suggestively on a car she's washing? Or for those of you who spend waaay too much time on the internet, how about the ads for an online game called Evony? You know, the ones that got skankier and skankier, finally almost implying porn when all you actually got when you clicked on them was a really bad RTS (Real-Time Strategy, for anyone who doesn't know) and a couple of viruses. Or how about decades of car magazines with women in bikinis draped over the hoods of sports cars, or the horrors of Axe body spray commercials, or this classic Pepsi ad with Cindy Crawford?
For those of you counting, it takes 34 seconds to actually see a can of Pepsi. The commercial is only 1:01 long. Here's a question, what does Cindy Crawford being hot have to do with a can of Pepsi? Here are some more: What does Paris Hilton writhing around on a car have to do with a cheeseburger? What do those women in bikinis have to do with the cars they're on? What does a giant pair of breasts have to do with a strategy game? There's one answer to all of them: absolutely nothing. It does tell us something, though. It tells us that ad executives think that men are so stupid that they'll buy anything as long as there's sex involved. The marketing divisions of multiple multi-billion dollar corporations think we're stupid. That's it, we're idiots; we are incapable of buying anything based on rational thinking and logic. No, we have to be tricked into doing it because we saw that hot chick shaking her butt on the moving picture box.
Now, I'm not trying to completely excuse male gamers and PR representatives for what happened to Katie. But when you're a young boy and you grow up with this, and you also grow up being told that women hate what you love to do and that no woman will ever want to spend time with you because you're a gamer, what else are you supposed to think when a woman shows up at a gaming expo? What else is a young man supposed to think when he sees a woman doing something he's been told all his life no woman would ever want to see him do? When the stereotype of someone who plays video games is that he's never had sex and that he has no clue how to even begin to talk to girls, there's no way a male gamer's idea of women won't be a bit skewed. Like I said, I'm not trying to excuse their boneheadead (pun intended) behavior. I'm just trying to give a possible reason for thinking this way.
As a member of the Fighting Game Community, there is one more example that I would be remiss not to address: the actions of Aris Bakhtanians during Cross Assault. There are so many articles and points of view on this incident that it's hard to pick one. But I'm going to, and it's right here.
For those of you who didn't read the article, Capcom started what basically amounted to a reality show called Cross Assault to publicize the release of their (at the time) new game, Street Fighter X Tekken. The gist of the show was that players were split into Team Street Fighter and Team Tekken and the teams would compete against each other, eliminating players until there was only one left who would win $25,000 (New York native TS NerdJosh ended up winning). One contestant on Team Tekken, Miranda "Super_Yan" Pakozdi, was playing when Aris, the coach of Team Tekken, started making lewd comments about Super_Yan and taking control of the camera and focusing and zooming in on her breasts and butt. This treatment caused Pakozdi to forfeit and drop out of the competition. After this, Aris was interviewed on the stream and answered the question "Can I get my Street Fighter without sexual harassment?" with this:
Wait, what? Yes, he did say that. I can't believe it either. Well for those of you who are not part of the FGC, let me tell you that this is not true. In my experience, sexual harassment is NOT an integral part of the FGC. The FGC is not a divisive community, but an inclusive one, one that is made up of all races and socioeconomic classes. The FGC is by and large a community that emphasizes skill over sex, race, or class. If you're good at your chosen game, or at least sincerely want to be, you are readily accepted. If you want a good look at what the FGC is really about, take a look at these videos.
You can't. You can't because they're one and the same thing. This is a community that's, you know, 15 or 20 years old, and the sexual harassment is part of a culture, and if you remove that from the fighting game community, it's not the fighting game community—it's StarCraft. There's nothing wrong with StarCraft if you enjoy it, and there's nothing wrong with anything about eSports, but why would you want just one flavor of ice cream, you know? There's eSports for people who like eSports, and there's fighting games for people who like spicy food and like to have fun. There's no reason to turn them into the same thing, you know?
Shin Blanka announcing the death of his mother in front of attendees at Final Round XV and an interview with the supportive father of a 14-year old tournament participant
RedRapper's tribute to the history of arcades in the FGC, and to the FGC in general
After the Aris incident, the Fighting Game
Community got a lot of attention. Even now, months removed from this, we are
still being looked at under a microscope. Our every move is being watched.
Because of this, because of the actions of some execs at a booth at E3, because
of the actions of a few many
idiots on Xbox Live, people think we're just sexist jerks. But the truth is,
we're not. We are so much better than that. We are so much more than that. I'm
not saying that the sexism isn't there and that it isn't detrimental to our
growth and even our continued existence to an extent, but I am saying that
there is more to us than that one dark spot. What drives the (definitely mostly
male, but also racially and socioeconomically diverse) FGC is passion. We are
passionate, we are ardent, we love what we do.
To bring this whole thing home and wrap it all up, I really think that the discussion of sexism in videogam(ing)es is approaching dangerous territory. I look in the comments sections of very well-written and thought out articles and all I see is venomous vitriol violently vacating (alliteration is fun) the mouths and keyboards of people who don't like the opposition to something that they see as almost necessary to the enjoyment of their pastime. I really think that the sides in this argument need to stop pointing the finger (see how I brought that back around and tied that in there?) and start trying to get at the underlying problems that may shape these thought patterns that everyone wants to change in order to get to a place where we can all play videogames and just have some damn fun. Because that's all we really expect out of our games. Not sexism, not the start of a gigantic argument, not flame bait. Fun. And that's all we should get.
