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[Phmcw]

What a fun and original idead.... not. Jill of the jungle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jill_of_the_Jungle was out in 1992, and was one of the first game I played (after prince of persia)

Seriously, this whole thing is bullshit : the "Damsel in distress trope" is older than videogames and even early ones poked fun at it.

I really don't understand how people can fall for this garbage. A subset of videogames are based on heroic epics where one of the challenge the hero could face is the abduction of his loved one or general orpression of women (does it remind you of something?). It exist since the epic of Gilgamsesh so the dawn of humanity. Note that it pretty much only exist for plateformers, rpgs and the likes which may pass for peoples that don't play videogames for the entirety of videogames, but really aren't.

So videogames based on heroic epics use heroic epics tropes. What a surprise. Note that this trope is one among other, and not used specially more often : saving the world form destruction is a classic, avenging one's parents and loved ones is another, quest for riches and fame, quest for love, and most often than not, like in the final fantasy stories, all of the above.

Now videogames is a field for the young and educated, so for the left. They didn't wait for the pseudo intellectual clique to include women in their plot, and most often than not, the firstgame are more feminist than the sequels, due to marketing that try shamelessly to pander to a "males gamers" and completely miss the mark.

Lara croft is often reduced to her boobs, but if you played the first and second games , it's obvious that she's a sucessful highly educated archeologist who can play four instruments, in in incredible shape and generally a total badass. The command and conquer serie, especially the early one but a lot of strong women in their senarios, including our beloved Tania, who is a freedom fight, a badass and slighly sadistic (remember her cry of glee as she gun down USSR infantrymen?). And  marketting almost blew the first serie by making Lara a bimbo before coming to their sense and destroyed the second with the hillariously bad red alert 3.

So first thing she ignore the cultural contex of the subject she try to analyse,second she exclude whole subgenre in favor of plateformers and arcade games, the third is that she ignore the conflict between marketing and the devs.

Fourth, she analyse japanese games from a purely western point of view. I have zero knowlege of japanese cultrue so I cannot do better, but I thing it's pretty clear that Mario is some form of parody of western tales, with a plumber instead of the prince, unecessary girly princess captured by the turtle king... It is a play on her precious "damsel in distress" trope.

Fifth, masculine and feminine qualities? Really? Try to say that as a man "hey girl you're strong and courageous, that's not feminine at all".

Sixth second degree is a thing, you cannot just ignore it.

But no, she got an internet martyr aura, she got trash talked so now she's unironically a damsel in distress and she got a license to say anything without beign questionned. That and her supporters try so hard to be above "the average white male gamer, a brutish creature".

[alexandertnt]

One day people will realise she is not "attacking" video games and stop trying to make excuses like "but it's based on heroic tropes!" (which is irrelevant to the points she makes) or "It's a parody!" (does not give an automatic free pass), or "blah blah political left blah academia blah intellectuals".

Her video's are not "This is why video games suck", they are supposed to be "These are some relatively common issues with popular conceps used by video games from a feminist POV".

(All this is irrelevant to the quality of her video's, btw)

Sixth second degree is a thing, you cannot just ignore it.

Can you elaborate on this a bit? I googled "second degree" and just found information on burns and polynomials.

[Phmcw]

Sixth second degree is a thing, you cannot just ignore it.

Can you elaborate on this a bit? I googled "second degree" and just found information on burns and polynomials.

Sorry literal translation of "deuxième degré" I didn't know it doesn't carry the same meaning in english. It's parody is "deuxième degé" but there is more to "deuxième degré" than parody. A counterutopia is "deuxième degré" too for instance.

"blah blah political left blah academia blah intellectuals".

It's neither political left (the subject is largely irrelevant to politics exept for slacktivists) or intellectual : She have zero credentials and doesn't know what she's talking about. What I'm talking about is narcisism.

they are supposed to be "These are some relatively common issues with popular conceps used by video games from a feminist POV".

No, it's a requisitoire against gamer and gaming culture masquarading as an educated criticism of tropes. It's even clear in the title "tropes (in videogames) versus women".
Or rather, a money and attention grab that took the form of a requisitoire.

"It's a parody!" (does not give an automatic free pass)

We don't need a pass. We don't care about what peoples feel acceptable or not, that is part of my gaming culture. Gaming is where peoples let steam off. It's when I was ten and surgerons had doom installed on the hospital computers. It's where problems of society are mocked and twisted for your enjoyment (remember sim city 2000?) it's where you fight your friends for fun. But what does she know about gamers culture? Nothing, and that's painfully clear.

Political correctness in  itself is an attack on gaming culture.

[scrdest]

Sixth second degree is a thing, you cannot just ignore it.

Can you elaborate on this a bit? I googled "second degree" and just found information on burns and polynomials.

Sorry literal translation of "deuxième degré" I didn't know it doesn't carry the same meaning in english. It's parody is "deuxième degé" but there is more to "deuxième degré" than parody. A counterutopia is "deuxième degré" too for instance.

Based on French Wikipedia and my understanding of written French cobbled together from passing familiarity with some Romance languages, it appears to be closely related to the meaning of 'metaphor', or specifically irony. It's 'second degree' because the 'first degree' is the literal, face value meaning of something said, and second is the intended meaning.

And it appears to be something more specifically like a rhetorical paradox, so the utopia example would be something like Brave New World - it is utopian on surface, but dystopian on closer examination.

That, again, is a hackjob in linguistics on my part, so correct me if I got this wrong.

[Phmcw]

Sixth second degree is a thing, you cannot just ignore it.

Can you elaborate on this a bit? I googled "second degree" and just found information on burns and polynomials.

Sorry literal translation of "deuxième degré" I didn't know it doesn't carry the same meaning in english. It's parody is "deuxième degé" but there is more to "deuxième degré" than parody. A counterutopia is "deuxième degré" too for instance.

Based on French Wikipedia and my understanding of written French cobbled together from passing familiarity with some Romance languages, it appears to be closely related to the meaning of 'metaphor', or specifically irony. It's 'second degree' because the 'first degree' is the literal, face value meaning of something said, and second is the intended meaning.

And it appears to be something more specifically like a rhetorical paradox, so the utopia example would be something like Brave New World - it is utopian on surface, but dystopian on closer examination.

That, again, is a hackjob in linguistics on my part, so correct me if I got this wrong.

You got it exactly right. So tagging something that is "deuxième degré" as problematic when taken at face value is as relevant as pointing that it's offensive in another language.

[alexandertnt]

No, it's a requisitoire against gamer and gaming culture masquarading as an educated criticism of tropes. It's even clear in the title "tropes (in videogames) versus women".
Or rather, a money and attention grab that took the form of a requisitoire.

"Tropes in video games versus women" not "Video Games versus women". So yeah, not evident in the title, and not an attack on Video Games.

We don't need a pass. We don't care about what peoples feel acceptable or not, that is part of my gaming culture. Gaming is where peoples let steam off. It's when I was ten and surgerons had doom installed on the hospital computers. It's where problems of society are mocked and twisted for your enjoyment (remember sim city 2000?) it's where you fight your friends for fun.

Political correctness in  itself is an attack on gaming culture.

At the very core, some of her main points seem to be:

1) Video game culture in general is generally not particularly accepting of women, and
2) Video games may actually harm some women because of 1, and/or because of the negative stereotyping presented of women in video games.

Neither of these have anything to do with "Political Correctness", or shooting demons/throwing tornadoes at towns.


Interestingly, some of the responses to her video series in general tend to make me think it's become "Politically Incorrect" to critisize gaming culture (or something), especially considering some of the responses I have read seem to take issue with the mere fact she critisized video games.

(Again, this post does not address the validity of her videos. I am just addressing what I perceive is a suprisingly common (and bizzare) perception that Video Games are "under attack").

[Phmcw]

1) Video game culture in general is generally not particularly accepting of women

It's false. She piece together a completely dishonest requisitoire that say exactly this while video games always allowed you to play women in various roles since day one.

She purposely took things at face value when it's not intended, ignored the cultural context, or straight made up point (the women is the object of the story thus that is objectification, for instance).

Video games may actually harm some women because of 1, and/or because of the negative stereotyping presented of women in video games.

This is quite a claim and backed by... nothing. It's nothing more than one inflamatory opinion piece. Where is the evidence? Or even the hint that it harm women?

Interestingly, some of the responses to her video series in general tend to make me think it's become "Politically Incorrect" to critisize gaming culture (or something), especially considering some of the responses I have read seem to take issue with the mere fact she critisized video games.

Peoples get upset when you frame them, yeah.

Beside author and consumers of creative works always fought not to have to limit the scope of what they were allowed to say. That is free speech and not the ridiculous version popular among sjw's "free speech is when it's not the government that censor you".

[Reelya]

I would go so far as to say, that if she had her way, based on her position across her career, some genres of games wouldn't be able to exist at all - notably, the first person shooter, at least this genre played straight.

A shooter where you play a man is a male power fantasy. She has repeatedly made statements that such entertainment is "gross" or against women, even if women are not portrayed. Then her thesis holds that merely including a female protagonist into this type of media merely reinforces the patriarchy etc, etc.

I guess we could still have shooters as long as there are no female characters in them that can be shot, because regardless of how that is framed, Anita is going to find fault that there's an option to harm a woman by a male character.

Games like Call Of Duty are safe from her styles of critique only as long as they do not try and represent women in any fashion. So, I do not fault the makers of military type shooter games from not rushing to include more female characters in the wake of Anita's videos. Why would you? You only end up creating footage she can use against you.

So, her analysis has implications, and one big one is don't include women at all in your most violent games. And that has the implication of creating an even bigger gender-divide amongst game "types" than before.

[DJ]

She is a demagogue who's doing this for fame and fortune, and doesn't give a damn about any damage she might be doing. IMO she's on the same level as teleevangelists.

[Reelya]

I linked it before, but there's a concept in psychology/sociology called "negative social proof". What that means, is that by portraying a bad trait as common, you make it socially acceptable. Women's studies graduates don't seem to be well-read in the best practice in psychology and sociology, at least going by Anita's stance on issues. IDK maybe the post-modern fem studies crowd don't crossover with the psychology and sociology crowd that much.

An example from 1st generation feminism and how it backfires:

"All men are rapists!" or "All sex is rape!" sounds like you're taking a hardline stance, right? Wrong. That actually sends the message to potential and actual rapists that "Well everyone is doing it, I'm normal, so I might as well start/keep doing it". Which is really, really, really counterproductive if your goal is to minimize harm. It sends the exact same message that "rape culture" and rape jokes are sending: by joking about rape, you send the message to rapists that other guys are OK with it, they must do it too, etc, etc. Going around labeling "all men" or "seemingly normal men" as rapists sends the same message to the actual rapists that they're "just average guys" doing what everyone does.

This is why you need to be extremely careful in how harmful social issues are framed. And Anita apparently doesn't know this. Some of her statements seem fine-tuned to backfire on this sort of stuff. They're more about political agitation than helping with the issue itself. Links:

https://blog.kissmetrics.com/social-proof-factors-2/
http://www.futurefundraisingnow.com/future-fundraising/2013/02/how-negative-social-proof-persuades-people-not-to-give.html

Anita Wrote:

it reinforces a popular misconception about gendered violence by framing it as something abnormal, as a cruelty only committed by the most transparently evil strangers. In reality, however, violence against women, and sexual violence in particular, is a common everyday occurrence often perpetrated by “normal men” known and trusted by those targeted.

The first bolded part is what Anita objects to. And it's exactly how sociologists claim is better to frame some behavior you want to discourage. The second framing, which Anita prefers, is actually the one sociologists warn against as most often encouraging the bad behavior. It's why actual modern campaigns against domestic violence don't frame it the way college feminists do: an anti-domestic violence advert played here read "don't be that guy" rather than "don't be one of the guys".

[Phmcw]

Beside it's a non-statement : everything is done by normal peoples exept maybe digging up old ladies and wearing their skins. Even Auswhitz guards were normal peoples ; some of them did go on and lead normal if regretfull lifes. Peoples in death squad were normal peoples. Something only done by crazy peoples is basically a small problem since it won't happen often.

[Reelya]

It boils down to - something may be true, but it's harmful to express it a certain way, even if true.

A statement like "only the most sick and twisted individual would rape his wife" might be factually untrue, but it's pretty much proven that this sort of framing dissuades the behavior. Few people want to be labeled "one of those freaks that does X", even if they are the only one who knows they did it. Going around saying there's an epidemic of wife rapes, or that every husband uses rape to control his wife, does NOT dissuade the behavior, regardless of it's truth level: in fact, it encourages perpetrators because they believe they have impunity since no-one else is getting caught.

They talk about how stereotypes can be self-reinforcing (e.g. saying "women can't do math" causes lower math scores in women exposed to this idea). Obviously, negative stereotypes for men could be self-fulfilling prophecies as well. So, clearly, anyone should think twice before generalizing to a group as a way of "shaming" the behavior. Stereotype threat is another way of looking at this: people live up to what you tell them they are.

[Neonivek]

Don't get me wrong Alexandertnt your viewpoint is a perfectly valid interpretation of Anita's videos, it just falls back onto the same old stuff.

Anita doesn't do a very good job of it.

Heck Anita technically isn't "attacking" videogames, she just relies on blanket statements and shock value statements in order to make her points. Which can easily be construed as such. I found out it takes no effort to make Anita look like she is two-faced with her disclaimer (>_< I didn't look at what she said so closely, so now I am in a iffy state)

Honestly her ONE good idea the entire series, the best thing she has said is that... Mooks should have male and female models.

That is, actually kind of an interesting idea.

[Fniff]

Bioshock Infinite does a good job of that, I feel. I do hate when games use females as "special units" with the average grunts are male. Like in Condemned 2, where one of the enemy types is just a female rioter who just happens to get a special attack. It can't be that hard having the enemies and pedestrians who spawn be randomly selected to be male or female with both of them having the same attacks/actions. It would also make the world feel a little bit more believable.

[Reelya]

I think though, diversity of mooks could backfire in e.g. sandbox games. What if women in GTA came in all body shapes and skin colors? I could do a let's play where I only exterminate fat black women for example. I can't see that being good publicity for the game, even though the inclusion of various body types and skin colors was intended to be "more inclusive".

Bad behavior in a game will never have real-world implications, so being "inclusive" just opens up the game to include more potential examples of abuse of differing minorities.