Comment Re: Her work (Score 4, Insightful) 1262
Men die in the same way! And in much more gruesome and jovial manners. I think when this occasionally happens to women and it's considered more important is more of a reflection of our attitudes of men's lives being less important than women's than any negative view there is of women. You can't honestly believe that male video game characters do not die in heinous ways more than female characters. You don't think it's interesting that you find that totally normal for men and something that needs to be stopped for women? Women cannot be the same part of a narrative as a men unless they can actually be put in the same part. Which according to Sarkeesian and yourself they cannot be because *reasons*.
So if you watch the latest video, she does touch on that somewhat. I'm going to assume you haven't (or at least, that someone reading our discussion hasn't) and point out the salient bits.
First, that when men die in these games, they're generally an antagonist or actor that actually has a measure of agency. They're killed because they were involved in a conflict that revolved around more than just their gender or their victimhood.
Second, part of why you're gruesomely killing the men in these games is often justified by the violence that the men are (arbitrarily) enacting against women. The women die as props to show off how bad someone is in a wild caricature of evil. She's right in pointing out that violence against women is most often perpetrated by 'normal' men. A woman is FAR more likely to be raped by a friend or family member than a random bad man on the street.
Third, men die in ways that aren't overtly sexualised. Women die on beds in lingerie with their legs spread and their tits hanging out. They're still T&A even after brutal violence.
She's right that sexual and sexualised violence is used as a lazy shortcut to show how bad a person is. You can instantly justify murdering someone brutally (to bring it back to your complaint) if we've just shown them as hitting a woman or raping them. It's not the nicest cycle.
Given that we know men are far more likely to be murdered or die in war would it not be a good idea to hold off on this bit of violence? You can do what you want in your games. But when you're trying to tell other people they're being bad or "insensitive" based on the games they create or like to play you actually are trying to make them feel bad so that they stop.
The worst part about her criticisms is that she actually doesn't understand the tropes she's talking about. Or she just makes up new tropes. Tropes are pretty much a necessary part of storytelling. That's why we call them tropes. They've been around since the advent of storytelling. All stories are just rehashes and variations of old ones.
I don't think people have to stop doing anything. But I think they DO need to think about what they're doing, understand whether it's appropriate narratively, and make those decisions with open eyes. Speaking personally, for the first ten years of my career, I definitely didn't think about this stuff as much. Maybe I would've spoken up more about certain things if I had.
I understand that the word 'trope' actually has several meanings, but in this context, she's using the word 'trope' as 'cliché'. You DON'T need to write something that relies heavily on clichés. At the very least, you don't need to write something that heavily relies on the sorts of tropes that may be damaging to our ideas about women.
I really can't agree with that. Using her same irrational argument style you could paint that same problems onto any media. You think playwriting needs to respond to this criticism if it wants to be credible in the world? Shakespeare the misogynist! The gaming community tried to respond with the appropriate "you're going to have to do better" and explained why to her. She chose instead to focus on people making fun of her for saying stupid things. Everybody with civil disagreements went on and did their own things because she chose to ignore them and make a spectacle out of crazies instead.
Every AAA title made in the past 20 years disagrees with your assertion. Every AAA movies as well. Every AAA book. Unfortunately mass appeal appears to correlate extremely strongly with mass stupid.
This is really just an appeal to tradition, and as such, it really doesn't carry much weight. Lots of things that have happened in the past don't happen any more because we've decided that they're reprehensible. "Bang, zoom, Alice! Straight to the moon!" That kind of casual domestic violence is a part of television's (and our society's!) history, but that doesn't mean we show it on TV now. It's not a joke to be laughed off, this thing where a man is threatening to hit his wife so hard he sends her to the moon. I'm not sure why we think it's okay to glorify violence against women in video games. But relatively speaking, this medium is young and hasn't borne the same scrutiny as books, film and television.
I think that playwriting HAS responded to the changing times. I think that if we saw a play with the same sort of violence that's in games we'd be horrified. And I think that we can look back at stuff done in the past and see that things WERE misogynist and the product of their time.
And, as she's repeated so often, just because you're critical of something doesn't mean you can't enjoy it. Nothing is perfect. I'm just happy she's making these videos so I can recognise the bad stuff and think about it more.
Some people really aren't playing games for the story telling. Some people are. Games should not be limited to targeting only one of those groups.
You talk about trolls again like there has not been plenty attempts to discuss this in a civil manner. The reason Anita focuses on trolls is precisely so she can ignore actual criticism. She has literally ignored it all while waving her hands and screaming "look at all the hate! This is proof I'm right". A lot of us have seen this behaviour before and know that it has zero credibility.
Regardless of what you think about how she reacts to trolls (and there are lots of them, which is why we're talking about this right now at all), I also think that philosophically, her ideas have merit. She's making videos and putting her opinion out there, and it's up to us to watch the videos and make sense of her position, whether we agree or disagree. You don't have to agree. You don't even have to watch. But if you don't agree, it doesn't give you license to slag her and attack her. If you feel like your position is defensible, you don't even have to directly contend with her on it--make your own videos and put your own opinion out there.
