“Girl” on Top

6 Jul

Today Gamers Against Bigotry shared a story by a male gamer about what it was like to log in to his wife’s multiplayer account. It contains most of what you’d expect – the male players identified the gamertag as female, discussed booting said supposed female, then got upset when said supposed female beat them, then insulted both that supposed female and the other actual female playing in their game.

The author – who had no idea what he was getting into when he logged on as his wife – found in this experience a catalyst to promote feminism in the gaming community and to point out that suggesting that a woman “get raped” because she’s defeated a male teammate (teammate!! This is a cooperative game!) is unacceptable and should never happen or be tolerated.

Okay. Great. But I do have a couple problems with this narrative. Namely, that it takes a male narrative about abuse of women for people to pay attention to it. I’ve been the identified female gamertag. I’ve been the only female voice on chat. I’ve also been one of several women in a game who defeated our male teammates and opponents. And, to be fair, not all of them have been misogynistic assholes. A lot of them remarked only “You’re a girl?” and then moved on with their lives (although the simple fact that my gender was surprising is problematic in and of itself). Few of them made rude or crude comments, but you can bet that I remember those much more vividly than I do the good ones.

But it doesn’t seem right for a man masquerading as a woman to become our voice, our advocate. Yes, I’m glad that Caldwell wrote what he did, and I’m glad he realizes that this is a problem and wanted to share his story, but what about the fact that there was an actual woman playing, a woman who felt utterly silenced for most of the game, whose actual gender was being maligned? Yes, it’s awful that Caldwell was insulted for being a girl (even though he isn’t), but what abouther?

I also think there something dangerous about “proving” that women can game by having a man masquerade (however innocently) as a woman because the woman whose tag he borrowed wasn’t a very good player. Certainly, even a bad player shouldn’t be subject to insults and misogyny, regardless of gender, but the fact that he was male somewhat detracts from the power of the story. It’s still about his experience – not about the experience of the woman actually playing, not about his wife’s experience of being a player maligned not only for  being a woman, but probably also for not being elite.

Which raises a point about women in multiplayer games – a lot of them don’t play (or don’t play visibly) precisely because of the abuse to which they are subject, which means they aren’t skilled, they aren’t good enough to “prove” themselves because they choose not to spend hours playing a game where they are daily attacked for appearing to be female. Because that’s another point here – perceived gender is much more important than actual gender.

The two idiots on Caldwell’s server perceived his tag as female. They perceived the final player’s tag as default male (for more on “default” see my earlier post), even though she was female, and didn’t attack her until she spoke up and identified herself as such. The very perception of gender is enough to get a player verbally assaulted, booted, neglected, and otherwise ostracized from a game – so no wonder more women don’t play or don’t speak up if they do.

And that’s the real problem here. Women still aren’t being given a voice – either because someone else is silencing them, or because they’re too damn sick of dealing with this kind of thing. Last night I got a comment notification from TLF on my last Anita Sarkeesian post that seems to echo some of this in a small way:

Well read half way though and stopped couldn’t take it this become go Anita go Anita rather fast her videos are crap, she bashes literally any game she loves playing DiD herself, oh poor me save me fund my project because I got trolled, video games are made for u to go play have fun and act like a child because guess what its fun to trash talk someone and 5mins later your chatting with them

Putting aside the small apoplectic fit being had by my inner grammarian, I was particularly irritated by this comment because said commenter didn’t actually read all the way through before deciding that I must agree with everything that Sarkeesian has to say (obviously not having read the post I made about it before that…). I think that there’s a lot wrong with Sarkeesian’s project, but I do think that there’s a lot right with it, and “russell” (the commenter) decided that since I didn’t immediately dismiss her as belonging in the kitchen, I must revere her as a feminist deity.

But here’s my biggest complaint, and it’s one that Caldwell addresses, too: “video games are made for u to go play have fun and act like a child because guess what its fun to trash talk someone and 5mins later your chatting with them.” Yes, games are made to play. Games are made for fun. BUT. You are not a child and many of these games are not designed for children – they’re designed for adults, with adult themes, with commentary and complex social problems and advanced cinematic and literary allusions (the husband is playing Condemned 2 right now, which is alluding to Gaston Leroux’s novel Phantom of the Opera, and Mass Effect has references to Shakespeare, Tennyson, and Eliot, among others). They are adult forms of entertainment that require complex adult thought to understand and fully engage with.

And, furthermore, there is a difference between “trash talk” and “verbal assault.” “I got you, you bastard” qualifies as “trash talk.” “Get raped” does not. So I would invite you, “russell,” to think about how you talk to men when you play with them and how you talk to women. If it doesn’t matter – if you say the same, non-sexual things, to both genders, then you’re engaging in “trash talk.” If you’re not, if you’re sexualizing your “trash talk” to women but not to men, if you’re demeaning gender or sexuality, then it isn’t “trash talk.” And if anyone ever tells you to stop, it isn’t “trash talk.”

Because it is a game, and it is supposed to be fun for everyone playing the game. And when you’re a female gamer, situations like the one in which Caldwell found himself aren’t fun anymore. When you’ve played game after game and all the women in it are two-dimensional or victims, it isn’t fun anymore. When you habitually don’t engage with the community of which you are a part because you no longer have the patience or the strength to deal with the comments and the disparagement, it isn’t fun anymore. As a player, you should have the right to have fun, but you absolutely do not have the right to take that fun away from anyone else because of their gender, sexuality, or ethnicity.