So I know I’ve mentioned this on here before, but one of the things I hate the most about the whole G****G*** movement is the way it’s served to unmitigatingly dichotomize discussions about games, about gender, and about privilege. I hate that if people are involved in the discussion, they’re either Gaters or SJWs, misogynists or misandrists, trolls or feminazis. The discussions that we should be having about gender, sexuality, race, and cultural diversity in games shouldn’t be framed by either-or. There is so much nuance, so many possibilities, that to reduce the discussion to thing A or thing B misses the infinite space in between those things, as well as to either side.
To be upfront about it, I think that what women like Anita Sarkeesian are doing for games is great. I think that a series like “Tropes vs. Women in Video Games” has a lot to give to an industry that has hitherto been profoundly unaware of the problems it has in its treatment of women. I think there is a lot to be done with videogames in they way they portray not only women, but minorities and transpersons and queer persons and persons of other religions, creeds, and cultures.
But I also think that tweets like the following are problematic, too:
From @rollingstone, how @femfreq weathered a misogynist backlash to become pop culture’s most valuable critic http://t.co/w2EKqqxqg9
— WIRED (@WIRED) October 22, 2014
The article from Rolling Stone is the source of the phrase, “pop culture’s most valuable critic,” which is where I take issue with this. Although it isn’t the most brilliant interview ever, the issues I have are with the interviewer and the byline writer – not with Sarkeesian herself. Put frankly, I just don’t think she’s “pop culture’s most valuable critic.” She may well be its “most visible” critic at the moment, which carries with it a certain amount of cache, but “most valuable” implies a level of depth and experience that she just doesn’t have.
The interview itself is fine – it talks about the video series, GG, and the harassment she’s faced as a result.That’s not really a problem (although the fact that she’s had to deal with the last of these is). What’s problematic, to me, is the fact that in this internet-turned-offline drama, one has to be either a hero or a villain. At one point, for instance, the interviewer says the following: “You’ve described yourself as a folk villain to a certain subset of gamers, and you’ve become a folk hero to another.” The image of a “folk villain” is certainly clever and fairly apt for the position in which Sarkeesian has found herself, but the impulse to create the opposition – either “folk villain” or “folk hero” – creates a false opposition. It produces a war that may or may not have inherently existed.
This is not to say that Rolling Stone in particular is culpable here – the dichotomy was in place long before current non-gaming media picked up on it. But no one is attempting to dismantle it, either, and I find that almost equally irritating. I know conflict sells – or gets clicks – and the more news outlets get involved in the discussion, the fewer voices are going to be heard because they’re all going to get filtered into pro and against – and the pro and against WHAT is going to fall away.
You see, this isn’t really a war – one doesn’t have to approach games as either misogynist or the Best Thing Evar, which is the way things are shaping up right now.
Anita Sarkeesian can be valuable and contribute value to the games industry without being “pop culture’s most valuable critic.” People can object to her viewpoint in whatever nuance they want without being GGers or misogynists (I take issue with some of what she says, and I’m about as feminist as you can possibly get). (People should also be able to object without resorting to insults, threats, and so on, so there is some blame that falls on those participating in such actions.)
What I hate is that according to the line in the sand that has currently been drawn, I have to either love all the things about games as they are OR I have to be a games-hating raving feminist who wants people to never have fun because patriarchy.
But let’s be honest here. I love games. I play RPGs and shooters and puzzle games and mobile games (pretty much in that order of frequency). I’ve had fun playing Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Call of Duty, Borderlands, Skyrim, Team Fortress 2, XCOM, BioShock, Infinite, Warcraft 3, Age of Mythology, Tomb Raider, Braid, Dishonored, Contrast, Alice, Myst, Riven, System Shock 2, Civilization, Plants vs. Zombies, Peggle, and Bejeweled. Even Minesweeper and Lode Runner and Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego, back in the day. (And I’m sure I missed some in there.)
I can love those games and hate individual things about them (the ubiquitous Asari strippers in Mass Effect, for instance, or the godawful Mako). I can love a game and still think that it’s sexist (Warcraft). I can hate a game that isn’t sexist, or for reasons that have nothing to do with sexism (Alan Wake, which I didn’t make it far enough into to find out whether it was sexist or not). I can also hate a game in part for its sexism (Fable III). I can do all these things, and still love games. I can also do all these things and still be a feminist. (And, for the record, I can be a feminist and not hate men. One can also be a feminist and wear makeup or a skirt.)
The reason so many people – men, women, transpersons – are talking about games is because they love games. If we didn’t love them, we wouldn’t talk about them, and that is something we all have in common here. Whether GGers or feminists or just plain gamers, we all love games. We aren’t at war – or at least, we don’t have to be.
This isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition – everybody can have the games they want. What we can’t have is for ALL the games to be what only one group wants – but I think that if we all stopped shouting and flag waving and gating, we might find out that the games that would appear if everyone tried to accommodate others (just a little bit) wouldn’t be even half as awful as we feared.
So instead of putting up walls and siphoning people off into jars based on their gate-status or -ist identification, how about we just talk about what makes a good game?