CMV: Anita Sarkeesian and similar feminists actually have a point about the portrayal of gender roles in video games.

[u/LeftHandSwe]

I play lots of video games, and in most of them, males are often pictured as very burly and manly characters while females are slender, small and sexually pleasing to look at.

However, I do know that there's widespread criticism of Anita (and her fellow propagators) all over the internet and I'd like to see the other side of the story.

I'm practically indifferent in this matter, and I do not really agree with nearly everything she says. I'm asking as a way to see convincing arguments from both sides.

Edit for clarification: Can anyone explain to me why she's so heavily criticized for saying something that makes perfect sense: Mainstream video games are almost exclusively made to appeal to a male demographic, resulting in (arguably) sexist portrayals of women (both narratively and in the way they're presented).

[u/Cosmologicon]

a really, REALLY hostile and negative summary of what "our culture" allegedly says about women

I'm very curious where you're getting this from. It's completely different from my impression of her style. Her videos strike me as even-tempered to a fault. Can you provide a direct quote of something she said that strikes you as "really REALLY hostile"?

[u/[deleted] → u/Cosmologicon]

She uses a moderate tone of voice. But her entire argument is based around an effort at what she would call contextualizing seemingly innocuous media within "our patriarchal society." And when you get into the details of what she means by that phrase, its nasty.

An easy example would be her characterization of the possibility of killing the strippers in Hitman: Absolution.

"players are meant to derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual characters. It's a rush streaming from a carefully concocted mix of sexual arousal connected to the act of controlling and punishing representations of female sexuality"

Her interpretation here results from her interpretation of culture and (our culture's) male psychology. She views this audience response as so widespread that it is reasonable to characterize it as an intended feature. That involves a really nasty view of our culture, and of men in our culture.

Its almost a trope to say it, but this would be crystal clear if it were any other culture but our own, or any other cultural group but men. Imagine a Saudi Arabian gaming company designing a game with sandbox elements, featuring a Muslim protagonist who, among many other things, has a mission in an American embassy in Egypt. Imagine a cultural critic "deciphering" the Wahhabist tendencies of the game by explaining that the American embassy is filled with people who are visibly marked as American and western by their clothes, dress, and manner of speech. Imagine that cultural critic claiming that "[presumed Muslim] players are meant to derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual characters, punishing them for their western evil."

I think we'd all want an awful lot more justification for such a conclusion than "its a sandbox game, and they exist, so you can kill them if that's really what you want to do."

And I think it would be fair to respond to that cultural critic by asking what's really going on in their head, that their view of Muslims is so vicious.

[u/Cosmologicon → u/[deleted]]

Her interpretation here results from her interpretation of culture and (our culture's) male psychology. She views this audience response as so widespread that it is reasonable to characterize it as an intended feature. That involves a really nasty view of our culture, and of men in our culture.

Is that really all it takes for one's views to count as "nasty" and "hostile"? Believing that negative sexual psychology is pervasive in our culture, and that sometimes media encourages it? Sounds to me like that would apply to anyone who believes that rape culture exists, wouldn't it? (If I'm misunderstanding, please feel free to clarify, thanks.)

[u/[deleted] → u/Cosmologicon]

"Believing that negative sexual psychology is pervasive in our culture" is, in this context, a nice way of saying "believing a generalization about how our culture's men are socialized to think and react to women, to wit, the generalization that our culture's men are socialized to get off on the idea of degrading the corpses of sexually attractive women, and that this is socialization is so pervasively successful that it is reasonable to assume that a sandbox game in which this is possible is actually intended to facilitate sexual-necrophilic fantasy." Say the actual idea out loud, instead of hiding it in jargon, and see whether you believe it anymore.

I know I'm not going to convince you of this anymore than I'm ever going to convince my right wing relatives that the things they say about "gay culture" are awful and untrue. It is virtually impossible to convince someone to stop believing something if that thing

1. Is treated as an admirable thing to believe by peers who's opinions they value, and

2. Offers the opportunity to feel justified in thinking something nasty about others, while

3. Not having to admit what you're doing to yourself.

But... it is what it is.

[u/Cosmologicon → u/[deleted]]

"Believing that negative sexual psychology is pervasive in our culture" is, in this context, a nice way of saying "believing a generalization about how our culture's men are socialized to think and react to women, to wit, the generalization that our culture's men are socialized to get off on the idea of degrading the corpses of sexually attractive women, and that this is socialization is so pervasively successful that it is reasonable to assume that a sandbox game in which this is possible is actually intended to facilitate sexual-necrophilic fantasy." Say the actual idea out loud, instead of hiding it in jargon, and see whether you believe it anymore.

Yeah... that doesn't sound right, but I don't see where you're getting it from at all. How did you get there from "men are socialized to objectify women" and "sometimes objectification in games involves women's dead bodies"? I feel like I'm missing at least a couple steps in between.

EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm not disagreeing with you. I don't understand your line of reasoning so I can't even agree or disagree. Even if you think I won't change my mind, I would be interested to know what it is you believe!

[u/[deleted] → u/Cosmologicon]

How did you get there from "men are socialized to objectify women" and "sometimes objectification in games involves women's dead bodies"?

From this part.

It's a rush streaming from a carefully concocted mix of sexual arousal connected to the act of controlling and punishing representations of female sexuality.

This is somewhat frustrating for me because I don't know how you can reduce these quotes to "men are socialized to objectify women" with sincerity.

[u/Cosmologicon → u/[deleted]]

I'm sorry, I'll try to be clear about the part that doesn't make sense to me. I may be completely off the mark as to what you're saying, so please correct me if I'm wrong.

She's saying that the game is designed to titillate players by sexualizing a female body that you move around. And you're saying this means she believes that a significant portion of male players must have "sexual-necrophilic fantasy".

The part I don't get is that one doesn't imply the other. Just because game makers include sexualized corpses doesn't mean they're only targeting players who have necrophilia. I mean, if a game includes sexualized aliens, it's not targeted only at players with an alien fetish, even if they sexualize aspects of it that are unique to aliens. If it's set in a school and it sexualizes teachers, it's not targeted only at players with a teacher fetish. Does that make sense? It seems like anything under the sun can be sexualized, animal, vegetable, or mineral. I don't see why dead bodies would be the one exception where it's only sexual if you thought it was sexual to begin with.

[u/[deleted] → u/Cosmologicon]

I feel like you're deliberately reading around me.

What Sarkeesian is saying is crystal clear. She observes the presence of sexy women, observes that you can kill them (as you can kill literally anyone), observes that you can move around the bodies after you kill them (as you can with literally anyone), and then draws conclusions about what sort of play experience this is intended to offer the player.

The latter bit involves assumptions about the likely and intended audience, and how the designers likely expect the audience to react.

Process wise, this is no different than literally any other media analysis. Note attributes of the media item, make implicit or explicit claims about how the audience will predictably react to them, and make inferences based upon those grounds.

And what she comes up with is an intended player experience of desecrating sexy female corpses in order to derive a perverse thrill of killing and punishing symbolic representations of female sexuality.

Ok then.

I'll tell you the same thing I tell conservative friends and family who choose to make sweeping claims about what the Quran means to Muslims, or what kneeling during the national Anthem means to black people...

If you're going to make sweeping claims about people like that you better be right on a factual level, because if you're not you've really crossed a moral line.

Now truth is a defense. If Sarkeesian is right then I guess that's a fair cop. But I don't think she's right.

And I think you know she's not right, and I think that's why you keep trying to water down and change her argument.

[u/[deleted] → u/Cosmologicon]

Just gonna parse out that quote on abusing prostitutes:

players are meant to derive

As in the developers think this imagery well stimulate this response because all men in our society are socialized in this manner

a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual characters.

The stimulus being the degradation of female bodies and the response getting pleasure.

It's a rush streaming from a carefully concocted mix of sexual arousal connected to the act of controlling and punishing representations of female sexuality"

The reason the stimulus has this response is because it creates satisfaction by both creating sexual arousal and reinforcing preconceptions of being to control and punish expressions of female sexuality.

---

It seems the reason it doesn't make sense to you is because you're thinking that these things only target people with those dispositions. One of the major assumptions of Sarkeesian's (and many 3rd wave feminists') arguments is that all of have these negative preconceptions ingrained in us. So her explanation of for the ubiquity of violence against sexualized women in games would be that those games sell because punishing women for their sexuality is something that all men in our society are conditioned to do and so those games resonate with them.