Having touched on gaming in my previous post, that does give me an excuse to segue onto a game related topic. Specifically the game Bayonetta, which features a tall, aggressive leather clad female protagonist. It clearly draws on BDSM culture (as alluded to here by one of the designers), but I’d always dismissed it as an example of the typical adolescent dominatrix fantasy that crops up fairly often in video games. Maddy Myers, writing in Paste magazine, thinks otherwise. It’s an interesting article, and she clearly identifies with both the dominant role and the leading character.
We don’t just get invited to watch Bayonetta, we also inhabit her. When I play, Bayonetta is me, and the camera’s glances are just the “sub gaze”—the male submissive’s gaze. Bayonetta holds all the cards.
Maddy Myers in Paste
It’s rare to read such a thoughtful commentary on a video game. It’s even rarer to have a woman come out as a dominant in a non-professional BDSM setting. Pro-domme tell-all articles are a dime a dozen, but I can’t remember the last time I encountered a woman identifying that way in the context of her professional non-kinky life. You can read more from her at her site.
While I head off to Amazon to order a copy of the first version of the game, I’ll leave you with some Bayonetta cosplay by TraumaticCandy. The original character design is deliberately freakishly long-limbed, and this costume does an amazing job of capturing that.
That Anita Sarkeesian you praised from your previous post said that Bayonetta was misogynist because the game objectifies women. She presented the game as proof of sexism in the video game industry. So if you like this character, I guess that would also make YOU a misogynist Paltego :p . The reason I’m writhing you this is because of how you previously said #gamergate was a toxic clusterfuck. The media is full of articles rejecting gamergaters as a group of so called “angry white male misoginist“. And frankly this is sickening. The only thing I’m asking you Paltego is to look for yourself. The link is right here https://twitter.com/hashtag/gamergate Look at how diverse this community is ! gamergate include gamers of both sexes, of all color and even include some feminists ! I think its very important to view this controversy with an OBJECTIVE point of view. Right now this is difficult to do because any VALID criticism against an anti-GG women is dismissed as misogyny. And the voice of all the Pro-GG women is constantly silenced or ignored by the mass media because it does not fit the “war against women“ narrative. Here’s an objective journalist who Interviewed 2 people representing both side of the conflict http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqwLyjcQ6SU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETVcInunAss
also if you want to know how the whole thing started you might want to check this
http://www.historyofgamergate.com/
I think its important to realize that gamergate is an issue with 2 side, and that bullying and death threats have been received from BOTH sides. I also believe that if you want to convince someone, you must do so with FACTS and ARGUMENTS instead of insults and bullying. So there you go. I don’t know if you are a gamer or not Paltego. If not, then please do some research before taking a stance on this. I know this was a ginormous comment but this is a very important topic for me. And I like your website a lot. I just didn’t expected to see those two things connected. Cheers
I am actually a gamer. Don’t get as much time to play these days as I used to, but over the years I’ve owned and played on a lot of different systems – ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 & Amiga, 3DO(!), Playstation 1 & 2, Xbox 1 & 360, countless PCs, etc. I even worked in the area for a while a few years back, albeit on the platform rather games themselves. There’s a fair chance you’ve indirectly interacted with some of my code at some point, depending what systems you’ve used :).
I’d watched a bunch of Anita Sarkessian’s stuff way before gamergate blew up, and quite honestly the ‘contradiction’ you point out doesn’t bother me at all. I liked a lot of her points, disagreed with some, was undecided on others. Analyzing art and culture is often like that. Critical opinions will differ on the same piece of art. Critics who normally differ may align around one aspect, and some who often agree can disagree about specific examples. The reaction Anita provoked was bizarre to me. At its best her videos seemed to be taken as some sort of a personal attack on gaming. It its worst it was horrible and misogynistic. There’s an interesting discussion to be had, but so far it hasn’t happened. Most responses (of the non-hateful kind) I saw never engaged with the sentiment of her points, they just tried to poke holes and accuse her of lying. It was astonishing to me how visceral the reaction to her was.
Gamergate seemed to tap into a similar sentiment. My reaction on reading Eron Gjoni original post was: Wow, what a douche to post this. The whole thing seems like a complete emotional disaster on all sides. Why would anyone take this as a starting point for some sort of ethical quest? Nothing I’ve read since then has changed my mind on that.
The topic of ethics in gaming journalism doesn’t really grab me, but I get it’s an important thing to some gamers. However, the ethical issues in question here seem tiny compared to the resulting mess that has unfolded. There are a hell of a lot of dubious ethical areas in all types of journalism, yet none of them generate this kind of vitriol and poisonous discussion. Something else is being surfaced.
There was a comment I saw on a gaming forum a week or so ago that summed up the cultural problem for me. Somebody posted that he was sick of all the strong, independent, sexy, one-dimensional female characters that were being pushed onto him these days. He wanted richer, more complex and flawed characters of both sexes, and then want on to give James Bond as an example of a male character of that type. The lack of awareness in that comment blew me away. Yet it’s an attitude I seem to keep hearing in gaming circles.
-paltego
I find it hard to believe that you are surprised by the reaction of Anita’s videos. Remember what Jack Thompson did ? He claimed that video games cause violence in society. He had zero evidences to back his claim. His point of view was rejected by the gamers. The anonymous nature of the internet combined with the fact that Jack Thompson made the feedback he received very harsh to say the least. Now a similar scenario is repeated with Anita. Why are you that much surprised ? I mean, I understand that you agree with some of her arguments and disagree with others, but surely you can see the extremist nature of her point of view ? She killed an innocent NPC stripper in Hitman, she hide the body in a box and then she say that this was made to somehow appeal to the arousal I get when I dominate women ??? Then she went on to say that the school shooting in Seattle was due to “toxic masculinity“ ? Disagree or not , Controversial claims like that HAVE to provoke a wide reaction. And obviously these reactions will not always be polite on the internet. Wow anyway you’re right, there is an interesting discussion to have about that. But from what I see so far I don’t believe the SJW want a discussion. They want to censor those who oppose them. They tried to do so by dismissing GG as a misogynist group but such tactic is bound to fail. There is simply too much pro GG women for this to make any sense.
As a side note I’m pretty much a Nintendo fanboy myself since the days of the NES. You can imagine my disapointment when they announced the Wii U ….
I think there is a huge difference between Jack Thompson and Anita.
Anita basically said that there are a bunch of common tropes in video games that are negative towards women and the gaming community should be more aware of. That was the thrust of 99% of her videos. Jack Thompson said that game makers should be sued, games should be censored and that politicians should legislate against them. That’s an entirely different ball park.
To draw an analogy – the first is liking saying that most porn is an unrealistic representation of sexuality and the portrayal of women in it is cultural problematic. The second is like saying that porn is bad for society and should be banned. I tend to agree with the first (with some amount of qualification) and am radically opposed to the second. I thought Jack Thompson was/is an absolute ass, where Anita was interesting (without necessarily agreeing with everything).
Most of the arguments I see against her fall into the example you’ve given. i.e. In this one example she’s given, I don’t agree that it’s representative of the game. Which ignore the 95% of other examples she gives that are accurate (while the 5% are arguable). I think the cultural impact and effects of gaming is an interesting discussion. But I start from the point of view that it’s self-evident that gaming has for years been male dominated (both from the consumer side and developer side) and that arguing against that is ignoring the evidence. What the evidence means is something else, but the tropes she talks about leap out to me as incredibly obvious.
It reminds me of a study that was done of women in social spaces that were typically male dominated (e.g. business meetings, technical lectures, etc.). They asked men after events to assess the ratio of men/women and the share they’d had of the discussion. In turned out that the men thought that the ratio was 50/50 for attendance when the actual ration reach 20-30 percent. And for discussion the men thought it reached 50/50 when in fact it was between 10-20%. So in fact men thought women were beginning to take the majority of the discussion when they hadn’t even got anywhere close to parity. They weren’t used to it so there ability to assess was way off. Now there’s a few women putting forward these points of view in gaming, which is a tiny fraction of the gaming community, and suddenly it’s this huge issue. There are a million threads on different forums and endless articles, yet somehow these few women are censoring everything. Sorry, but it’s not the reality I see.
To get back to GG, it reminds me of the old joke about asking for directions and the reply starts with “Well, I wouldn’t start from here…”. As I said, I personally don’t see what big ethical issue is being surfaced. But for those that do see one, this seems like a really bad place to start the discussion from.
As you could probably tell from my list of system, I’ve never been a Nintendo person. I think when the Nintendo v’s Sega thing was happening in the US, the UK was still all about home computers (Sinclair, Atari and Commodore). By the time I got my first console, Sony had entered the picture. Although I do regret never having had an N64. That seems to have had a huge number of classic games that I’d have liked to have played. Going to GDC (the Games Developer Conference) and hearing Shigeru Miyamoto speak is a special memory to me. As was getting to shake the hand of Eugene Jarvis (developed Defender and Robotron 2084).
-paltego
also here’s a video of a pro-GG feminist 😛
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RVlCvBd21w
That would be pretty stupid to debate the fact that the video game industry have been male dominated. BUT here’s the thing : There will always be male dominated area in our society in vice versa, and this is simply due to the general preferences of both genders. Why do we accept every female dominated aspect of society while we claim SEXISM on every male dominated ones? I’ve link you a video of this factual feminist and I really agree 95 % of what she say. But when I see someone like Anita Sarkeesian…… I see an Indoctrinated person. Of course I am for equal right of women and men but this whole ideology about “patriarchy“ “rape culture“ and the 77% pay gap ………. seriously? The reality is that men have some advantages and disadvantages in society and the same thing is true for women. The degree of importance theses advantages have is open for debate of course. But to say that women are OPRESSED in western society in 2014 ? That doesn’t seem compatible with reality. Should we help these women to better integrate male dominated industries like gaming ? Yes ! Absolutely ! But in order to fix a problem we must first discern the cause of it. Assuming that this “patriarchy“ is responsible for every problems a women face in society is like a geologist assuming the earth was created in 6k years. It wont give you any results. This form of extremist gender politic must go. The gamers community is diverse and numerous. You can’t just brand such community as “misogynist“ without any kind of backlash.
Btw I still play with my N64 lol. Its just the best console of all time for local multiplayer games
There’s probably not a lot of point continuing this discussion. What you’re saying begins to sound awfully like MRA to me, and nothing is guaranteed to piss me off and annoy me more quickly than that bullshit. If you think there are female dominated aspects of society that somehow compete equally with male dominated ones then we’re not just on a different page, but reading different books. The idea that a tiny handful of women speaking up about what they see as a problem in gaming culture is somehow oppressive, censorious or extremist gender politics is laughable to me. But as I said, this is unlikely to be a fruitful avenue of discussion for either of us.
-paltego
Well we obviously disagree on this subject. And when 2 people disagree ,Its normal that they’re having a discussion. I think I made my position on this quite clear. It may piss you off, it may annoy you , but everyone is entitled to their opinions. And that is regardless of my gender or skin color. To me the REAL problem here is when the SJW movement try to censor any contrary opinion on the ground that its offensive or oppressive. Paltego please don’t tell me you don’t see the difference between the one who say “women are bitches“ and the one who say “women are not oppressed in our society“ ?? To me the first one is a sexist asshole and the second one is having a valid opinion. The root of the problem come from those who say that both of these people are assholes, and therefore must be censored. The intolerance to any criticism from the social justice movement ,THAT my friend is the real reason GG have so many supporters. The definition of racism and sexism is constantly diluted to the point where having a disagreement over it is considered an outrage. If a person disagree with YOUR definition of sexism and racism, that does not automatically make this very person a racist/sexist. At the end of the day, its all about the ability to differentiate a bad person from a good person who disagree with you. It is my opinion that this ability have been completely lost among those who identify GG as a hate group. From the previous reply you obviously don’t want to continue this conversation and I respect that, Its your website. You probably think I’m a piece of **** now but hey , I still think you’re awesome
– Le random dude who give a damn
I don’t think you’re a piece of anything. And I always enjoy being called awesome 🙂 I just think that we’re so far apart in our worldview that the discussion is unlikely to be productive. What you describe doesn’t align with anything I see, which makes it hard to make any progress on the issue.
My observation (as a long term gamer) is that a bunch of people who were used to having 100% of the conversation are suddenly upset at having 95% of the conversation. And a fraction of them are so insecure that they react to this with insults, threats and attacks. A few women put forward a point of view and a chunk of the gaming community react as they were breaking into their houses at night and wiping any games with skimpy female outfits in them.
When the goverment gets involved in enforcing political correctness in games, or no game forums allow this topic to be discussed, or youtube starts banning anyone with a contrary point of view to Anita Sarkeesian, then get back to me. Then there’s actually a censorship issue to worry about. But I really don’t care about a bunch of guys who go ‘THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!’ every time someone critiques the sexual or cultural aspects of a game.
I don’t have any hope that will have convinced you – so as I said it seems a fruitless conversation. Your originally comment asked if I’d done any research before taking a stance on this. If nothing else I’d hope that at this point you’d agree that I’m at least not completely unaware of the topic, even if it turns out that we don’t agree about it.
-paltego
I think everyone would agree that sexism should be censored and forbidden. What we don’t agree with is the definition sexism. If as a society we decide to apply the “Anita and co“ definition of sexism and misogyny , then its only a matter of time before the censorship issue you mentioned actually happen! Because once we agree that something is sexist , then the censorship become completely justified …
Well obviously I can see that you are aware of the topic. We disagree with each other. That’s fine. We still had a GG debate without throwing any insults, so I’d say it wasn’t a fruitless discussion in that regard.
– Le gars random
I’m actually not so sure about your opening statement here. I don’t agree with it.
I think if you’re talking about terms of employment or offering of services, then I think most people would agree that discrimination should be prevented. But that’s very different to censorship. If someone wants to write a sexist book? Or a videogame? Or any other work of art? Then go for it I say. I’ll not support it. I’ll probably be very rude about it. But I’d strongly defend your right to do it. Freedom of expression is very important. But the flip side of that is that you need to defend the freedom of people to criticize you.
People in the gaming community seem very concerned about censorship. Which makes absolutely no sense to me. On one side there are a few women, with no official power, speaking up about sexism in videogames and unhealthy tropes. On the other is this huge male dominated industry with millions of dollars and millions of gamers. Yet a significant fraction of gamers are so threatened by the criticism they freak out and pull all sorts of nasty stunts.
As I said previously, when you see governments enforcing mandatory equality in gaming gender representations, or youtube pulling any video critical of Anita, then get back to me. In the meantime having people critique games and point out problems they see is pretty much the complete opposite of censorship. It’s part of a healthy discussion of our culture. Maybe they’ll alter how some games are made and maybe they won’t.
And yes, we did manage a GG discussion without descending into insults or squabbling. So that’s something at least!
-paltego
I don’t quite agree entirely with your points about the ‘male gaze’, I’ll try and put my finger on it and come back. However, I do agree that the ‘male gaze’ is a super oversimplified term. Sometimes it’s perfectly accurate (DOA beach volleyball), but just because a game features on sexualization of women doesn’t mean it’s just about the male gaze, that’s true enough.
Bayonetta may be sexualized, but she is also a power fantasy, especially in the way she is sexuality and she owns it!
Too often (and for reasons I understand) people seem to think overt sexuality, that people other than the subject may enjoy, are mutually exclusive from being healthy, consensual, legitimate expressions and power fantasies. Just look at the way we treat sex workers of all stripes as lacking agency, and having false personal empowerment. I think the same argument of the oversimplification of the ‘male gaze’ come into both, in the exact same way.
I adore Bayonetta. She is my power fantasy!
There have been so many comments on this thread that I’m not exactly certain whose point about the ‘male gaze’ you’re referring to :). If you mean the one in the original post, I was actually quoting Maddy Myers from the article I linked to. I think she agrees with you – as Bayonetta is her power fantasy. She also believes that Bayonetta owns her sexuality, and doesn’t liken the camera to the typical lascivious male gaze.
The male gaze is definitely a problematic and sometimes misused term. It’s particularly tricky in gaming, where there is a degree of interaction and fluidity. Not having played the game I’d always assumed she was a typical male dominatrix fantasy – DOA beach volleyball in leather and heels. But now having read both your comment and Maddy Myers article I’m thinking I should give it a shot.
Thanks for stopping by to comment. I hadn’t seen your blog before, but I’ve enjoyed catching up on it tonight. I was nodding in agreement through the posts – particularly the one on Bioware 🙂
-paltego