New Blog Address

After much thought, I've now moved to Blogger.  Therefore, this page will no longer be updated, and eventually will be erased.

Point your browsers over to: http://100littledolls.blogspot.com/

Thank you!

Gaming and Gender

I'm back to being somewhat coherent now that I'm not forever coughing up a lung.

All week there's been some interesting discussions about some of the articles that appear in this week's The Escapist, a great zine about gaming.

Specifically the discussions have been about the Chris Crawford and Bonnie Ruberg article.

Chris Crawford's article entitled Women in Games takes a evolutionary psychology take on gaming and women's places in it.  Warning: I feel that it's extremely condescending and reductionist.  Of course I'm one of "those feminists" who take issue when people try to apply evolutionary psychology to women today.  One of Crawford's solutions to the gender problem in gaming: to make videogames that are like soap operas and romance novels (except he calls them "bodice rippers" yuck).  Stereotype much?

Thankfully I'm not alone:

Old Grandma Hardcore's Tim thoroughly (and satisfyingly) frisks Crawford's article and ends his piece with good insight:

Perhaps the problems do not lie in the structural purpose of a game, perhaps they lie in the representation of female characters within the game and in advertisements.

 Man Bytes Blog accomplishes to demystify Chris Crawford's use of evolutionary psychology by writing this to him:

I find your confusion as to why women would find evolutionary psychology sexist disingenuous at best. I cannot see how any but the most deeply sexist male could fail to see a connection between EvoPsy and women’s current struggle to be recognized as equals in our culture. If you truly can’t grasp that tools such as EvoPsy are perfectly designed to assign women to second class status, then I suspect you are using it as a sexist tool, whether that is your intent or not. I have heard too many people (both men and women, incidently) refer to EvoPsy as a rational for women not being “allowed” to work to regard this very young branch of “science” with anything other than the utmost suspicion.

and Mile Zero compares Crawford's article with Larry Summer's rediculous statements made earlier this year in a letter to The Escapist.

Bonnie Ruberg's article, Women Monsters and Monstrous Women, is the other article that has caused quite a stir.  In it she makes the statement that "Men, as the ones most often holding the controllers, exercise control over playable female characters, redistributing the power balance in favor of the male...there's something innately sadistic about this interaction".  Which has really made a lot of male gamers upset.  I can see why, she's making an extremely charged statement.  She further explains this by alluding to Tomb Raider and hints at the notorious "nude code" and how the heroine could be moved so that her breasts or buttocks would take up the entire television screen. (Just look at those polygons!)  C. has written a poem about this, I might ask for permission to post it up here later.  So yes, there is history behind her claim.  It is arguable, however, if this can apply to characters such as Jill from Resident Evil, Jen from Primal or Jade from Beyond Good or Evil. It could be said that when playing these female characters, male gamers might be able to slip into the viewpoint of a woman and maybe learn a bit what it might be like to be a girl.  They also experience that women can be strong as well.  But on the other hand, because our society is a patriarchy, there are inherent inequalities that exist beneath it all when you are literally controlling a woman on screen.  All in all, I find Ruberg's article to be compelling--it may not be perfect, but there sure are a lot of ideas to discuss in it.

More discussion on this aspect of her article and other points can be found at:

Heroine Sheik Ruberg's personal gaming blog

Old Grandma Hardcore In the comments section

Game Girl Advance Also to be found in the comments section

Sickness

Haven't posted since I've been all icky with a head cold and such.  Trying to decide whether I should go to class or not.  I admit it, I'm a huge wimp when it comes to clogged ears, runny noses and mucous brain.

So stuff I've wanted to post about is numerous, but I still can't really think straight, so I leave with this:

--I'm glad Rosa Parks is being commemorated--she deserves it.  I just wish people would add on to the conversation that the work isn't done yet and we still have far to go, as Katrina has proved to us.

--I knew Miers wouldn't make it, but Alito is a fricken nightmare. 

(knitted uterus courtesy of knitty.com)

Reading through some blogs (and putting off my research paper) I came across this post from Hugo Schwyzer's blog.  The excerpt that caught my eye (and truthfully, it isn't the main point of his post):

In television, film, and increasingly in interactive video games, young people seem to have no problem viewing an extrarordinary number of killings.  The same folks who can't stomach watching a cow slaughtered for food have no problem playing Grand Theft Auto, or sitting through "Saw" and similar bloody epics at the cineplex.  Looking at faked violence, like looking at the artificial and falsified sex in most pornography, is much easier than gazing at real suffering, particularly when encountering real suffering and real exploitation might make a moral claim on us to take action.

This isn't necessarily fair.  People all of the time talk of the violence that is found in movies, TV and videogames because they visually see these things.  What about books or visual art? (Though I do know that at times pieces like Piss Christ get called out.)  Books, and books like (the tired argument) the Bible are fulled with violence and are hardly ever called out.  Unless it's Harry Potter teaching witchcraft or Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.  What are we doing when we read books? Entertainment.  We're also learning things, gleaning experience.  What are we doing when we play videogames games? The same thing.  We do to learn--sometimes this is overlooked due to ideas of low/high brow culture.

Don't get me wrong, though.  Hugo is making a compelling argument.  I realize that I personally make it a habit to call out videogames and the industry on sexism, because I care so much about the issue.  However, I do read books with sexist characters (as much as I play games where gender-roles are firmly in place.)  It's important to read or participate in other activities that don't necessarily meet up to your own personal morals.  You learn that way.  It means however, that when something, like sexism, becomes standard, it's time to cry foul.  It's good to want something better and to have different experiences than just the standard. Just like it would suck if it were true that most videogames are needlessly violent (which I would argue not).  It's interesting that he uses the example of GTA--an easy target of course from people who don't play games because it is so over-the-top.  Which you could say about movies like Braveheart or literature like the Bible.

Bits and Pieces

--Quote of the Day (to me): "How can you look so frazzled at a part-time job?"

Oh, let me count the ways. Bastard.

--A well-meaning teacher started to talk about Serenity with me, not knowing I haven't seen it yet, and spoilers rained down on me.  Damnit.

--Two mid-terms today.

--So I was more social than I'd ever had been this past weekend.  Unfortunately, this included many sexist comments from a certain indivudual.  He even dragged Jem into it.  Now it's personal.  I believe I will write a poem towards him in workshop and see if he notices.

--The best thing I'd ever heard was that Bill and Melinda Gates fund the Cervical Barrier Advancement Society.  From the website:

The Cervical Barrier Advancement Society (CBAS) aims to raise the profile of cervical barrier methods both for preventing pregnancy and potentially HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs).

Awesome.