Tag: gender issues

The 55 Greatest Moments in Gaming… as long as you aren't a woman

tekanji

So, GamePro did this feature on The 55 Greatest Moments in Gaming (you may have to reload the page to get past the ad). I check it out ’cause, hey, I’d like to see what others find memorable about video games. Now, mind you, when I clicked on the link I knew what I was getting into: the video game industry is historically a “boy’s club” environment and I’m going to take a wild guess and say that the three editors who created the list are all guys.

But, hey, I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t call the list out on its gender representation, so here goes. I’m going to look at some numbers regarding the games chosen and the way the article framed said games, then I’m going to organize the relevant games into three categories: 1) Sex and Sexuality, 2) Sacrifice as Heroism, and 3) Miscellaneous. The tropes that I criticize here, I might add, are not confined to this list; indeed, they are pretty common when looking at women in fiction and that includes gaming.

I. Crunching Numbers

So, I’ve done a little breakdown of the gendered references in the list. Mind you, there is a certain element of subjectivity to these lists, especially with the second one because I chose designate references of “you” to mean the character as N/A, even if the character was obviously male. But, still, I think it’s worth taking note of.

Gender of Player Characters in Chosen Game
Female Male Both Neither
2 32 12 9

Gender References in Article
Female Male Both N/A
4 10 3 38

So, what do these numbers mean? Well, firstly that the editors found more memorable moments in games with male protagonists than with any other game. This is, no doubt, due in part to the prevalence of male-only games — heck, they list Fable, which was supposed to be this amazing game where you could choose everything about your character down to his sexual preferences, and yet, somehow, they thought that “gender” wasn’t one of those important choices players would like to have.

Anyway, aside from lack of availability, another possibility is that we tend to grativate towards characters like us in a lot of cases. Growing up, if there was a time where a female character was an option, I’d take it. Unfortunately, those times were very few, so I had to settle for male characters more often than not. But the men out there don’t have that problem, so I can see why there would be an imbalance.

As for the references, well, overall I believe most of the references fell under “N/A” because they were highlighting specific features of the game — most of which weren’t relevant to gender. That the “male” references outnumber the “female” ones is, I think, a product of the games chosen — if the games focus on men (male protagonists, male main characters driving the storyline, etc), then it’s only logical for them to have more references. It should also be noted, that the “female” references outnumber the amount of games highlighted with female protagonists, though not ones with female player characters.

Now that the background is out of the way, we can move on to examining the way that the references to women were treated.

II. Sex and Sexuality

That the number one type of reference to women is in relation to their sex and sexuality is in no way surprising. How many times have we heard the old “sex sells” adage when yet another game sexualizing women comes out? In this world, women are always viewed through a lens of sexuality in a way that men are not, and that lens extends to video games and other forms of popular culture.

55. Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball (Xbox): That very first game with the D.O.A. girls changes your appreciation for game visuals. It’s rumored that the release of DOAX coincided with an…er, spike in the demand for computer animation courses in high schools and universities as gamers across the country sought to better understand the exquisite mystery that is “jiggle” physics.

Though last on the list, it’s first to be seen. The DoA series has become legendary because of its so-called “jiggle physics”. While the game is entirely populated by women — something pretty much unheard of in most video games — their purpose is primarily for titilation and the gameplay is made secondary to that. Not exactly the most memorable in terms of making strides for gender equality in video games.

Which brings us to the next one on the list…

47. Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards (PC): Walking out of the bathroom with toilet paper on your shoe in this masterpiece of crude humor and soft-core debauchery, from the days when there was no ratings system and sixteen color EGA graphics were state-of-the-art.

I’m not sure what kind of fame the Leisure Suit Larry games had, but when I was little I knew about them, and if you search Abandonware sites you will find that it has no shortage of games in the series. While there’s no specific references to women here, seeing as the entire premise of the game is to get Larry laid, I’d say that it has a firm place in the “sex and sexuality” category. While this series is certainly memorable in terms of being one of the pioneers of adult PC games, I’d have to say that it gets a “pass” on gender parity, or, really, anything relating to the positive portrayal of women.

41. Smash TV (Arcade): Laying waste to countless foes, collecting ten keys, progressing to the correct part of the map, and making it into the elusive (and babe-filled) Pleasure Dome.

I can’t comment on the game itself, as I haven’t heard of it outside of this reference, but I think that the goal of the game being the “babe-filled” Pleasure Dome says it all. Again, male entitlement to women’s bodies isn’t exactly the most progressive idea here.

21. Combo Pack: Super Mario 64 (N64) and Tomb Raider (PS): The one-two punch in the polygonal revolution changed video games forever– moveable cameras and true three-dimensional gameplay put these two games a full step ahead of everything that had come before. Remember what it was like to look at those games for the first time?

You may ask why I include this one in this section. To those of you, I have two words: Lara Croft.

Love her, hate her, think of her as helping women or hurting them, there is one truth of her: she is a sexualized character. Even as the capable protagonist of her own series, made into not one but two movies, and still going strong many years later, when we think of Lara Croft, the first thing that comes to mind isn’t usually her puzzle-solving prowess, but rather her T&A.

I can’t say what affect the Tomb Raider series has had on the portrayal of gender in video games, but I’m not ready to put Lara into the “solution” category when so much of her fame is dependent on her sexuality.

III. Sacrifice as Heroism

Women as nobly sacrificing themselves, or otherwise dying to aid the cause of the (normally male) protagonist is a longstanding trope in fiction. So, again, it’s not surprising that it made a couple appearances on this list.

25. Breath of Fire II (SNES): Mina sacrifices herself to become Nina’s “wings.” Tragic, but sacrificial game progression earns Breath of Fire II bonus style points.

For the record, I hated that part of BoF II. Hated, hated, hated it! Tag-along sister sacrifices herself so that her sister can carry Ryu, the hero, and his band of merry followers to challenge the evil goddess? Annoying, not tragic. Ranks up there with Tiga asking Ryu if he could marry Katt. I hated that scene so much that I retconned it in my mind that she kicked the crap outta Tiga and he respected her after that. Too bad the reality was that she coddled him after he treated her like property.

But, personal opinion aside, I’m insulted that they chose that as the defining moment of BoF II. I mean, hello, if we’re talking game dynamics (which they do), what about the Shaman system? It wasn’t exactly user-friendly, but it was one of the most innovative gameplay options I had seen since Dragon Warrior IV. I mean, is it just me, or is that a hell of a lot more memorable than some cliche trope of sacrifice?

1. Final Fantasy VII (PlayStation): Aeris is killed by Sepiroth in one of the most heartbreaking scenes ever in a video game. Those big, cute eyes will never blink again under the wrath of Sepiroth. You’d only be lying if you said you didn’t cry.

Which brings us to the “most memorable event”; the death of Aeris. I’m going to admit something right off the bat — I never saw this scene. I got my PSX waaay after FFVII came out and, well, I never played it. I heard about it when my friend came in one day wailing about how Sephiroth killed his favourite character. I heard that it was very well done.

So, really, I can’t offer too much of a comment on their choice to include this point — which, in terms of what I saw of fan reactions, really does seem to deserve the title of “most memorable” — but rather that it’s interesting that the most memorable event is of a woman who died so that she could later protect the hero, Cloud.

IV. Miscellaneous

Then there are one-offs that are stand alones or I don’t really know how to categorize.

53. Final Fantasy VI (SNES): The opera house sequence with Celes and Locke.

I was always a fan of Celes, although the whole attempted suicide thing rather bugged me. Locke was okay, but I was never all that into the idea of them in a relationship. Regardless, the opera house sequence was my all-time favourite part of FFVI aside from, maybe, the fact that Terra was this kick ass esper who, despite her emotional issues, was the love of my life. I mean, green hair, devastating attacks… GREEN HAIR. Did I mention that my all time favourite FF character is Rydia? I sometimes wonder how much of my personality was molded by that character.

But, I digress. I’m not entirely sure how to categorize this one, except perhaps tagging it with being romance related. But I dunno.

11. Prey (PC): We won’t ruin it for you, but suffice it to say that the big reunion with your abducted girlfriend isn’t quite what you were expecting.

Never played this game, but from the blurb it seems to be some sort of play on the “Damsel in Distress” trope. Would have to play the game, or talk to someone who did, to figure out how they utilized it. It seems like there was some sort of twist, but that could be anything from the fact that your gf wasn’t kidnapped but was rather part of the organization that “kidnapped” her to the people who kidnapped her turning her into a monster who is the final boss. Like I said, didn’t play it, don’t know, can’t offer a real comment.

Update: A reader has e-mailed me with a visual walkthrough that reveals the truth about the twist. At the risk of being spoilery (though the original list completely spoilered the ending of Shadow of the Colossus, which would have pissed me off if I hadn’t already beaten it, so I don’t feel too bad here) I guessed right about the “twist” — it was my latter supposition. Aside from it being a horrible cliche — having a person guess the “omg memorable twist” without having played the game and knowing nothing of it aside from a screenshot and a blurb ain’t exactly the paragon of excellent writing — seeing as it wasn’t a “twist” on the concept of a damsel in distress, I gotta give this one a thumbs down for gender as well.

3. Metroid (NES): You beat the Mother Brain, race through the tunnels, and when you reach the surface of the planet…blammo! You discover that your hero Samus Aran is a woman. The sneaky game manual referred to Samus as a “he” making the revelation all the more surprising. Cool feature: you could replay the game with Samus sans spacesuit.

That last line almost had me put it into the “sex and sexuality” category because even Samus, this hardcore fighter who kicks the crap out of metroids in a non-sexy space suit, has to have the lens of sexuality applied to her as soon as her true gender is revealed. Not exactly Empowerment 101.

But, still, I remember when Metroid first came out, and how happy mom and I were when we beat it and realized that our kickass Samus was the same gender as us. And, if we look at later Metroid games, it’s not like she’s running around in a bikini, but rather continues in her traditional suit. So, at the very least, it seems that aside from that “shock reveal” Samus is still Samus, even if we now know that she has boobs and a vagina.

V. Conclusion

I’m not saying that I think these items shouldn’t have been included, but rather that the list is unsettlingly unbalanced. The game industry is not exactly known for its female-friendly games (and no, I’m not talking Nintendogs here, I’m talking games that don’t patronize women in some way), but have the editors never played Beyond Good and Evil? The Longest Journey? Kings Quest 7? Kyrandia 2? I’m not blaming the editors, or GamePro, or even the developers who made this game. This isn’t about blame; this is about noticing a pattern and putting a stop to it.

You want more women to game? You want more women buying your products, subscribing to your magazines, and participating in the gaming community? Then stop boxing women in games into a small subset of tropes like those seen above, stop believing that the only people you’re writing to are young, white, heterosexual men and boys. And, for those games, publishers, magazines, and people who have started catching on that women — yes, even women gamers — are people, too, good for you. Keep up what you’re doing because this gamer, for one, appreciates it.

When he loves the console more than you

tekanji

In her post, Frustrations of a Growing Up Gamer, Ariel has been musing about what growing up means for her gamer status. I can definitely identify with her struggle, and it’s worth a read for any adults finding that growing up changes the way that they interact with their fandom.

One thing she said really struck a chord with me for reasons other than personal gamer issues:

I want to protect what I have: I don’t ever want someone to come over to spend time with a machine instead of me.

Photo by Female TechAs a matter of principle, I constantly rail on the Girlfriend Lists. What Ariel said above is something that I think lies at the heart of these lists: No one likes it when their partner is more interested in an object than in them.

I say this as an avid gamer, who has spent countless hours playing all sorts of video games with not only my partners of the time, but also my friends and my family. Heck, I sat down and helped my sister’s husband beat Blood Rayne 2 when I was visiting with her, and then we took turns playing some Terminator 3 game that he rented. So, really, I know what it is to love the video games. Because I do, I really do.

But, I gotta say, one of the things that sticks in my mind about my first boyfriend was that he liked video games more than he liked me. And, mind you, I was a gamer long before he and I got involved. I remember the first time I flew out to see him (he went to school in New York and I was still in highschool in Miami), he spent the entire weekend playing Street Fighter Alpha 2. I couldn’t even play it with him because fighting games were the only kind of game he played consistently, so I couldn’t even begin to hold my own against him.

He may sound like an extreme case, but from what I’ve seen of gamer message boards, it’s exactly that type that the Girlfriend Lists cater to. These lists pretend that you can have your cake and eat it too — slavish devotion to gaming, easy access to sex and emotional comfort that a girlfriend provides, and a hot gamer chick who you can brag to your buddies about. Except that it turns these guys’ (potential) girlfriend into another object for amusement and social status, and — especially these days — most girls and women don’t stick around very long after they start getting treated like that.

Hence the “need” for the Girlfriend Lists, I suppose. Now that seems like a vicious cycle, now, doesn’t it?

Sexist Language [Red-blooded American Sexist, Part 3]

tekanji

For those just tuning in, this is Part 3 of my series on a small blurb that Joseph Lisner wrote for Wizard’s “How to Draw” series (found here [JPG]).

The language Lisner uses throughout the blurb Others, dehumanizes, and ultimately objectifies the women that he’s talking about — both drawn and real. The chart below compares the language he uses to describe women versus the language he uses to describe men. In terms of variation of terms it was equal (4 on 4), but the distribution of those terms reinforces the general message being sent in the blurb — men as people, women as objects.

Term # of Uses Term # of Uses
Women 2 Men 4
Female 4 Male 1
Girls 1 Guy 2
Ladies 1 Gentlemen 1

Lisner uses “female” the most to describe women and “men” the most to describe men. In fact, the one use of “male” is a correct usage of the term, while most of the way he uses “female” are inappropriate outside of a nature documentary or science lab. Before I get into the nitty gritty, however, let me first explain the differences between “female”/”male” and “woman”/”man”.

I. Adjectives Versus Nouns

“Male”/”female” are most commonly used as adjectives used to list characteristics or otherwise modify nouns. In the former case, since the nouns being modified are inherently gender neutral, it can be useful to specify a gender if one wants to address that section as a whole. Some examples include “female gamer,” “male doctor,” “female teacher”, and “male artist”. There are also times when the noun is implied, rather than stated. When you say, “I am female,” you are stating a characteristic like saying, “I am tall.”

These terms can be used as nouns, but this is typically confined to scientific settings. In nature documentaries, for example, you will see this employed to talk about the animals (“the male sleeps peacefully,” or “the female leads her pack on the hunt”). For reasons I will get into below, however, this use of the term is, if not incorrect, then certainly sexist outside of a scientific setting.

The terms women, girls, men, boys are all nouns used to describe types of humans. You use them when you want to specifically address one kind of human: “Girls and boys go to school,” or “Let’s join that group of men over there.” Using nouns is the typical way to distinguish between genders.

II. Why It Matters

You wouldn’t typicaly say “I am a female,” (you are a female what? person? bat? fruitfly?) but rather “I am a woman,” and not just because it’s grammatically ambiguous. There’s a reason why, outside of a scientific arena, we don’t commonly refer to people as “the male” or “the female” — it’s dehumanizing. Because the most common usage of “female” and “male” are as adjectives, using them as nouns serves to remove the human element (ala. “the gay”, “the black”, “the transsexual”). With “male” and “female”, this is further reinforced by the setting we do see the words used as nouns in, which is to say in reference to animals.

III. The Terms In Action

Lisner illustrates this dehumanization process perfectly. Men, to him, are clearly people and so his most common reference to them is as “men” (or “guys”, which is also a noun). The one instance in which he uses male, he uses it as an adjective describing himself (“heterosexual male”).

Let’s contrast this to the way that he described women.

Anyone attracted to the female must ask themselves, “What turns me on? What about the opposite sex hits me like lightning and instantly shatters my self control?”

His language here is reminicent of a documentary, “The wild males of the flock are attracted to the female, but which one shall be her mate?” So, already, we have the animal connotations. It’s also important that the concept of woman is important here only in terms of facilitating men’s lust: “the female” is the vehicle in which men are turned on, important because some effusive quality of this concept of “the female” is so powerful that it “instantly shatters [men’s] self control.” The actual woman here is non-existent, and ultimately not important.

Many is the time I have been out with a girlfriend and some female would walk by and totally blow my mind.

Again, here we have the use of female as a noun. This is dehumanizing on two levels.

First, the use of “some”. We use “some person” to mark the information as unimportant (A: “Who was at the door?” B: “Oh, it was just some guy.”)– it wasn’t a person, it was some person. Not always, but often, its used with negative connotations: “Jeez, some guy just ran the red!” or “Some person’s cell phone went off in the middle of the movie!” or “Some woman was yelling so loud I could hear her in my room.” Writing this, I am also struck by the way that “some man” doesn’t seem natural to me. “Some boy,” sure. “Some guy,” okay. “Some dude,” even. But “some man” hasn’t, in my experience, been a phrase that has gotten a lot of play. I’m not entirely sure why.

Anyway, the second way that it’s dehumanizing is in the same way “the female” above is dehumanizing: it reduces the woman in question to an object of Lisner’s lust. He reinforces this opinion when, later on in the exchange, he excuses his rude behaviour (obviously checking out another woman while he’s out with his girlfriend) by implying that the woman he checked out had such an impressive breast/butt/pair of legs that he couldn’t help himself.

IV. Conclusion

You can argue with me over the technicality of the issue — “male” is listed as a noun to mean “man or boy” in the dictonary, just as “female” is listed as a noun to mean “woman or girl.” But definitions are only as good as their context; when the most common usage is to refer to animals and in the rare instances its used to refer to people it’s almost always “female” and used in a dehumanizing context, can you honestly say that calling a woman “a female” or “the female” or “some female” isn’t insulting? I personally don’t think so, and I’m not the only woman who feels the same way.

A conversation on body image

Sigel Phoenix

When I was growing up, I didn’t wish I was white. I didn’t look at my Barbie dolls and ask my parents why I didn’t look like her. I didn’t envy my white friends and think, “If I was their race, my life would be better.” Of course not.

It was never that obvious.

Here’s what I wished: I wished that my eyes were blue and not so narrow, because the ideals of beauty I saw and read and heard about had wide, sky-blue eyes. I wished that my nose, which is wide and flat like my father’s, was more narrow and perky. Even though I loved my long hair, and I felt flattered when all the girls would ask to play with it, I wished it weren’t so stick-straight, and that it would fall in waves or curls like theirs. I wished that my lips weren’t so full, that my smile would be more of a thin, dimple-inducing curve (oh, and I felt left out because I didn’t have dimples). I worried that my voice sounded like a boy’s, and I wished it could be high and cute like other girls’.

I didn’t wish I was a white girl. I just wished I was exactly like a white girl.

I still do, sometimes. I have to catch myself at those times when I try to compare myself to the racialized beauty ideals I see – on TV and magazines and all those expected places, but also in less obvious ways. For example, even if a makeup counter doesn’t have a (white) female model pictured somewhere prominent, you pick up pretty quickly what their model woman is when the “flesh tones” are all pinkish-beige, and the lipsticks are all about plumping up your lips (which assumes that your lips aren’t already full). Or what about fantasy novels that overwhelmingly feature European medieval settings, or draw from Western folklore, thus effectively whitewashing their characters even if the author doesn’t intend to exclude people of color? (That’s changing lately, but it’s still hard to find non-European derived fantasy novels that don’t Other dark-skinned people as savage or evil, or rely on “wise old samurai” Asian stereotypes. I would actually really appreciate recs, if anyone has them.)

Not long ago, I read a response to Pam Noles’ essay on the whitening of Ursula LeGuin’s Earthsea books, in which the (white male) writer said that consciously adding racial diversity to fantastic fiction was unnecessary, and implied that it was the fault of people of color who simply couldn’t imagine themselves in the place of the protagonists.

There’s a lot to be said about the assumptions and privilege behind that kind of attitude, but let’s bring it back to my original topic: body image. It’s easy enough for someone to tell women (and girls) of color to just imagine themselves in place of the women whom society gives the title of the ideal, to find our own beauty amidst the cultural images. But it’s hard to ignore the bombardment of images in our culture – which is not only visual media-centered, but also disproportionately relies on female bodies as the visual object. Furthermore, the subtler messages still push us toward a white-centric ideal: pale skin (or a golden tan, which cuts out black women), long and smooth hair (not kinky), wide eyes (not slanty or with Asian-style eyelids), high-pitched voices. Even the women of color who are lauded for their beauty often fit these criteria – think of how we tend to focus on light-skinned black women more than dark-skinned, such as the biracial Halle Berry. I don’t have to think “I wish I was white”; instead I just find myself wishing that I was like white women.

This is how I got the message about what’s pretty, even when I was in elementary school and uneducated about race issues. It’s only as I’ve grown up that I’ve realized what kind of racist biases underlie these ideals, but it’s been easy for me to learn about them, because they aren’t new concepts – just new names for ideas I was already familiar with.

I’m yellow-skinned and squinty-eyed. I don’t fit. But I do win back a few points, due to the fetishization of Asian women. We’re “exotic.” We’ve got that mystical “Oriental” beauty. We’re passive and pliant and all “me love you long time,” right? And if you haven’t heard the myth of Asian women’s vaginas being smaller, sideways, or otherwise especially fuckable – well, lucky you.

Oh, and let’s not forget – we’re especially hungry for white men, because yellow guys are effeminate/small-dicked/old-fashioned and sexist (yeah, they’re the sexist ones …). We’re the exotic Other, open for sexual plundering by vanilla guys looking for something exciting. I know the attitudes; I’ve been the target. I also know that I can be used to feed them because I’m with a white man. There isn’t a single thing in the world I would trade my relationship for, but god if I don’t wish I could tear it free from all the racist bullshit baggage.

I’m talking about this now, not because I have a solution, but because … well, because I want to talk about it. It’s something that we all know – POC or white – even if we don’t think about it consciously or know the name for it.

The power of identifying it, however, is that it’s easier to reject it – I can see how false these ideals are.

Also, I’m talking about this because I know I’m not the only one who doesn’t fit. None of us do. If it isn’t because we’re the wrong color, it’s because we’re those “freaky” trans who break from gender traditions and aren’t feminine enough, or manly enough. Or because we like girls – but, dammit, not in that pseudo-bisexual way that’s all about getting a guy’s dick up and not about actually having relationships with women (and, of course, having sex with him in the end, and only being with women if he’s there to watch). Or because we don’t have the able body that society likes to pretend is the only kind that exists, conveniently forgetting that almost a fifth of us don’t have “normal” ability. Or we are white, female, and feminine – but too “fat” to fit a size 2, or don’t have surgically enhancednaturally gravity-defying cleavage, or aren’t six-feet and 110 pounds.

I just want to talk about this. We don’t talk about this nearly enough – we all see and know and absorb these impossible beauty standards, and we hear some lip service from the media about how yes, they are impossible, but we don’t get actual attempts to fix it so we’ll stop being dissatisfied with how we look. So we end up detached from our own bodies, looking at ourselves from a critical distance and hating how they’re shaped and being dissatisfied with what color they are and wishing we could change them instead of just. You know. Living in them.

So, if you’d care to, talk to me about how you don’t fit. What kind of messed up things society tells you about being female (or not) and having a body, because for some reason those things aren’t good enough on their own, even though they should be. Feel free to share whatever you want. I’d like to listen.

Yet Another Take on the Althouse Incident

jfpbookworm
[I’ve got a new blog on Vox, with these posts and a few others. Commenting, unfortunately, requires registration to the service, but I’ve got a few invite codes for it. Come visit.]

There’s been a bit of a kerfuffle this weekend over Ann Althouse‘s treatment of Feministing‘s Jessica Valenti.

(I’m not going to call it “Boobiegate.” It’s been over thirty years since Watergate; can we stop framing everything in terms of the Baby Boomers and let that go the way of Teapot Dome?)

What It Was About

The short version: Ann Althouse responded to this photo of Bill Clinton with several bloggers by making an vague allusion to the Lewinsky scandal.

Let’s just array these bloggers… randomly.

(As other folks have pointed out, the bloggers were arrayed not “randomly” but in terms of height.)

The first commenter, Goesh, picked up on it:

Who is the Intern directly in front of him with the black hair?

The woman in question, Jessica Valenti of Feministing, takes offense at being reduced to an element of a joke:

The, um, “intern” is me. It’s so nice to see women being judged by more than their looks. Oh, wait…

And it all snowballs from there as Ms. Althouse gets defensive:

Well, Jessica, you do appear to be “posing.” Maybe it’s just an accident.

Jessica: I’m not judging you by your looks. (Don’t flatter yourself.) I’m judging you by your apparent behavior. It’s not about the smiling, but the three-quarter pose and related posturing, the sort of thing people razz Katherine Harris about. I really don’t know why people who care about feminism don’t have any edge against Clinton for the harm he did to the cause of taking sexual harrassment seriously, and posing in front of him like that irks me, as a feminist. So don’t assume you’re the one representing feminist values here. Whatever you call your blog….

She goes on to create a whole new post, entitled “Let’s take a closer look at those breasts“, in which she writes:

Sooooo… apparently, Jessica writes one of those blogs that are all about using breasts for extra attention. Then, when she goes to meet Clinton, she wears a tight knit top that draws attention to her breasts and stands right in front of him and positions herself to make her breasts as obvious as possible?

Maybe it’s just overexposure to comics, but I don’t really see that as anything more than standing up straight, turning to make sure she’s not blocking out Mr. Clinton, and smiling. Other people, especially those commenters who identify themselves as Ms. Valenti’s age or younger, seem to see it the same way.

After that post draws 500 comments’ worth of ire, defensiveness and trolling, she washes her hands of the whole deal with one more post:

I’m surpassingly sick of this comments thread from yesterday, and I’m not even going to read all the commentary on other blogs. The immense tiresomeness is actually undermining my will to blog this morning.

I don’t mind an intense, verbal fight about ideas, but this wasn’t that. This was, every time you expressed a substantive idea, the answer was, essentially, “Stop looking at my breasts.” (I’m picturing an SNL sketch based on that concept, and like the usual SNL sketch, it goes on way too long.)

Why Althouse Was Wrong

There’s not really much to be said on this point that other people haven’t already said better. Ms. Valenti writes:

You know, I was psyched to be invited to this lunch and was feeling pretty honored. But then things like this remind me that no matter what I do or accomplish, because I’m a young woman all I’m good for is fodder for tacky intern jokes and comments that I don’t “represent feminist values” because of the way I posed in a picture.

Here’s another quick rule of thumb: if you’re complaining about people supporting a sexual harasser, it’s best not to do it in a way that encourages future sexual harassment.

Althouse’s “Real Point”

Ms. Althouse is claiming that her critics miss the point, which seems to be something along the lines of (a) real feminists don’t accept invitations to meet with Bill Clinton; and (b) people should respect the office of the Presidency by dressing in formal business attire when meeting with a former President.

I’m not sure these two positions are completely reconcilable – “pleading in the alternative”
doesn’t work so well outside of a legal context – but the idea that she gets to be the one
who decides what the “real” issues are is the same thing that constantly gets done to feminism, as feminists are asked to put their issues aside for the important shit. That’s what Ms. Valenti was being asked to do – not complain about being used as part of a blowjob joke (I’m not exaggerating here; Ms. Althouse makes references to berets and blue dresses in her comments) because Ms. Althouse was making a point about Bill Clinton.

Generation Gaps

There’s another generation gap that is going on in these arguments, and that’s in the perception of Clinton. Here’s a fact that makes me feel old: Anyone younger than 28 (including Ms. Valenti) was never able to vote for Clinton, because they were too young during the 1996 election. Ms. Althouse is of a generation that was politically active during the Clinton administration, and for whom the impeachment issue was primary. For many of the younger commenters, that issue is of historical interest, but doesn’t leave much of a direct “legacy.” As one commenter, Parry_Lost, notes:

Allright, I’m sorry I lack in knowledge of the scandalous affairs of foreign presidents (I’m not an American) that happened while I was in middle school. Yes, I know many people do have such knowledge. Allright. My feminist and historical knowledge is lacking. I accept these flaws and will continue to try and work on them.

But why, why, why is it wrong to criticize Althouse for unfairly insulting another blogger?
What did her comments that Jessica was showing off her breasts to someone and that the Feministing blog is trying to get attention with breasts even have to do with the Clinton scandal of which I am admittedly ignorant?

This, of course, gets seized on by older commenters, who basically treat Parry_Lost and other younger posters as if they were still in middle school.

Althouse and Privilege

Ms. Althouse seems to run her blog in a much more “top-down” way than I’m used to – it’s more like a syndicated news column or radio call-in show, in contrast to the more “community” focused blogs I tend to read. At least in the posts I saw, there’s a divide between Althouse herself and other commenters. Often, she adopts her law-professor role and actually grades people’s comments (as she did with me when I commented there), which strikes me as an attempt to take the privilege she enjoys as a professor and apply it to contexts where it’s unwarranted.

Ms. Althouse gets a lot of mileage (increased readership, newspaper articles, etc.) out of her academic credentials; Ms. Valenti’s fame in these circles is mostly from her blogging.

Ms. Althouse’s attacks on Ms. Valenti’s appearance and youth seem to me to be founded in part on the idea that Ms. Valenti’s privilege is unwarranted, and must be to some extent based on being a conventionally attractive young woman, since she hasn’t paid her dues yet.

The trouble with this, obviously, is that it basically relegates young women to be nothing more than “eye candy.”

Basically, it’s a hazing mentality. Since Ms. Althouse (presumably) didn’t have these sorts of opportunities in her twenties (at the very least, she wouldn’t have been able to publish a blog), but does now, people in their twenties need to wait until she’s had her turn at the helm of public discourse before they demand their say.

A Confession

Somewhere out there is a picture of me with Christopher Cox, taken back in 1993. As a high school junior, I took a trip to DC and part of that trip invovled meeting with the members of Congress who represented us.

Mr. Cox addressed the Generation X concern (not really my generation, but we were high school students and didn’t have much of a political voice yet) that we would likely be economically worse off than our parents. And do you know what he blamed for that possiblity? Women in the workplace. I can only wonder what he would have said if there
were a female student there as well. The argument was something like this: back in the Good Old Days, a man got paid enough to provide for a family because women didn’t work; now the expectation is that both men and women would work, so a single income doesn’t have to go as far. (Privilege? What’s that?) Totally economically unsound, of course. Which explains why he’s now running the SEC, I suppose.

Anyway, what would Ms. Althouse say I should have done – respect the office of U.S. Representative, or stay away? Should I have walked out? I was 16, and had the understanding that this meeting was more about being presented with the program recognition, Argued back? I thought that you weren’t supposed to “make a scene” or ask hardball questions at those sorts of events. Besides, at that age I didn’t have a ready response; I knew there was a flaw in the argument, but didn’t know exactly what. But I guess it doesn’t matter, because I wore a blazer and slacks and don’t have breasts.

Links

Althouse: Bill Clinton, lunching with the bloggers.
Althouse: Let’s take a closer look at those breasts.
Althouse: Comments, comments, comments.
Jessica @ Feministing: Feminists don’t pose
Jessica @ Feministing: The “dirty pillow” line of attack
Jill @ Feministe: Wherein Ann Althouse Shoots Any Credibility She Had Left
zuzu @ Feministe: More about that Clinton blogger lunch
zuzu @ Feministe: Know Your Place
Lindsey Beyerstein @ Majikthise: Let’s take a closer look at those nuts
Amanda Marcotte @ Pandagon: But there’s titties in that picture!
OTF Wank: Feminist wank.

Erik Larsen on getting non-comic book readers into the fandom

tekanji

Get thee to the kitchen, Goddess!(Two short posts involving comics, it must be procrastination weekend!)

Out of the mouth of Erik “I think women’s issues with comics are all about the boobies” Larsen, we actually get some surprising insight on the difficulty of finding the right comic book for someone who doesn’t read comics. Sure, true to form, I found the tone of the article to be at times condescending to women and I rolled my eyes at his little quip about not wanting another “lecture” on why certain books will likely turn female readers off, which, of course, he oversimplifies the reason as being that the book is “loaded with sex and violence.” Yes, Mr. Larsen, it’s the “sex and violence” not, you know, the way that powerful women are often second fiddle to the men in their lives, or inappropriately sexualized and then killed off and forgotten when convenient, or anything like that.

Anyway, if you can get past his dismaying attitude towards women, I think his ongoing quest to get a “non-comic book reader” is pretty darn insightful:

I mean, I want to share. I really do. Comics have been such a delight to me over the years. They’ve kept me entertained and enthralled. They’ve lifted my spirits and broken my heart and touched my soul. I’ve laughed, I’ve cried and all the rest. You know, you’ve read them. A good comic book is better than damned near anything but things are subjective, I realize. While I might get a charge out of “Devil Dinosaur” or “Jimmy Olsen” or the “Dingbats of Danger Street,” I realize that those books aren’t universally cherished.

Let me pull out that last important bit: I realize that those books aren’t universally cherished. Right there. That. What all those Girlfriend List articles don’t get: you can’t assume someone’s taste based off their gender, race, or any other part because we’re all individuals with our own likes and dislikes. The closest you’re gonna get is if there’s a theme that a person enjoys you might be able to interest them in comics of a similar theme. Period.

No, wait, there’s something else I want to focus on beyond the above. It’s where he says this: I mean, I want to share. I really do. Comics have been such a delight to me over the years. See that, kids? Mr. Larsen doesn’t want to get his (presumably) significant other into it as a way to shut her up when they’re not having sex, but because he enjoys it and wants to share that enjoyment with another human being. Novel!

By the way, thank you, Mr. Larsen, for recognizing that just because the person involved happens to be female, it’s not a “woman” thing, but rather a comic fan versus non-comic fan thing. Seriously, seeing that warmed my little, ice-cold heart.

Blog Highlight: Marketing to Women Online

tekanji

Sorry I haven’t been posting. I actually have a few in mind, but it’s the end of semester crunch right now so I’ve been immersing myself in Japanese.

A small study done by University of Florida professors recently was highlighted by MSNBC because of an award it won. Although the study itself is not proof of anything on its own, it seems to have opened up the debate on the assumptions of marketing and will hopefully bring to light other research done on this matter.

To this end, I’d like to highlight a new to me blog called Marketing to Women Online. Holly has written a piece called Do Women Respond to Sexual Ads? where she says:

We’ve certainly seen how different genders react differently to advertising messages. What women want and are attracted to can be different from what men want and are attracted to. This is not true in every case, but depending on the subject matter, the differences can be striking.

Sex is one such subject matter. I’ve written before about studies on how men and women react differently to sex in advertising.

Now there is another study with similar results. Do fashion magazine ads that ooze with pictures of sexy seductive women work? Especially magazines ads aimed almost 100% at women?

Via The Hathor Legacy (another great blog new to the blogroll).

Modesty and raunch culture: two sides of the same sex-negative coin

tekanji

At first glance, it would seem that the push for modesty is at the opposite end of the spectrum from “raunch culture” — the trend in society to hyper-focus on sexuality (particularly women’s sexuality), which encompasses everything from short skirts to athletes posing in porno mags. Indeed, those who crusade for modesty often cite expressions of raunch culture as why people (mostly women) need to “cover up,” and there are many aspects of raunch culture that can be attributed to a backlash against forced modesty.

But, what if they were just two sides of the same sex-negative coin? What if they were just two different ways of controlling women’s sexuality? Looking at it another way, isn’t it just a new spin on the Madonna/Whore complex?

I. Why the concept of “modesty” is sex-negative

When I talk about “modesty” here, I’m not talking about people who prefer to dress in a more conservative style. I’m not talking about people finding baggy shirts more comfortable, or those who favour pants over skirts (I would be one of them, although I’m re-thinking that given that Japan summer is really hot). Nor am I talking about choosing not to wear makeup. When I talk about “modesty”, I’m not talking about the way we, personally, choose live our lives, but rather the cultural push for “modesty” and the baggage that comes with it.

The primary idea behind modesty is that the human body should be covered up for reasons other than warmth or fashion. In modern Western culture, it is often (but not always) supported by religious arguments, which interact with the secular ideas of gender essentialism. Often there is an undercurrent of disgust for the human body, as well as an objectification element, especially when it pertains to women.

At best, women are told that they’re “unprofessional” if they don’t fit some arbitrary version of modesty, at worst it’s used to blame them for transgressions comitted by men. We’ve all heard the “short skirt” defense for rape, and that’s just the most visible of the “boys will be boys” arguments. Some of the more extreme proponents of modesty campaign against not only “raunchy” clothing that emphasizes cleavage and/or butts, but also tank tops, shorts, and bikinis because they show a lot of skin.

Modesty, as it is pushed in Western society, relies on defining for people what parts of their bodies are, and are not, acceptable in public, or even semi-private places. It uses tactics of shame and guilt in order to force people to comply with its guidelines, and in many cases “modesty” guidelines are part of laws (ex. many states still hold that a topless woman is indecent, whereas a topless man is not) and dress codes. In that way, it is very much a part of, and a method of perpetuating, a sexually negative culture.

II. Why “raunch culture” is anything but sexually liberating

There are a lot of aspects of sexual culture that we, as individuals, can find as liberating. In a very personal way, I can understand how freeing it can be to give a big middle finger to the “morality police” and wear clothing that I choose because I want to wear it. After a year of being forced by an abusive boyfriend to wear the shapless, baggy clothes of his choosing, I’d have to say finally being free to figure out my own style definitely counted as “liberating” for me. Now if I choose to wear my “boy” shirts and “boy” pants, I know it’s because I want to, and I know that tomorrow I could just as easily choose the cleavage shirt and short skirt that lives next to it in my closet.

That said, just as the choice to adopt “modest” dress does not live in a vaccum, neither does the choice to wear “revealing” clothing. There is a lot of pressure on young girls to adopt a particular style of dress. Now, there’s a lot of pressure in every subgroup to adopt the clothing style, as well as the lifestyle, and men are subject to that, too. But take that, and add it to the pressure for women to enact being “sluts” while still (mostly) remaining “virginal” and commercialize it by having visible female role models hawking it, popular culture normalizing it, and the “moral police” making it taboo (and therefore more enticing) by saying, “no, no, no, that’s bad,” and what do we get? Well, as Ariel Levy puts it, “What we once regarded as a kind of sexual expression we now view as sexuality.” (Female Chauvinist Pigs, p. 5)

But what, exactly does this brand of sexuality say about the concept of sexuality if it is, indeed, sold as the expression of female sexuality? Just like “modesty” puts the onus on women to cover up, so does “raunch culture” put the onus on women not to cover up. Female sexuality is turned into something that is primarily for entertaining the men, and if a woman says that she isn’t into that kind of exhibitionism then she is often labeled as “prude,” or “frigid,” or “puritain” (I got that one when I was younger, joy of joys), or some other implication that she is somehow bad for not submitting to being an object of their lust.

Raunch culture guilts and shames women into putting on a sexual performance for men, whether they want to or not. It sets up a “right” way to express sexuality, and by pushing the notion that men are entitled to sexual gratification, even if it’s just in the form of women wearing low-cut shirts, it ignores the fact that true sexual liberation comes from people being able to make choices about what makes them happy without being guilted and/or shamed into acting a certain way. In that way, it is very much a part of, and a method of perpetuating, a sexually negative culture.

III. Conclusion

One aspect at the heart of sexually negative culture is holding women responsible for men’s lust. Modesty, for its part, claims that women provoke men’s lust*, this is bad, and therefore women should be covered up so as not to “tempt” the men. Raunch culture may see men’s lust as a positive, but in this case the response is to encourage women not to cover up, because men’s lust should be catered to. In both of these scenarios, two positions that take the opposite side on an issue (men’s lust) do it from the same frame: that women’s sexuality is the province of men, not the women whose sexuality it is. And that, at least for the women involved, is sexually negative.

* Just to be clear here, I’m using “men’s lust” to mean the dominant paradigm for men’s lust that’s used in these cases, which includes the idea that men are entitled to sexual gratification, that to get off they need to objectify and dehumanize women, and that this is not so much a “bad” thing as it is a biological “fact.” I’m perfectly aware that the reality of what men do, and do not, find attractive is a much more complex subject.

What Quesada's Foot-In-Mouth Syndrome Says About Comics

tekanji

I don’t think Joe Quesada’s a bad person. I don’t think he hates women. But I do think that he’s digging himself a deep, deep hole on this whole women in the comic book industry thing. For those of you not “in the know,” Joe Quesada is Marvel Comics’ Editor in Chief. This most recent kerfluffle involves him putting his foot into his mouth about the lack of women in the higher ranks of the comic book industry. Ragnell has the scoop on his mediocre response to the question “why hasn’t a women creator made it into the tight circle of Marvel creators?” in her post, Does This Sound Like An Answer?. More commentary can be found here. Continue reading