philosoraptor42 | Videogames, Feminism and Internet Bigotry

*Mild/Moderate Trigger Warning* This discussion of misogyny and the damsel in distress trope may inevitably be triggering for some readers as it discusses power-imbalances and some violent or abusive scenarios. That said, there is no use of graphic descriptions nor any reference to sexual violence.

The post below is going to analyse some bigotry against Anita from Feminist Frequency. She has released the first of her "Tropes Vs Women" series about videogames now. Personally, I was unsure about some of the stuff about Starfox Adventures (since I cannot help but imagine that the character change in that game must be somewhat related to Microsoft buying Rare - since it would be harder for Nintendo to keep hold of a game not starring one of their copyrighted group of characters), but asides from that I was mainly reacting with "ah, I guess that's right".

Inevitably there's been some backlash. One of the videos criticising Anita (and undoubtedly NOT one of the best critiques she'll receive) comes from a Youtube user called Thunderf00t....

Now it's been a while since I've been made really angry by some bigoted ranting. I've reacted to some news articles, sure, but I've generally not been chasing down internet idiots. I've been a lot better off for it though.

The last idiot I really thought I needed to alert people to was Pat Condell. Condell was seemingly only known on the internet, but he seemed to have a wide following. So when his videos went from annoying and crass to all-out hate-mongering, I felt the need to expose precisely why people shouldn't support him. (He's still up to the same old tricks it seems. One of his latest videos claims that it's racist not to consider all Palestinians, every man, woman and child of them, to be evil terrorists. That's pretty typical rhetoric from him sadly.)

But the recent dodgy internet hatred doesn't seem to come from a single person. Instead it seems to be embodied by a large gang of mostly libertarian internet users who are strangely opposed to feminism and demand protection from criticism if they post offensive comments (on the grounds of 'free speech' apparently).

"Thunderf00t" seems to be a pretty big ringleader of this group. By this point Thunderf00t is pretty well known to be someone your average decent supporter of feminism will be upset by, but he attracts a lot of attention so I feel like he's probably as good a representative as any for this disgusting internet misogyny recently.

First of all some background...

Thunderf00t and Freethoughtblogs

Thunderf00t had a run-in with well known pro-feminism atheist blogger P.Z. Myers (who runs the blog Pharyngula) who is disinclined to accept misogyny, racism, homophobia, etc. on his comments threads. When Thunderf00t was offered space in Freethoughtblogs and decided to use it almost entirely to dismiss women's rights the other bloggers on Freethoughtblogs decided that he wasn't fitting in. He was alienating their female audience and conveying bigoted views with which Freethoughtblogs bloggers did not want to be connected.

Anita's "Tropes Vs Women" series

Anita used Kickstarter to get funding for her project to analyse the history of gaming and the portrayal of women within videogames. The comments at Kickstarter began to fill up with misogynistic comments from utter scumbags and the response by decent human beings across the internet was to donate huge amounts of money to her project. The misogynist comments had made it very clear to everyone just how much of an idol videogames were to these horrible individuals and just how sorely the world of videogames needed to be analysed from a feminist perspective.

Thunderf00t's video "Feminism Vs FACTS (RE Damsel in distress)" and how it completely misses the point of Anita's original video at Feminist Frequency, feminism as a whole, and plain old common sense.

I only came to watch Thunderf00t's poor attempt at a critique because I stumbled on someone showing one of his old videos "The Internet: Where Religions Come To Die". Not knowing it was from Thunderf00t I approached it with a pretty open mind. There were parts that were well-argued and other parts where it was more obviously labouring the point. I noticed that the video seemed to have a very "us and them" stance which appeared to represent the vlogger's genuine stance rather than being a rhetorical tool.

1- Double Dragon Neon

Thunderf00t's latest video begins by questioning Anita's research for her videogame critique. He argues that she is wrong to claim the damsel in distress of the game "Double Dragon Neon" is portrayed as weak, ineffective or ultimately incapable because the game finishes with her punching the villain in the crotch.

While this might seem like a reasonable argument to someone who had never watched the original video, already Thunderf00t is showing a clear failure to understand Anita's argument. Anita's concern with "Double Dragon Neon" mainly focusses on the opening which, as an update of an older game, rejigs the 8-bit classic by showing the damsel in distress character being punched in the gut and carried away in deeper colours, pristine 2D graphics with her cleavage clearly visable as she is punched and her knickers clearly visible as she is carried away. This update of the older classic begins straight away with an utterly demeaning image for women, right before introducing the two MALE playable characters.

The ending where she gets to help beat up the villain in the end is earned after the two male characters have spent the entire game trying to save her, while she sits and waits for them. There's even a part of the game where the two playable MALE characters (since Marian herself is NOT a playable character) can fight for her affection, while she cheers them on in the background. This all serves to back up the idea of women as objects the male characters compete for. Yes, even if the unplayable female character gets to help deliver the finishing blow at the last minute, she's still been completely helpless for the whole game and used as a woman-shaped trophy by the game designers.

The capture of the damsel in distress in Double Dragon Neon.

2- Damsel In Distress is a common trope and "one of the simple storylines you can set up easily... because most people in healthy relationships care for each other".

Anita's original point was that the damsel in distress trope (not even remotely unique to videogames) is used again and again as a simple storyline in classic games because it is easy for the videogame creators. However, she also notes that it gives a negative view of women and the common useage of this trope is problematic for the way women are viewed.

Naturally if it was just because people care for each other in healthy relationships, why aren't there more cases where the man is the one who needs to be rescued? Why aren't there more games where the ones doing the rescuing are women? The problem is that the game shows the men as the ones with the power and the women as the ones who are just going to have to hopelessly sit and wait. Yet we often see the male characters imprisoned only to break out of their captivity with relative ease.

The problem isn't whether this simple storyline works. The problem is how this simple storyline portrays women. It portrays them pretty damn badly.

A long and thoroughly unconvincing rant at from Thunderf00t at this point essentially argues that the female characters should think themselves lucky that they get to just be imprisoned the whole time, because at least they don't have to face all the awful dangers that come with being a playable character! *facepalm* It's the "you're not house bound, you're house blessed" argument all over again. *groan*

3- Saying that women in games are treated like objects is like saying that patients in hospitals are objects.

Okay, backing up a little here. This argument didn't entirely gel with the rest of the argument mentioned above because Thunderf00t seems distinctly confused by what is meant by "objectification".

As mentioned above, women in games are treated like trophies. Objects for the players to win. I already considered Thunderf00t's objection that a distressed damsel is a nice easy storyline to start a game quickly and simply. But Thunderf00t also questions what is wrong with wanting to save someone who is in need and gives the analogy of a hospital.

It's interesting that Thunderf00t should use this example, because there are real life cases where people are intentionally kept hospitalised as a form of abuse. If someone is kept in a state of reliance, that makes their carer feel more powerful as a result. Their suffering empowers their captor. What's more the sufferer can feel extremely grateful for the attention they receive in this situation, not realising that their carer is actually responsible for their condition (possibly elongated by continual mild poisoning or suchlike).

Anita's target is primarily the game design (just as analysis of a movie might target the script and direction of that movie) and, to a lesser extent, the audience that supports games using these tropes. The game designers have intentionally chosen to make their female characters helpless while making the male characters playable and giving them the power to overcome the villains.

Naturally wanting to help people who are in trouble is generally a good thing. However, the decision to make all female characters helpless is not. It is unrealistic that every female character will be entirely helpless.

4- Anita uses make-up and is therefore damaging all women.

This is such a cop-out argument. The extent to which men and women dress themselves up to please potential or current partners and the extent to which they do so as cultural expression is always going to be a bit mixed. To just label it damaging to women is lazy and stupid.

Thunderf00t's intention here is to show that you can over-analyse anything, but giving an intentionally weak argument is to use a straw man. Either Thunderf00t is trying not to acknowledge strengths in Anita's argument in order to make his argument look better, or he genuinely doesn't understand the subtleties of her argument. I'm inclined to guess the latter.

5- Why don't you just make a feminist game and show that the market will embrace it?

The old and lazy argument surrounding feminism as to whether women should wear make up or not was being used in relation to a wider claim. Thunderf00t claims that videogames are only the way they are to suit the commercial market.

The problems here are myriad. The insistence that Anita make a game herself is completely irrelevant to her decision to criticise videogame tropes. You don't have to make a movie to critique a movie, you don't have to write a book to critique a book and you don't have to design a videogame to critique videogames either.

What's more, whether a genuinely feminist game would be successful in the market is irrelevant to Anita's critique. The success of a product does not shield it from any negative statements. Just because Michael Bay's "Transformers" movies are massively successful doesn't mean that they are entirely immune to criticism. If products that enforce patriarchy are popular, that highlights the issues Anita raises rather than dismissing them.

There's something extremely libertarian about Thunderf00t's argument here, but I find something extremely funny in this. Thunderf00t wants to argue that feminism is completely unviable comercially, yet surely the huge amount raised by Anita's kickstarter campaign refutes that? Okay, so she was promoting a set of youtube videos not a videogame, but even so this is clearly an ideology that turned out to be pretty lucrative in at least one case. Why is Thunderf00t so quick to imagine that a feminist-friendly game would be unsuccessful commercially. (Or, more to the point, why is he so quick to imagine that Anita doesn't intend to praise any successful games for their portrayal of women during her video series).

6- Anita's own thesis rejects female protagonists in games.

Actually it's quite clear just from looking at the small amount of text quoted in Thunderf00t's video that Anita's masters thesis criticises portrayals of women which simply give male characters breasts. I'm not sure that this is always such a bad idea (since I don't think women are so different from men and it's a good way to up the number of female protagonists), but I do recognise that it is an issue that needs to be challenged if we want better realised female characters in our media.

Thunderf00t also shows us an odd table from the thesis and suggests that Anita doesn't think any genuine female characters will be strong. Unfortunately I cannot find the thesis online, but I WAS able to find this article praising it.

Having expressed solidarity with Anita, they express their feelings about Katniss Everdeen, Jennifer Lawrence's character in the movie "The Hunger Games" as follows:

"Katniss Everdeen, the female protagonist in the film never truly used violence or killing in order to win the Hunger Games, she never accepted what western society see as feminine as she felt uncomfortable in the dresses and being on stage and even the shots that were used were mostly close-ups on her uncomfortable and blank expressions. She was seen as a motherly figure for her younger sister, for which she essentially sacrificed her life for and was later seen as another mother figure for another Hunger Games participant named Rue. She is also shown as the stronger participant of District 12 to her counter male part called Peeta. She then becomes both male and female, becoming the hunter, gatherer as well as the nurturer when she nurses Peeta back to good health. So for the first time I saw a female that was both stronger on screen than her male counterpart as well as trying her best not to use violence in a game in which her life revolved and depended completely on her ability to kill other participants."

If Katniss followed the typical action-hero badass trope, she'd be stuck in the shadow of male protagonists before her. More than simply strength is required to break out of the existing tropes and to provide a more positive female protagonist. Being physically strong doesn't necessarily make a female character a good protagonist, though Anita doesn't consider it a negative either. (Anita's own views on "The Hunger Games" can be heard here.)

This is why Anita praises the figure of Krystal who was planned to be the protagonist of "Dinosaur Planet" (which later became "Starfox Adventures" with the female protagonist being unceremoniously turned into a sexualised damsel in distress) saying "she was strong, she was capable, and she was heroic".

7- Women are weaker than men. That's not a trope, that's a fact.

Women are STATISTICALLY weaker than men. But Thunderf00t knows full well that not every man is stronger than every woman. Also, muscle strength is not the only thing that matters in a fight. A lighter weight fighter can still bring down a heavyweight fighter is they use a fighting style for which the heavyweight is unprepared. Then there's the use of tools, such as the aforementioned Katniss who is an expert at archery.

Gina Carano

When Anita says that the idea of women as weak and helpless is culturally embedded and obviously false, simply noting statistical differences in physical strength is not enough to refute her.

The problem, once again, is that Thunderf00t does not understand feminism. In fact he seems to actively mistrust anything related to feminism by default. As such, he never refutes anything more than his own straw man representations of a feminist stance.

Thunderf00t simply doesn't understand the topic he is trying to discuss and yet there are internet misogynists rallying around his video which now has over 10,000 likes. Meanwhile Anita has had no choice but to disable ratings and comments because of an over-abundance of misogynistic trolls. Check out her excellent analysis of the Damsel In Distress trope in videogames below:

(video link)