Tropes vs Women: Damsel in Distress Part 3 is out.

I'm more curious that she has a problem with a villain being sexy or unattractive according to this list. Almost sounds like women should be protagonists, but never the baddies.

@sergio: she probably thinks that if a women is ugly she is evil. Like the witch in all these fairy tails. But I really can not think of a ugly female villain right now.^^

The biggest problem I have is the women as reward thingy. A story about someone you love being kidnapped and than you are rescuing her. You do it not for a reward but rather for the women you love. Its called empathy. Imagine if your girlfriend was captured and you stay calm at home. Imagine what she would think if she came out of it alive.

I'm going to disagree a little bit on this - just a little. For the most part, I don't think any kind of media will make someone do something, eg. playing games won't make you a sexist or go on a killing spree, but it may influence people's judgements and ideas. @lively mentions gay rights, and I think a large part of this shift to be more accepting comes from younger generations who have been exposed to gay characters for the better. I don't mean stereotype portrayals, but seeing gay characters who are just like any other character on TV/movies that just happen to be gay. Contrast that to previous generations that portrayed gay people as either potential pedophiles or diseased.

Wait this is only part 3 of video 1? Will she be doing this for years? Will she ever get to Positive Female Characters?

Why define what you consider a positive image of something when you can keep condescendingly harping on what you consider a negative image (read: EVERYTHING EVER APPARENTLY) forever? 160,000 dollars at work.

@sergio: I wouldn't be surprised, as she already isn't happy with equality.

According to her list it is the absolute final thing she will do. So maybe in 2069?

@mabui: You know she likes to mention Buffy and maybe she is a strong character. I only know that I liked to watch it as a teen as I found both her and alyson hannigan hot. :P (Sorry Anita)

@darji said:

That's what is so lost to her, which is very offending to me.

Did the people who went and enrolled in the Armed Forces do it to rescue "property" from would be terrorists? How about those that risked and/or lost their lives rescuing people on 9/11 or during the Boston Bombing? Did she not think that people rescue others because of good nature, or that they have someone they love they would die for? I honestly hope she would never have to make that decision because I would shudder at what decision she might seriously make!

She talks about this at the end of the video. It starts at around 21:15 if you're interested.

@hinderk: YEah she talks about it but dismisses it on the spot. For her rescuing a women is always a reward thingy which is stupid in my opinion.

Not going to comment on the content of the video, really.

But that fucking... tugging one cheek smugly thing when she talks shit. Fuck that. Maybe it's just how she naturally talks. But holy shit is it the most irritating thing about these videos.

This is all well and good, but she really falls into a "edutainment-TV" style, where repetition is supposed to enforce your arguments.

She never dismisses helping other people just to help. She also never said that rescuing a women is always a reward. In some games like Castle Crashers it obviously is, in others it's not.

@hinderk: Yes she does in her first video foremost. The calls it objectification. and reward.

God some of you are being willfully dense about this. The problem isn't that "helping others is bad", the problem is the sheer number of times women are reduced to mere objectives to be recovered really takes away their story function as anything but an end goal, rather than characters to be explored.

This isn't even that hard, you just have to put an ounce of effort into trying to understand an argument from a point of view other than your own, instead of coming in with a chip on your shoulder and an opinion already formed, it seems.

So yeah, Anita Sarkeesian is totally advocating that no one help the victims of the Boston Bombers, because it totally makes sense that any human being would say that. Give yourself a cookie, you clever boy.

Can't we stop giving exactly what these attention seekers want? I think if you step back for a moment, take in a deep breath, you'll realize how silly all of this is. I would be willing to bet that the majority of "supporters" of anti-misogyny care very little about the evolution of the portrayal of women's dignity in the virtual space, and are simply there to look better in the eyes of their peers.

So having a damsel in distress as the goal of a game can make a weak story because the trope is overused and doesn't allow for much character development? Absolutely. But is it inherently sexist? Absolutely not.

This is the problem that I and many others have with this series in general. The basic framework of "Tropes vs Women" sets up a false dichotomy where supporting or using the trope makes you automatically anti-women. Damsels have become way too common in video games, and i'd love an unbiased examination of the trope that we as fans, devs, and critics all can learn from. Instead, we get an extremely limited examination of the trope itself because all of the examples are chosen to prove a very specific thesis about sexism. Anita is "coming in with a chip on [her] shoulder and an opinion already formed". (your words, by the way)

Which is yet another thing she never said.

@lively: She says it right in the name of her series! "Tropes vs. Women". The implication is clear that the tropes she's analyzing are working against women, so if you side with them, you are against women too.

She does try to admit that use of the trope isn't inherently sexist, but then immediately contradicts herself:

Just to be clear, I am not saying that all games using the damsel in distress as a plot device are automatically sexist or have no value. But it’s undeniable that popular culture is a powerful influence in or lives and the Damsel in Distress trope as a recurring trend does help to normalize extremely toxic, patronizing and paternalistic attitudes about women.

So if I like a game that uses that trope, I'm "help[ing] to normalize extremely toxic, patronizing and paternalistic attitudes about women." You just can't honestly say that she isn't creating a clear correlation between being okay with the tropes and being a misogynist.

One of the problems I've always had with her conclusions is that these games don't say that a woman should earn less than a man who is equal in every regard, or anything applicable to real-world sexism.

In the beginning of every episode she says that there is nothing wrong with enjoying games that use these tropes. You can enjoy a game while also thinking some parts of it are a little sexist.

@hinderk: But they are not sexist,,,,

First of all the biggest problem is that she is even going for games with almost no story which is incredible stupid. These games just need a motivation and to create a setting. These games are not about any form of story. The Damsel trope is just the easiest way to create a setting it is a tool nothing else. There is no need for a story or to over analyze stuff like she does in Spelunky when she mentioned that you can easily kill the damsel when you are trying to get to the goal. It is like blaming porn for being sexist.....

Secondly what this industry needs is better writing in general. Most of the times they are using generic sterotypes which are basically offensive for every gender. But again people do not care enough yet about the story in games. t is getting more attention but sadly this is not enough.

And lastly: Complaining about every dumb female character only will lead to less female character since this complaining is bad for the publisher and developer. If you would not complain about everything you would get more and a much bigger variety on female characters. Again just look at Japan. For evry bad and mabye to some offensive character you get a great one as well. They have the freedom to create these characters because no one is really complaining.

If we would complain about every dumb and stupid offensive male character we also would have gotten less. But thanks to that we are getting also some really good written male characters in the pile of many many badly written male characters. Same goes for black characters. IF you just do one thing wrong you will get a backlash that is why developer are not using them as much because they are much harder to do the right way with no one complaining.

Hell people even getting offended when a black character like chicken. I do not know what the history is with chicken and black characters but let it rest already. I like chicken myself so what?^^

Comments are disabled for this video. Not worth my time watching it.

@lively said:

She's giving the impression that the only reason ANY man would save a woman is either they see women as their trophies to win and/or to get laid. Men would never have a caring mindset from what she's implying. How could you NOT see that as a dangerous mindset to undertake, in ANY context?

And how can you not see the mindset that you do it because you love her? Which games that have a story imply that you just rescue some random girl and getting a reward? Not even in Mario it is the case because you can easily see that Mario cares for Daisy has his friend or love interest. Who knows. Which games with a story handle Women as a trophy? If even than its old arcade games at most. But even there I can not name one game if I am honest. And even if you rescue some random women. Which games imply that you are getting sex as a reward? Please tell me...

People on both sides of this argument really need to stop saying that something IS sexist, or is NOT sexist, as if it were objective fact. It's like arguing that something IS art, or IS pornography. There's a lot of subjectivity involved in categorizing any of these things.

I think I see part of your problem right there, you want to view things completely divorced from any social or historical context. Context matters, though, we don't live in a vacuum. There is a reason why a word or image might be extremely insensitive, and you can't just pretend that you can ignore it without any consequences.

Well then it's a good thing she never said those things either. You must be thinking of someone else.

If your biggest beef is with something a person only gave an "impression" of thinking, maybe that says more about you than them.

There must be something beyond the substance of Anita's message that makes people angry, seeing how often they have to distort and exaggerate her words in order to justify it. I'm no psychologist or social scientist, but I sure would like to see someone get to the bottom of this, because it's sure puzzling me.

@lively: Especially why I see it with no connection I think I see clearer. So what if there were slavery back than? So what if my country killed millions of jews? It is all in the past these people are mostly all dead And why should we still stick in our past? Stop living in the past stop trying to still make up for your countries history. Stop even to honor these days. Like a Black history month. What does it give you? Nothing except you are getting remembered on the bad days over and over again. That way you will never get rid of prejudice and hatred.

My main issue with her videos is that it sounds so much like those terrible academic essay I wrote in school that were pretty disconnected from reality living only in a set of insular theories and would have been an utter bore and making little sense to anyone not acquainted with the field of study I was writing about.

@darji: To that I can only say that I VERY strongly disagree. Racism isn't a "solved problem"; ignoring it doesn't make it go away. Keeping quiet and not making waves has always been the advice of the status quo. If that's what you want, then by all means keep encouraging people to be quiet about these issues.

I share this mans opinion in this matter.

@lively: That cuts both ways. I have no problem with someone speaking their opinions. But, you find both extremes of an argument trying to censor other people's opinions. Hell, Anita even does it herself.

She isn't presenting her argument for critical discussion. She is presenting her argument in terms of a "soap box". Thats A-OK, but everyone else has a right to point out flaws, or even discard/ignore it if they deem it doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

If you don't believe the "PC thought police" doesn't follow the same idiotic tactics that your hardcore repressed conservative fundie does; your crazy. Well, not YOU specifically but people who don't see the contradiction.

What you want or hope is for better options for people in general. So, not every product is a "male power fantasy" or specifically geared towards men. What you don't want is saying that "male power fantasy" can't exist or we can't show women in a sexualized light because someone may get offended. Fuck that.

I think it absolutely is inherently sexist since the damsel is nearly universally female.

Do you see the problem with your earlier objection here? I tend to be even handed by starting with mealy-mouthed things like 'I think' but for most intents and purposes in critical analysis that phrasing is assumed. You can't have your cake and eat it too. If you want her not to state opinion as fact you should probably be careful of throwing around absolutes as well -- or just treat criticism as what it always is, someone's opinion.

No... we examine our history and discuss our present so we can adapt and change for the future.

I know that comes off as pretentious, but seriously, the way you talk it seems like movies would never have left the point of recording theatrical stage performances. Entertainment mediums of all forms need and deserve scrutiny, especially by those who love it.

Why does everyone around here equate any criticism Anita makes with, "These games hate women!" That's just completely missing the point.

@gordy: not every movie and that is my point. So what if there are stupid movies or games? no one would have paid even attention to these niche games or movies. Did exploittation hurt the women? No was it stupid and women degrading yes. But again it has as much right to exist as classics.

Something something Anita's the devil something something rage rage.

Meet back here next month to go over it all again? Coolcool.

Your entire counter to my post amounts to "nuh-uh, we shouldn't care." Why? Why shouldn't we? Why do you assume any critique equals admonishment and demands that these games be banished from existence?

And, niche games? Are you joking?

@flindip said:

I think, also, that you should also show females having freedoms to dress and/or act the way they want to act because their characters have the freedom to do so. That's harder to do right now because complaining about misogyny in games seems to be "the thing" right now and some will never allow developers to make females that are clearly shown to actually USE those freedoms because we'll always look at character creation as just author's choice and that a character would never have that kind of freedom. Real life does have females that choose to dress slutty or conservatively, or act ditsy or cruel or whatever else. Which is my point about trying to portray this in any form of entertainment medium, especially games.

This is why complaining about these things without taking a look at context is not good. You do want to show that the females in your game chose to be that way because of a choice they made, and they made that on their own power. You could have a woman tired of being conservative about how they dress, and for a night or two, decide that they are going to show off because they are tired of being the wallflower, or they had enough of being oppressed, and that oppression was having to cover everything up because of whatever reason. Maybe the female likes the attention she gets. That's the same way in real life, and many women love having that freedom to choose if they want to do that. Again, that might be harder because you have to convey that the female character was given that freedom by the author, and the female has chosen to use that freedom in the way they saw fit, and the author shows that the female is using that freedom and is choosing to dress/act/be a certain way because that's who they are, and it's very hard to do that right now because no one on "Anita's side" will ever see it as anything else except an author's perceived sexism. Context is completely ignored in a lot of the cases Anita brings forth as examples, which is very damaging to her case.

Not to be Mr. Buttingin, in Anita's case that is kinda what she is doing when she segways from her Spelunky criticism to statements like "We need to look beyond the cliche(Damsel In Distress) all together. Then, you can combine her comments about "Bayonetta" and "The Last of Us." Its starts to get away from objective into completely subjective criticism. So even though she may not say something explicitly(ban all these games); if it "walks like a duck" and "talks like a duck."

Honestly, I see no difference in her criticism than something like Hilary Clinton or Tippet Gore with their campaigns to curb violence in video games or music. She is just approaching it from a different angle(and thankfully has no legislative power).

She starts off with legit representation grips for women(which is backed up with data) and then pontificates into opinionated filler. She has a total right to do this. But, I'm not going to take it seriously as some sort of academic insight or examination.

I think there is a legit conversation for this subject. I just think the person who has self appointed herself as the figurehead is grossly unqualified. Yes, she does try to speak for all women. Not just for herself.

What do you think games liek dragons Crown are? And I am sorry If I do not buy into the Spelunky is sexist bullshit. It has a setting and a motivation and thats it. It has no story. No deep character development so why sould anyone even care? I tell you what. The people who play these games would not. They play these games because of the gameplay.

If we want to talk about story heavy and AAA games. That is mostly bad writing. Look what good writing can do with examples like Uncharted or The Last of Us. WE need better writing not to tell these people that every female character is sexist and every black one racist. Stop getting offended and you will see way more interesting female and black characters in the end.

No one in this thread is saying that, and Anita isn't saying that. So crisis averted eh?

See my comments above. No one is saying low-brow stuff shouldn't exist at all.

I doubt that's true; absolute statements like that rarely are. There are plenty of movie examples of women who dress or act sexy yet don't seem to be squarely written and shot exclusively from a "Male Gaze" point of view, and I imagine there are even a few videogame examples of the same thing, and plenty of people on Anita's side would be happy to acknowledge them.

Well at least here you admit that you're extrapolating an opinion from her that she never actually stated. I can't think of anything in her videos that would lead you to think she's calling for legislative action on this, so that's your baggage to deal with.

Lastly, I don't know where you're getting the idea that she's appointed herself as a figurehead. She's just a person who says what she thinks on YouTube. The only thing that's made her stand out is the fact that she's raised so much awareness of this issue, she's never given the impression that all women agree with her.

(Edit: Sorry for the weird formatting on the quotes, the editor keeps wanting to turn them into user profile links).

@lively: Well, your kinda cherry picking my comment and taking it out of context about the whole legislative thing. i never said she was advocating legislation. I was saying her criticism reminds me of Hilary Clinton and Tipper Gore's media violence crusades. I was grateful that she wasn't a politician with an agenda bent.

Plus, she is a self appointed figurehead. She is going on Ted talks and creating media attention for herself. She calls herself a "pop culture critic"(whatever the fuck that means)as synonymous as a position of authority.Thats someone who is pretty much trying to position themselves at the head of a movement. I believe she is also doing some sort of seminars. She also wants to get her videos used in an academic environment. She isn't simply opening a You tube channel and spewing opinions.

That is totally fine. If someone wants to listen to what she has to say, more power to her.

My biggest issues with Anita is her fashion sense, why would anyone in their right mind wear plaid? Honey, it looks just as bad on you as it did on Al Borland.

The Ted talk wasn't about video games at all, it was about harassment on the internet -- and she didn't strongarm her way into doing it, she was invited. Creating media attention for herself is a simple by-product of being a contentious public figure. What part of 'pop culture critic' do you have an issue with? I'm not trying to be snide, but as far as I can tell it means she considers herself a critic of pop culture. Where does the definition break down for you? Getting videos used in academia has absolutely nothing to do with being the head of any movement -- she just wants professors to use her work if they consider it valuable, which some do. Plenty don't!

This is another 'failing' that isn't actually hers. She was thrust into the limelight due the early abuse of her Kickstarter, and I'm not sure that she even took advantage of that as much as some people say: I don't see any problem with surfing on the wave of a narrative that's been created for you. Doing so just means you're making lemons into lemonade. If anything, I'd call her a community-appointed figurehead, because she's risen to the top by simple ability to make some people go apoplectic.

Besides, better her than no-one, I think. I know plenty of you disagree with both parts of that sentence.

http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?hl=en&q=video+games+feminism&btnG=&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=

Oh, would you look at that, actually qualified individuals conducting research into gender roles in video games.

It's a big world, I'm sure there's room for both. Best case scenario, people like Anita raise awareness that causes people to go seek out the proper scientific studies on this subject.

Don't get me wrong, I'd also like it if Anita decided to include a statistical element to her presentations, but I'm not going to yell at her to get off the stage if she doesn't.

This is not limited to this specific topic (it actually doesn't really apply in this instance) but I am really starting to get grossed out by the euphemistic use of the term "raising awareness" in place of "being an attention seeking jackass with an axe to grind."

At no point did she say the ending was bad. She said she would have rather played as Elaine. Those are two completely different points. I have no clue how you managed to interpret it that way.

What community? You're talking about fucking Youtube. This is such a delusional and childish response.

She's not saying Spelunky is sexist. She's saying that placing a man in the position of distress, does not have the same connotation of a female in distress. There's centuries of context in the latter, but not the former. She used Spelunky as a good example of this.

Seriously, how in the world do you equate that complex concept with, "game is sexist, ban ban ban!!!!!"? Why are you equating any level of criticism as "being offended"?

Yeah centuries of context no one takes seriously anymore anyway. Stop blaming history. Women are not getting oppressed anymore. In our countries (US and most of Europe) there is no reason to fight anymore. We are all equal with different advantages and disadvantages. That how it is and ever will be. If you never will let lose of history you will never change anything. Treat everyone the same so yes you can compare it with a male or dog damsel. If you can not you should stop blaming our history. I am German and I have nothing to do with all the shit that went down. So if I make a jew joke or whatever I do it not because I am a racist but because I make jokes about everyone. Black, White, me, my, firends, Jews, Chists, Japanese people , Dogs, Cats and so on.

STOP LIVING IN THE PAST!!!!!!!

You're adorable.