Sexism is a hot topic right now, along with other kinds of discrimination. In light of gamergate and the influence misogyny had on the 2016 election, I think sexism in gaming and our culture needs to be discussed. As a lifelong gamer and a female, I’ve often thought of myself in a minority in many ways. Whether that be just in daily life and things I’ve dealt with or in gaming. To ensure I reach an audience that understands me, I want to give a brief history of my personal experience with games. At 6, my father bought my older brother and I an NES for Christmas. We both adored it. We would trade off playing together for hours at a time. By the time I hit high school, I had not only a Sega Genesis, but a PSOne (the PSOne was my first system that I didn’t have to share with anyone). By this point, I had a job and could buy my own games. I had literally hundreds of them. When the PS2 came out and I couldn’t get one due to shortages, my dad helped me find one by driving me around our state until we were able to buy one. Sine then, I’ve had at least one console in every generation, about 3 gaming computers, and a PSP, DS, 3DS, and a Vita. Today, our family owns a total of 35 gaming consoles and portable systems (between just 3 people).
So I can assure you, that when I say I’m a gamer, I am and have been one my entire life. Now, I also want to add in one small item here, and that is that I consider those who play Candy Crush or other similar apps and do so on an almost daily basis to also be gamers. You will not find any hate towards any kind or style of gamer from me or my family.
Let me get to the heart of the matter here. I have played thousands of games, (I know you all are thinking ‘obviously, duh!’), and in my life I have not found a game that I find sexist (the original Tomb Raider may be the closest, but I would defend even that because Lara Croft was and is an extremely strong female, not just eye candy). Before I move on to where I see real sexism, I’d like to defend the industry a bit here. Let me take a few of the most controversial games that get cited for sexism:
Grand Theft Auto — As a series one can find any number of scantily clad women running about as strippers or prostitutes. But let me put the game in context. You play a vicious criminal in every game. Even their wives and children are violent criminals of the worst sort. When you do see an average woman, she is usually running from you screaming. To put a strong female character in this series (with the possible exception of a seedy leader to a drug empire or mafia family) she would be seen as being beaten down and treated in some of the worst manners you can imagine. I would find that far more sexist and terrible than to see criminals behaving like criminals. (obviously this doesn’t delve into things like human trafficking but that might be a bit too deep for this series anyway)
Leisure Suit Larry — This series I first played when I was 11 (way to go parenting right?). And although I loved this series even then, it did make me uncomfortable for the first few years I played it. After some introspection, I believe this is far more to do with the extremely sexualized situations and not anything wrong with the game itself. Larry is a guy who wears a white leisure suit and wants to get laid. Your job as Larry is to try to help him get some, and you do this by solving complex puzzles and riddles. It is done in an extremely humorous manner. The women are often large chested beauties and ask Larry to find something or perform some feat before they will “help him out.” When you do finally solve one woman’s problem, invariably Larry ends up regretting it (as in a case where Larry helped a woman at a resort and she ends up telling him to strap himself in a weirdly shaped chair and pull down his pants. She then blindfolds him and gives him a very forceful enema). The whole series I believe is not sexist in that even though these beautiful women are definitely eye candy for our womanizing hero (zero), they always end up getting what they want and leaving Larry without his reward.
Dead or Alive — Perhaps the most cited game for feminists on what is wrong with the industry, this game you would almost have to see to understand. It is a simply fighting game, in which you can play as any number of scantily dressed women and then fight one on one til their health bar is depleted. The crux of the matter is this game has some very wonky physics but only for one body part: the female fighter’s bouncy breasts. This is an extremely Japanese game, and the women do have an almost anime look to them. But that isn’t why I’d say it doesn’t fit the idea of being sexist. I honestly have a few of these games, and my personal opinion is that the whole game is too humorously and ridiculously setup to be taken as a serious look at women. The physics are almost like they are set on the moon, except even more so. There is very little realism here and it isn’t a serious title in many respects. The women don’t have obvious personalities other than those of the classic anime types and are definitely one-dimensional. What I’m saying is the entire game is unrealistic and ridiculously so. How can I as a strong woman be offended by women that are beyond cartoonish in their appearances and their movements? The answer is I am not and never have been.
Games for me are also one more thing than anything I’ve mentioned so far: they are an expression of art. From their story-lines to their actual art pieces (from the backgrounds to the character designs to even the tiny things like blades of grass), these are all personal art expressions of groups of incredibly talented artists. Even the physics and engines are works of art in their own right. Some of the most talented people in the computer engineering field code the software that runs these games. Even a minor game takes an incredible amount of personal time and talent to create. They are the blood, sweat, and tears of often underrated people and should be treated with the respect any art gets. Even controversial art that seems to depict horror, violence, or even sexism, has some value. But for some people, games are not seen in this light. They should be… But that is another discussion.
My real point is this: nothing I’ve seen from the industry itself really shouts misogyny to me. What does, however, are the gamers themselves. I’ve found as a female gamer that the moment your gender is known online, it can become the whole reason for you to leave. This is because of a variety of reasons, most of which are not acknowledged by male gamers.
These are things ranging from differences in culture to downright forcing women and girls from gaming. I’ll start with some of the more common things I’ve not only experienced, but heard from peers who said they didn’t play because they were bad at gaming.
This is because when we are young and try to play games with our male peers, we often don’t know how to play. So there’s a learning curve (like with anything). However, if you cannot immediately jump in, boys do take controllers away or even push you from the room. I’ve even heard people tell me stories of just being skipped continuously until they left. I’ve experienced this, my daughter has, and along with that, many gamers, both male and female have related stories to me of this behavior. For me, it was my nephew, who was 5 years my senior and would play games I hadn’t yet. Even if it was one I owned, if I beat him or played better than him, he would get angry and hit me with the controller. He would rip them from my hands. If an adult or my brother would try to intervene, he’d just run up to the console and hit the power button.
In high school, I saw similar behaviors, though more subtle. We would all get together at one person’s home after school for rounds of Tekken and Street Fighter. My friends treated me fine, but sometimes there would be kids that didn’t know me and would skip my turn on purpose, giving the controller to the next boy in the room. If they were called out on it, they’d shrug and just say oops! My nephew (a different one, but also older than me), lived with roommates when I was around the age of 15 and 16. I remember playing 007 on the Nintendo 64 when he suddenly had to run to pick someone up across town. His roommates and I continued our game. As soon as his car was out of earshot, one of the guys said it was his turn, mid game. I reluctantly looked at the others for help, and they stared at their feet. He took the controller and it wasn’t until my nephew was opening the front door that someone in the room threw their controller at me and said “hey its your turn.”
Honestly, I have more of these stories, some as recent as last month with my own daughter, but I want to move on too.
Online play can be just as harrowing. I don’t speak online anymore just to prevent backlash from others for my gender. However, I have seen everything from trying to get you to have personal conversations with guys online to blatantly trying to keep you from playing when others find out your gender. Many gamers I know who are women will not speak just to prevent nonsense like that during their playtime.
Then there’s what I consider a cultural issue, but most especially for women in the US who want to play games online. This is the ‘C’ word. In much of the English speaking world, it is used without issue by both genders. However, I have seen many women here get upset at someone calling them it or even just saying the word over chat during a game. Not many gamers in the international community realize that this is offensive to a vast population of people here. For some, it is simply the one word you just don’t say. (as an aside, I grew up watching British TV and my first love was a guy from the UK, so I never really got this bias, but I do understand it). Some gamers try to cover that hurtful, demeaning words by calling it banter, but I have heard the difference between banter between rivals online, and a message of truly putting down another gamer because of their gender. Calling female gamers sluts, whores, the ‘C’ word, and even many threats of rape or sexual assaults. Men who receive threats often get them because they are not manly or male enough. People in who’ve responded to studies as not identifying as a specific gender say that their insults are usually that they are not male enough.
However, there is at heart here an undercurrent: one of misogyny that I’m not sure everyone understands exists. In light of the last election and the precursor of gamergate, I think we as a country need to have a serious look at ourselves and how we see the gaming community. I believe many young, male gamers out there are good people, but I also think they are the same ones to hold in their hearts that only they can be true gamers. That gamers are not moms or dads or grandmas playing apps. Or women. Computer gamers look down on console gamers. There’s a whole hierarchy that no one wants to do away with. Women are certainly in there, but most gamers still see us as casual gamers who only like having kittens we can feed or bowling games on the Wii or playing matching games like Candy Crush (not that there’s anything wrong with any of those games!), and that somehow we are less than them because they play Call of Duty or Halo. RPGs (role-playing games) have for years welcomed female gamers in with epic tales often with strong female characters, but then when you try to play one online, suddenly you are either the hottest chick on earth (and some dude’s personal fantasy — sometimes many guys’ personal fantasies) or you are a foreign invasive species who are ruining their gaming culture and should be pushed out.
This last point speaks to a larger issue around the US. One of whether our society is able to welcome a more diverse idea of what it means to be treated fairly. For years, I’ve seen an industry blossom into this incredible culture of creating vastly different kinds of games looking for new markets. The industry, I believe, will make whatever they can sell. We are seeing more and more games reaching into markets no one could’ve imagined when Pac-Man was big. We are seeing grandma’s tapping away joyfully at their matching games or bingo, sometimes even making or spending money (and in many cases it equals or even surpasses what us classic gamers would spend on a game). We see kids with DDR, using it to learn large motor skills coordination. Police using racing simulators to improve their driving skills and reaction times. We see moms and dads setting up family gaming consoles to play with their teens and adolescents. Gaming is changing, but the community has not caught up. Thousands of gamers are out there right now who believe this is their hobby and defend it tooth and nail like it is being invaded. They look down their noses at anyone not male enough to join them.
Yes, there is sexism in gaming. It isn’t in the industry though, it is in the players. Until this is really talked about openly, these people will continue to push anyone who isn’t them around and try to keep you out. This needs to be spoken of outside the gaming community and shown for what it is: discrimination.