July 21, 2018 • 44 mins
What's it like for women who play video games, having to deal with gamer girl stereotypes, in-game harassment and a shortage of strong female characters to play? In part two of their series on video games, Cristen and Caroline take a look how video games and gaming culture treat women.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hi, this is Annie and this is Bridget, and you're
listening to stuff. Mom never told you. This is another update,
another video game update for you, and this one is
about UM characters and games and UM women playing video games,
(00:30):
and it is another supplement to our recent episode that
we did on women in online Gaming UM. And kind
of a couple of updates from me is that E
three has was happening recently when we were recording this
And what is E three? Annie? Three? Wow, Bridget, I
actually don't know what E standard. The three E Standford's
(00:51):
Electronics something something. It's when all the video game announcements happened.
One of my favorite games that I mentioned in that episode,
The Last of Us, had like a twelve Men it
game demo that just blew me away. And it's a
demo and I watched like five times. I'm like already
planning because I don't have what I believe it will
be on the PlayStation four and I don't have one,
(01:13):
but I'm going to buy one when that game comes out.
I'm like stashing money away. We're moving towards having more
inclusive characters and storylines, which is good. There's always always
always room for more progress. But in this episode, Christen Caroline,
do look at kind of the past of characters such
as Sammy's which is a pretty formative character for me.
(01:35):
And then, um, where where we're going in the future.
And uh, another game I love is mass In fact,
if you heard Mass Effect, I have heard of it.
I don't know much about it. Okay, Well, I'd like
games like that too, where you can kind of pick
if you want to be male or female or alien
or pretty much all kinds of things, and then you
get to pursue romance with anyone you want. And I
(01:55):
always went from the cars that's a pan sexual dreams.
I always for the alien and I had a weird
crush on him, like outside of the game, but you
have to like go get sex advice at one point
in the game because he's a he's a different species,
and the doctors like, well, I would suggest lub good
advice for anyone alien, any species. Really, Lub is always
(02:17):
a good advice. Yeah, I agree, I agree. So, um,
we hope you enjoy this are our second update in
our video game kind of little mini serious thing we
have happening here, and we'll definitely do more episodes on
video games because it's not obvious. I'm a big fan,
but enjoy this. In the meantime, Hello, and welcome to
(02:38):
the podcast. I'm Caroline and I'm Kristen. This is part
two looking at women in video games. The last episode,
which I'm sure you listen to, was focusing on women
in the actual gaming industry, the women who designed the games,
run the company's come up with these great ideas, and
the fact that while the numbers aren't great, there is
(03:02):
hope out there. We gave you a list of a
lot of really interesting women who are heading up companies
and designing the games. This episode, we're gonna be talking
about both the women playing the games and the women
in the games. Yeah, so let's kick off with some
numbers for a little refresher. Women comprise of the entire
(03:23):
gaming population, and that includes all kinds of games, and
then from there we comprise of video gamers. So anyone
who says women and girls don't play video games don't
know what they're talking about. One thing that has kind
of lobbed against women gamers, though, is that a lot
(03:46):
of us play social games. These might be on social media.
They're called social or casual gaming, and it's things like
Candy Crush, for instance. Yeah, the interesting thing is how King,
which is a company that publishes Candy Crush, actually tests
all of its new games on a target demo of
women to fifty five, and if they like it, they
(04:08):
go ahead and put it out because they've found that
if women to fifty five respond well to a game,
it goes on to be a smash hit with all audiences.
What do you know about that? Who knew? Well? So,
women comprise of social gamers compared to forty six percent
of men, and the average age is forty What's up
(04:30):
with that? Why? Why do women make up such a
huge percent of social gamers? I think it could have
something to do with the fact that, I don't know,
we're busy and we might not have a tendency to
sit down and play Halo for five hours. Yeah. I mean,
first of all, we dominate social media. There are more
of us on places like Facebook, where you see so
many Candy Crush updates and ads, um. But experts suggest
(04:54):
that essentially women are adult women where I mean, think
about moms, okay, working mom. They are multitasking, they have
so much to do. And there was a story that
I was reading interviewing one woman about her candy crush addiction,
and she I think she had she had a very
young child, and she said, I play it during naptime
(05:15):
because it's just this little window of time that I
have all to myself, and it allows me to forget everything.
She can't sit down and play Call of Duty for
eight hours, and she says that playing it offers her
just this window of escape and because she doesn't have time,
for instance, to not that all men have hours to
kill playing Call of Duty kill Call of Duty un
(05:37):
pun but that they think that that's one reason why
adult women tend to play more on the go games
is just because we have smaller pockets of time throughout
the day. Perhaps, um, but this whole women being more
drawn to social and casual gaming as it's called. I
kind of hate the term casual gaming because it plays
into the stereotype at women aren't legit gamers. Because if
(06:04):
you start talking to quote unquote hardcore gamers and you
are a female identified, well, just get ready because they
will challenge your credibility because they're gonna want to know
as soon as you say that you enjoy games, you're
gonna need you Essentially need to resume to prove that
you know what you're talking about, kind of like talking
to like record store guys, no offense. Yeah, well so
(06:26):
you mentioned hardcore, like that's that's actually a thing. That's
a demographic. Hardcore gamers are defined by play time per
week and are basically a smaller subset of a games
core audience. These are the top ten percent of gamers
who spend the most time playing per week, at nineteen
hours a week. Nineteen hours a week. That's incredible. That's
(06:48):
a second job. That's like a part time job. And
Dennis Schameeca over at Venture be looked into gender and
core and hardcore gaming, because don't confuse core game ing
and hardcore gaming. Core gamers simply refer to anyone who
plays video games on consoles like Xbox three, sixty p
(07:09):
S three uh, as well as like Nintendo WE and
three D S. And when you look at the top
selling super genres as they're called for these core gamers,
those console players, it is a lot of guy oriented stuff.
First person shooter games, action games, sports games. Those are
the three not surprisingly top sellers, and they have overwhelmingly
(07:33):
over male audiences. Although as we mentioned in that last
podcast in Part one of our video game series. Do
not discount women for not wanting to play first person
shooter games, action games, etcetera. Because what was it like
of women enjoy playing violent video games? Absolutely, and when
(07:53):
you talk about these core gamers, these are the people
who really have the most influence over how the public
thinks about video games and gamers. So when you think
of a gamer, the image that comes to mind is
not a forty year old married woman playing candy Crush.
You think of that demographic that is playing a first
person shooter game on the Xbox three sixty for instance.
(08:16):
So when you look at the age breakdown for core
and hardcore gamers, the core audience has an average age
of about thirty and is excuse sixty forty mail. The
hardcore average age is lower, it's about five and skews
eighty five to fifteen mail. And that I mean that
(08:37):
breakdown of the hardcore gaming population is where a lot
of this idea that well, women don't play video games,
No women are actual legit gamers. That's where a lot
of this comes in. But the thing is, you got
to remember when you're hearing from hardcore gamers, we're talking
about like the ninety percentile gamers. These are the people
who play in the top ten percent, like nineteen Like
(09:01):
you said, an average that means some people play plenty
more than nineteen hours a week. These are It's like
the voices a few are being broadcast too many exactly Well, now, Christine,
you said something a minute ago about like if a
if a woman or a young girl says that she's
a gamer, she basically has to prove herself, like she
needs a resume to prove that she knows about and
(09:22):
plays games. This ties into the whole girl gamer stereotype,
and girl usually spelled when it's being used as a
pejorative term gu r L not to be confused with
the generic just a girl game or a female person
who plays games, and not to be confused with fake
geek girls. Like all of these things that arouse such
(09:43):
ire in a lot of young men playing video games,
and a lot of stereotypes that come up with this
girl gamer surround the idea that any woman or young
girl who is playing games is just doing it for attention,
And God forbid you claim the term girl gamer for yourself.
God forbids you want to set yourself apart as a
(10:03):
woman and own it, because there's that notion that if
you're doing it, you do just want attention. You're not
even allowed to own your own femininity or femaleness. Yeah,
and and this spawned an entire meme across the internet
where and you have like women participating in it as well,
talking down about oh, girl gamers. She's just the girl
(10:23):
gamerh did she instagram herself looking cute with her joy
stick in our hand? Then you're just a girl gamer.
You don't actually enjoy these games. And um, I got
into a little bit of a Reddit rabbit hole reading
up on girl gamers because it's just interesting to see
just first person these perceptions and people's supposed experiences with them.
(10:47):
And there was one woman's post on Reddit talking about
you know what, She kind of copped to it. She said,
I was a girl gamer for a while. She started
talking about how she kind of found gaming and it
was the first place where she ever received attention, any
kind of attention from God. She never really fit in,
(11:09):
she was overweight, she just never felt good about herself,
and finally when she found gaming, all of a sudden,
men were taking interest in her because she was into
this kind of male oriented hobby, and she said that
for a while she kind of played it up because
she enjoyed that so much. And to me, her experience
(11:31):
was telling because it seemed like this wasn't an issue
of oh, well, this most means that women aren't legitimate gamers,
but more just has to do with you know, flirtation,
body image, how we deal with the world and our
attractions and attractiveness, etcetera. Where But but what is what
what it's led to is a lot of slut shaming
(11:51):
that happens and just ickiness that women have to deal with.
That was one of the main things that our Facebook
stuff Mo'm Never Told you followers responded to when we
asked what we should talk about regarding video games, so
many women said, oh, please talk about girl gamers and
how I always have to prove myself. Yeah, but those
(12:12):
girl gamers are a lot of the times having to
prove themselves based on their looks, whereas if a dude
comes along and wants to play a game, it's like, okay,
well we're going to test you based on your skill.
Are you any good at this? No? Okay, well, then
obviously you're not worth it. Whereas when a woman comes along,
it's like, okay, well are you hot? Are you really
playing the game? Are you just posing with your joystick
and like licking it and posting pictures of yourself on
(12:32):
the internet, Like yeah, first of all, why are you
looking at joystick? But that's the thing, there's like that
horrible divide where men at least get the get the
favor of being judged on their actual skill, whereas women
are just like are you cute or not? Or yeah,
I don't. I don't think I've ever heard anyone termed
a guy gamer. Oh he's a guy gamer. He's just
he's just posing with that joystick by his abs, for
(12:55):
just for the just for the ladies. Well, then, I
mean that's another thing. You hear a lot of guys
saying like, shut up about being a girl gamer. I
don't call myself a guy gamer. You're just a gamer
and so, but then that discourages girls and women who
do want to own it, because yes, okay, well there's
a girl gamer demographic. That's like just doing it for attention,
according to these guys. But then what happens when the
(13:16):
girls and women actually want to say, no, I'm different
from you, I play differently, I want different things, and
why do all of these criteria have to exist? Katie
Heeney over at BuzzFeed created just such a perfect collection
of all of the slut shamy, confusing, and sometimes straight
up sexist and contradictory rules for being a girl gamer,
(13:40):
where it's like, you gotta play games, but you can't
be too obvious about it, because if you're too obvious
about how you like games, and they're just going to
assume that you're a girl gamer. And then you know,
they guys want you to be attractive because we like
looking at attractive people. But if you're too attractive, you know,
it's just like and so that's why a lot of
times women will end up going just like, won't speak,
(14:03):
for instance, on you know, like multiplayer games. They won't.
They just keep their femaleness as hidden as possible, just
to not have to even deal with it. Yeah, Blogger
Stephanie ben Dixon basically said the exact same thing. She
was talking about how she finds herself editing certain aspects
of her femininity for fear that it would somehow damage
her credibility. And I mean this gets into all sorts
(14:25):
of issues that christ and I have talked about before
as far as fem phobia goes. But Stephanie says, hey, look,
I have a lot of pink tech accessories, and she
goes into it. It starts to sound really cool, and
she's like owning her differences. She says she accepts the
term girl gamer because for now we're still a minority
that faces a wall of angry nerd rage. But in
(14:46):
talking about her pink accessories, I noticed something very interesting
because at first she's like, yeah, I'm owning it, like
pink is different. But then she says, I liked the
idea of how this obnoxiously defiant and slightly sickening color
would go against the grain somewhat. And then I'm like, oh,
it's Stephanie, Like there's still she while she is owning
pink and owning the term girl gamer, there's still sounds
(15:07):
like there's from phobia in that, because she's calling the
color pink obnoxious and sickening, and so it still sounds
like she's been discouraged over her game playing career from
kind of owning her femaleness. Well, I think it's because
of a lot of those contradictory rules in quotes that
pop up for you know, just you can't you can't
(15:27):
look like you're trying too hard, you know. Um. And
it's fascinating to me that in this segment, specifically like
in gaming, that it's such a prominent aspect of it,
like this just this common assumption that that women have
some kind of ulterior motive for wanting to play games. Um.
(15:48):
But unfortunately, like the kinds of you know, the issues
of harassment that women in the video game industry, the
ones who are making the games, sometimes run up against
another thing there was echoed among people on Facebook was
the issue of also dealing with straight up harassment from
other gamers as soon as their female identity is revealed.
(16:08):
Sometimes they just get an onslaught of come ons, or
just gendered epithets. Uh. There was a survey conducted by
Emily Matthew at the Price Charting Blog which found that
women are harassed four times as often as men, and
six reported being called a slut, whore or other words
(16:30):
that I can't say on this podcast. And there are
also lots of charming requests for women to just get
back in the kitchen and start making lots of sandwiches. Yeah,
and in that pole of the people she talked to
believe that sexism is rampant. Interesting don't but I mean,
you know, you would, you would think that they're okay.
(16:50):
So there is a degree of awareness, but it sure
is still bad out there despite that awareness. It does
go both ways. Fifteen point seven percent of men also
reported that they had experienced sex based taunting, harassment, or
(17:14):
threats while playing video games. Um and ten percent of
women unfortunately copped to using their gender for favors, basically
like strolling into a world of warcraft and being like, oh, yes,
you wanted to give me gold Shore a no problem tee. Well,
and just like we talked about in the last episode,
(17:35):
where um, a lot of well not a lot, but
but many women, probably many more than we even know.
Many women have left the industry because of the abuse.
Nearly thirty six percent of women that Emily Matthew pulled
reported having to quit playing temporarily because of the abuse
and the harassment, versus eleven point seven percent of guys
that she pulled. Game is game is you'd be mean?
(17:57):
Sometimes We're looking a little bit deeper into this issue.
A team over at Ohio University looked at the reactions
by gamers to female voices versus male voices on Xbox Alive,
like looking at first person shooter games, and they publish
a study in the journal New Media and Society, and
(18:21):
one of the researchers, why you en tang Um, explained how,
on average, female voices received three times as many negative
comments as male voices or no male voices, and on
top of that, women's voices received more queries and messages
from other gamers than male voices or no voices. So
it's kind of the same thing of Uh, just by
(18:45):
virtue of being a woman, you sort of open yourself
up to either being called terrible things or being solicited
for sex. Yeah, so you basically your option is to
speak and get abused or remain silent. Yeah, and Tank said,
the take home message is that female players when herd
aren't treated as well as their male counterparts, despite skill
(19:07):
level wins or losses. They women aren't attracting negative comments
just because they be terrible a gaming. Yeah, it's like
there's there's that little sign up on the clubhouse store,
no girls allowed. Yeah, unfortunate, Although I know that not
all male gamers are like this. Guy, guy gamers listening,
I'm gonna call you guy gamers. Don't worry, I know
(19:28):
that it's it's again. I feel like it's the loud
voices of this horrific minority that often get the most
all that they are generating all of this negative press,
because it's horrifying. It is kind of horrifying. So let's
look a little bit more maybe into what women want
in their games, aside from harassment, obviously, because this is
(19:51):
a question that ties back to our part one episode,
looking more at the industry of like what they're trying
trying to figure out of well aside front, we know,
we know the candy crush is popular, but what kind
of games do women really like playing? Because if you
look back into the early days of gaming, the titles
(20:11):
that were made specifically for women and girls were so
hilariously riddled with hearts and sparkles and pink. And there's
actually a site called femicom that's calm with an M,
which calls itself the Feminine Computer Museum. It's a website
dedicated to archiving these quote unquote girl games from like
(20:33):
the early eighties and nineties, and it's kind of fascinating
to see. I mean, these are also the days when
you have alone Carol Shaw or Donna Bailey at atari,
like the only woman like in the room. So not
surprisingly that you have such kind of overtly just let's
play house. You have to do the dishes for twenty
points kind of games coming up. Kristen accepts that challenge.
(20:57):
She will organize the dishwasher. I will I would win
that game, would but I mean, yeah, the museum founder,
I guess we'll call her, basically said that she's preserving
these games to spark conversations, not necessarily preserving them because
they are so awesome, but preserving them because nobody's playing
them anymore and nobody's talking about them. They're not talking
(21:17):
about them the way you would like duck Hunt, Like
everybody has a duck Hunt memory of standing up against
the TV with the gun even though you're not supposed to.
But nobody has those collective memories of these quote unquote
girly games. And so she is working to preserve them
just so that we can take a look at why
we do the things we do, why we look at
certain games the way we do. Yeah, And and she
(21:40):
pointed out how girly video games are rarely advertised, reviewed
or written up, and rarely demoed in stores. And she says,
even if it's a huge seller, like the more recent
game Style Savvy for Nintendo d S, which I mean
Style Savvy, come on, hardcore gamers roll their eyes. But
(22:01):
it's a big seller. And yet it's kind of like
um with fandom in general. A lot of times, girly
fandom is sort of relegated to the corner, just like
Go Go Away, hearts and Polka dots. No, no, you
over here. There's a little pink corner over here. So
behind that line, I picture like the Lego movie, Like
there's all these little universes, different universes for different videos.
(22:21):
Polka dot, polka dots. You go over there, and they're
all like sad polka dot. But the fact of the
matter is, don't don't worry women gamers listening. We're not
suggesting that Style Savvy is what women want in video games.
We're also not suggesting the Candy Crush or Halo or
Grand Theft Auto or whatever games. You know what people
are realizing, Caroline, women want different things. We don't all
(22:46):
want the same kind of game. Weird women are different
then each other. That's what you're That's what you're saying.
Women are different from each other. Yeah, you and me.
We might even want to play different games. I want
to load, I want to play the dishwak your game.
Maybe you want to play Prince of Persia, build the
Sandwich game. Yeah, this is coming from Kevin Kelly over
at joystick dot com. He was talking about how women
(23:08):
do like story driven games. We do appreciate in game tutorials,
because honestly, who reads manuals or even like instruction manuals
when you're putting together an Ikea shelf? Like nobody reads
these things. Um. But but the point is just making
women aware of more games, you know, letting them know that, hey,
they might also like Halo as well. But it's a
(23:31):
matter of not advertising it to everyone across the board
with just some busty, sexy sexpot on the cover. You know.
Keep in mind that your audience is very diverse. Yeah,
I mean, there is market research that does suggest that
certain themes, like games that are more story driven or
sort of a more communication based the sims, for instance,
(23:54):
massively popular among women. Maybe games that might be a
little more emotionally evocative tend to appeal more to women.
But don't get pigeonholes in just trying to remake those
games over and over again. Rather, you know, consider all
of these women who are also really loving to frag
(24:15):
people and see, hey, maybe we can, maybe we can
put a female protagonist in there. Put put a gun
in the hands of a woman, shall we? Video game
wise video games? Well, we are going to talk about
women in video games, the female protagonist of video games,
and and how telling their roles are. When we come
right back from the quick break. Well, since Caroline and
(24:38):
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so they know we sent you. And now back to
(25:22):
the show. So when we left off, we had established
that while market research has suggested that there are certain
types of games that women like, surprise, surprise, women like
different kinds of things, And yet if you look at
the legacy of female characters in especially like big name
video games, they start to fall into very predictable types
(25:46):
of roles. So, for instance, in the late eighties, this
game called Metroid came out, and I'm sure a lot
of people have played Metroid, and it features this character,
Sammy's female character, and for all of the game she's
wearing kind of this genderless robotic exo skeleton. But then
and it's like super cool because you can like play
(26:08):
Sammy's and she's doing all sorts of cool stuff. But
then when you win the game, the exo skeleton is
taken off to reveal her bikini body. Yeah, and and
an article about this had a really really important point
about this, which is that as you're playing the game,
that robot exo skeleton character, that is you, you were
(26:31):
the hero and you were shooting. But once you win
and the robots suit is removed and you see a
bikini clad woman, then that character isn't you anymore. It's
just a passive object that you get to you get
rewarded with. Yeah. Yeah, And they found we'll get into
this a little bit more. But speaking of that sort
of the role playing that happens within video games, there
(26:54):
is a type of self objectification that happens just by
virtue of playing a character, like you take on the
role of that character, and when you see that character
then stripped down to reveal a busty bikini body, studies
have shown that it makes us think about our own
bikini bodies, and usually more negative ways. And so there
(27:16):
was a two thousand nine study essentially that took a
census of video games and it found that not surprisingly,
male characters not only outnumber women in video games, but
also female characters are overwhelmingly stereotypical and sexualized. Even the
case of a potentially really cool character like Sammu's now
(27:37):
that's people are probably but Kristen, that happened in like
the eighties. That was like the eighties. Things have like
totally changed, right, No, what who are these fictional people
that you're referencing, Kristen guy gamers? Yeah, No, things are
not better. And someone who has done a ton of
research to dig into these kinds of tropes is one
(27:58):
Anita Sarkasian, who made quite a name for herself in
the video game industry, for she had done a Tropes
Versus Women's series for a while, just looking at the
portrayals of women in pop culture, and she decided that
she wanted to really dig into the video game industry
because it is such uh massively popular and growing form
(28:19):
of entertainment for people, and she began. She had a
Kickstarter campaign, and essentially she got cyber mopped by a
lot of people who are not happy about someone wanting
to talk about video games from a feminist perspective, essentially
kind of taking a deeper look at like, well, what
how do these video games portray women? And the good
(28:40):
news is her Kickstarter massively exceeded expectations because she received
such an onslaught of cyber attacks from people. She publicized
and people then rushed to her aid um, and she's
still I mean, if you google her name, especially if
you look her up in you you if you find
her videos, but you also find so many videos that
(29:02):
people trying to discredit her. So I feel like we
need to give a little context to who Anita Sarkisian is,
because if you are a gamer, you've probably heard of her,
and there's a good chance that it isn't in a
good light. But I will tell you I have watched
her videos. She does a great job of offering a
comprehensive and non threatening look at women in games while
(29:25):
admitting that she still enjoys these games. She's not saying
burn video games to the ground, but it's worthwhile to
look into how women are portrayed, because she explained this
so well in an interview with I g N, saying,
think of it this way. If gaming is the air
we all breathe. Right now, the air quality is currently
extremely polluted with thick clouds of toxic sexism, with radioactive
(29:47):
particles of misogyny floating around everywhere. Sounds terrifying, right, Well,
that's society, hello. And of course that's not to say
and and christ and I are trying to drive home
that it's not everybody, it's not all the time and
not everywhere. But there are a lot of tropes in
these games that are worth talking about, even if you
do like playing them. And we're not saying you shouldn't
(30:09):
play them. We are, And so I think Sarkisian is
pleading for a little bit of media savvy, to just
be kind of aware of what you're looking at when
you're looking at it. And anyway, one of the tropes
that she focuses hard on is the whole damsel in distress.
What harm could a damsel in distress possibly have? But
you know, a lot of these in your face things
(30:31):
that we see over and over again tend to drive
home stereotypes about women and the way we think about women.
But anyway, before we get into that, what is this trope? Basically, Uh,
it's princesses, wives, girlfriends, basically women in these games who
often end up kidnapped or somehow frozen and disempowered, or
(30:51):
they're put under a spell, or they're frozen in a crystal.
Basically they're trapped somehow. Yeah, and by trapping the women,
it gives the male hero some kind of incentive to
go through this journey. And hey, you know what, I
love Super Mario Brothers. Princess Peach what a gal. She's great,
but she's kind of the quintessential damsel in distress. Um.
(31:13):
And but this started even before Super Mario Brothers with
Donkey Kong and Pauline also known as the Lady and Pauline,
who was a damsel in distress and Donkey Kong was
actually kind of the model for Princess Peach and Peaches
kidnapped for instance in thirteen out of the fourteen Mario
games she's featured in, and she's only a playable character
(31:34):
and Super Mario Brothers too, which came out in nine
um And she also talks about how you see the
same kind of thing in Zelda named for the damsel
in distress, and she's really Zelda has never really been
to star in her own adventure. Isn't Isn't that a
sad metaphor? It is it really is, Ladies, let's not
be Zelda's Sarkisian points out how she does sometimes get
(32:09):
more active roles, she becomes more of a helpful damsel
at times, but she always ends up at least getting
re kidnapped. She has to be saved at some point,
and she says this exists and pretty much any type
of game, whether you're looking at first person shooters, RPGs, MMOs,
like you're gonna find damsels in distress everywhere and even
(32:31):
when you have a heroic archetype of the hero being imprisoned,
a lot of times the way that hero will escape
is through his own strength and cunning huzzah. And this
poor freaking damsel like so, not only is she like
imprisoned in a castle or she's trapped or tied up
or whatever, she also is the victim of pretty horrific
(32:54):
violence and all these different kinds of video games. She
tends to be basically a disposable woman who falls victim
to any number of horrific violent acts. So Sarcasian takes
through all of these different game titles about how they
follow similar paths of for instance, the hero's wife being
brutally murdered and then you have to rescue the daughter.
(33:16):
That happens over and over and over again. Or you
have a wife or girlfriend's soul being trapped in hell
and so then you know the hero has to travel
to try to like save the soul. And then you
might also have damsels who martyr themselves that will then
propel the hero on his journey. Sometimes also you have
games that force the hero to brutally kill the wife
(33:39):
or girlfriend either because it turns out done da dada,
she was a villain the whole time, or that's like
the only way that you can win the game. Violence
against women solves everything according to these games, right basically,
I mean it's sort of the way that these a
lot of these games work, is it sort of forces
you into, you know, having one sole suan, which is
(34:01):
beating up, killing, stabbing, shooting, strangling, whatever it will take
to kill these women. And that's that's not so good
Caroline now. And and you know, you could be wondering, well,
what does this have to do with anything as far
as real life goes? Why do we care about violence
and video games? Haven't there been studies showing that it
doesn't make us a more violent culture. Well, actually, unlike
(34:25):
needless violence against women and all these games actually does
have quite a big impact. Yeah. Why. Yen Tang, who's
one of those Ohio University researchers we mentioned earlier, said quote,
the general gist of sexual content in video games is
that exposure to such content leads to attitudes that are
unfavorable toward women. And you see this reflected in so
(34:47):
many studies. For instance, the two thousand and twelve study
found that a video game depicting sexual objectification of women
and violence against women resulted in statistically significant increase rape
myth acceptance a sentence really sort of rape supportive attitudes,
the whole idea of like, you know, women asking for it, essential, etcetera. Um.
And that was more prevalent among male study participants, but
(35:10):
not for female participants. But that's not to say that
these kinds of video games that sexually objectify women don't
have negative impacts on female players, right. Yeah, Stanford study
found that women who played with a sexualized avatar, whether
it was basically with her face on it or with
(35:31):
another woman's face, engaged in more self objectification and bought
into rape myths more. Yeah. You see this theme of
increased rape myth acceptance a lot in these studies. Um.
Also in two thousand nine, there was a study that
came out which found stereotype confirming virtual women correlated to
(35:51):
higher levels of sexism and again rape myth acceptance in
male and female players. And we could go on and
on and on. There are a number of study He's
finding over and over again that hey, when we basically
use women, highly sexualized women in video games as props
upon which to inflict violence or rape. There are you
(36:14):
know there there's the infamous rape UH scene in Grand
Theft Auto. There's also a rape scene I believe in
I don't know if it was in the game or
just in promotion for uh tomb Rader addition that came out,
and basically it's like, no, we don't because we're playing.
It's different. I feel like it's different from sexual assault
(36:36):
being portrayed in movies and television in a way because
it's almost more engaging because you're playing those characters, right.
And I feel like when rape and sexual assault are
depicted in movies and TV shows, it's always a bad thing.
It's always like a crime and a negative thing that
needs to be solved. Whereas if you're the first person
(36:58):
player in a video game that evolves rape and sexualizing women,
objectifying women, it's there's there's nothing necessarily telling you it's wrong. Yeah,
it's fodder for your heroism, and and that can have
negative impacts on male and female players, and the solution
isn't yet. Again, it's not a call to get rid
of video games, but rather to ask for better raise
(37:22):
the bar. I mean, you can have you can you
can shoot up as many things as you want to
in games. This isn't us railing against gun violence and
video games, but rather, like you said, you know, Sarkisian
kind of requesting a little bit of media savvy. It's
important to pay attention to what we're consuming and yeah,
(37:42):
and not do away with, like you said, shoot him
up games or whatever, but just offer more and different
things like left Behind, which has garnered incredible praise. People
are coming out of the woodwork to be like, oh
my god, this game is amazing a change in my life.
It features a fourteen year old old girl protagonist, Yeah,
(38:03):
and she also interacts with her best friend Riley, but
she still has to do a lot of really tough things.
And Laura Hudson wrote about left Behind recently in Wired
magazine and it was headlined something along the lines of
left Behind was the first video game that really made
me feel like proud to be a woman, and she writes,
(38:24):
we don't just need more women in video games, we
need more women who don't fit in boxes. And she
talks about how left Behind isn't remarkable just because it
meets a quota, but because Ellie and her best friend
Riley are people. They're fully realized. They're quirky, they're funny,
and they're dangerous. And she says that Ellie is there
because she's herself, and for once, that's reason enough. She's
(38:47):
not there to just titillate and motivate. Players are like, oh,
you know, Ellie's been beaten, so go go kill somebody.
It's all about her. And like we said in episode
number one, uh, Call of Duty. Ghosts, for instance, is
going to have a female playable character in its multiplayer component. Yeah.
(39:09):
BioWare's Mass Effect three has implemented changes that allow for
gay romance. I mean, diversity beyond just women is something
that we didn't even have time to talk about in
a two part series on video games. Um So, LGBT
acceptance and visibility in games is something too that needs
to be strongly addressed. Me. A lot of what we
(39:31):
see is is very headeronormative violence against women. Are just
headteronormative romances, and it's like, hey, uh, I'm over here,
I'm an LGBT player. I exist too, And not to
mention two racial diversity as well, overwhelmingly male or female,
the protagonists are going to be white. A lot of
(39:51):
the industry itself is very white. Um, so there's a
lot of room for improvement. And the thing is, a
lot of gamers sometimes get up in arms about the
possibility of changes. You get attached to a game, you
love a game, if you're spending, like if you're a
hardcore gamer nineteen plus hours a week with a game,
it's understandable that you might be a little resistant to change.
(40:13):
But it's only going to make things better, yeah, you know,
And it's going to make things better for you know,
not just the games, but for the people who play
them as well. And shouldn't that be the the ultimate goal? No?
Not for no. People want to people want to just
shoot things on a screen, right, Yeah? Is that's what
it is? Crush candies. I don't know the answer, Caroline.
(40:36):
This is this is why I really want to hear
from listeners on this issue. What is it like to
be a gamer, especially if you are a woman out there?
I mean, do you deal with issues of having to
prove your credibility? Um? Are you harassed or are you
immune to all of this stuff? Do you find this
kind of these kinds of issues sensationalized? We want to
(40:56):
hear from everybody. What are your thoughts on this mom
Stuff a Discovery dot com is where you can email
us or you can tweet us at Mom's Stuff podcast,
and we've got a couple of messages to share with
you right now. Well, I've got a message here from
Christopher about our men scaping episode, and he said, I'd
(41:17):
like to make a statement of opposition in regard to
your comments about male body hair still being socially acceptable
in the US. As a twenty two year old guy
with body hair, I get ridiculed and laughed at on
a nearly daily basis by my peers and coworkers, and
I'm often told that if I want to get a girlfriend, quote,
you need to not be an abominable snowman bro. Maybe
(41:39):
this is just East Coast college town culture, but my
experience here and in Houston were about the same. As
a side note, I've tried manscaping in the past, both
with near and traditional methods, but removing all that hair
is an arduous task that rewards me with ingrown hair
and the sensation of sand paper taped to the backside
of all my shirts. I can only hope that I
find a lady who doesn't mind my body here, if
(42:01):
any exists, and Christopher, they absolutely exist. Yeah, I'm pointing
at myself right here, because my question to you about
these people who are like trying to humiliate you, are
they all dudes, because there are plenty of ladies out
there who don't mind it or do like it. My
my gentleman caller does have quite a bit of hair
(42:24):
in places, and he's very handsome. Yeah. Yeah, I say,
don't don't listen. Don't listen to the hair haters. And
this is also an example too of why we wanted
to talk about this issue, because you're experiencing the same
and so many other guys i'm sure are experiencing the
same kind of body hair shame that has usually just
(42:45):
been targeted on women. But Christopher, don't worry. There are
plenty of women who don't mind and might even like
a hairy bag. Yeah, Because if you're getting a bunch
of that flak from fellow dudes, all that means is
that they're buying into the junk that like those men's
magazines are selling them, and they're probably voicing some insecurity. Okay,
(43:05):
I have a letter here from es may Um also
about our grooming episode. She says, for as long as
I can remember. As a woman, I have been very
aware of this expectation to remove almost all body hair,
and personally, it's never really sat right with me. I
was brought up with role models like Patty Smith, who
not only grew out their body hair, but we're not
afraid to show it off. The cover to Patti Smith's
(43:25):
album Easter is a perfect example of this. But as
a woman in her early to mid twenties, I've never
come across someone who shares the beauty in body hair.
I'm more than happy with every other aspect of my body,
but hate having to shave for other people. I found
it interesting when you spoke of the anxiety that some
men and women feel when not shaving, and I think
I feel the opposite. I prefer how I look when
(43:46):
I let my body do its thing, and I wish
that wasn't seen as such a disgusting choice. So thank you,
es May, and thank you for sending that picture of
Patti Smith's cover, and thanks to everybody who's written into us.
Mom Stuff at Discovery dot Com is where you can
send your emails. If you want to reach out to
us on social media, check out this podcast with all
(44:07):
the links to all of our sources, watch our videos,
read our blogs. There's one place to go and that
stuff I've never told you. Dot com for more on
this and thousands of other topics. Does it How stuff works?
Dot Com
Hi, this is Annie and this is Bridget, and you're
listening to stuff. Mom never told you. This is another update,
another video game update for you, and this one is
about UM characters and games and UM women playing video games,
(00:30):
and it is another supplement to our recent episode that
we did on women in online Gaming UM. And kind
of a couple of updates from me is that E
three has was happening recently when we were recording this
And what is E three? Annie? Three? Wow, Bridget, I
actually don't know what E standard. The three E Standford's
(00:51):
Electronics something something. It's when all the video game announcements happened.
One of my favorite games that I mentioned in that episode,
The Last of Us, had like a twelve Men it
game demo that just blew me away. And it's a
demo and I watched like five times. I'm like already
planning because I don't have what I believe it will
be on the PlayStation four and I don't have one,
(01:13):
but I'm going to buy one when that game comes out.
I'm like stashing money away. We're moving towards having more
inclusive characters and storylines, which is good. There's always always
always room for more progress. But in this episode, Christen Caroline,
do look at kind of the past of characters such
as Sammy's which is a pretty formative character for me.
(01:35):
And then, um, where where we're going in the future.
And uh, another game I love is mass In fact,
if you heard Mass Effect, I have heard of it.
I don't know much about it. Okay, Well, I'd like
games like that too, where you can kind of pick
if you want to be male or female or alien
or pretty much all kinds of things, and then you
get to pursue romance with anyone you want. And I
(01:55):
always went from the cars that's a pan sexual dreams.
I always for the alien and I had a weird
crush on him, like outside of the game, but you
have to like go get sex advice at one point
in the game because he's a he's a different species,
and the doctors like, well, I would suggest lub good
advice for anyone alien, any species. Really, Lub is always
(02:17):
a good advice. Yeah, I agree, I agree. So, um,
we hope you enjoy this are our second update in
our video game kind of little mini serious thing we
have happening here, and we'll definitely do more episodes on
video games because it's not obvious. I'm a big fan,
but enjoy this. In the meantime, Hello, and welcome to
(02:38):
the podcast. I'm Caroline and I'm Kristen. This is part
two looking at women in video games. The last episode,
which I'm sure you listen to, was focusing on women
in the actual gaming industry, the women who designed the games,
run the company's come up with these great ideas, and
the fact that while the numbers aren't great, there is
(03:02):
hope out there. We gave you a list of a
lot of really interesting women who are heading up companies
and designing the games. This episode, we're gonna be talking
about both the women playing the games and the women
in the games. Yeah, so let's kick off with some
numbers for a little refresher. Women comprise of the entire
(03:23):
gaming population, and that includes all kinds of games, and
then from there we comprise of video gamers. So anyone
who says women and girls don't play video games don't
know what they're talking about. One thing that has kind
of lobbed against women gamers, though, is that a lot
(03:46):
of us play social games. These might be on social media.
They're called social or casual gaming, and it's things like
Candy Crush, for instance. Yeah, the interesting thing is how King,
which is a company that publishes Candy Crush, actually tests
all of its new games on a target demo of
women to fifty five, and if they like it, they
(04:08):
go ahead and put it out because they've found that
if women to fifty five respond well to a game,
it goes on to be a smash hit with all audiences.
What do you know about that? Who knew? Well? So,
women comprise of social gamers compared to forty six percent
of men, and the average age is forty What's up
(04:30):
with that? Why? Why do women make up such a
huge percent of social gamers? I think it could have
something to do with the fact that, I don't know,
we're busy and we might not have a tendency to
sit down and play Halo for five hours. Yeah. I mean,
first of all, we dominate social media. There are more
of us on places like Facebook, where you see so
many Candy Crush updates and ads, um. But experts suggest
(04:54):
that essentially women are adult women where I mean, think
about moms, okay, working mom. They are multitasking, they have
so much to do. And there was a story that
I was reading interviewing one woman about her candy crush addiction,
and she I think she had she had a very
young child, and she said, I play it during naptime
(05:15):
because it's just this little window of time that I
have all to myself, and it allows me to forget everything.
She can't sit down and play Call of Duty for
eight hours, and she says that playing it offers her
just this window of escape and because she doesn't have time,
for instance, to not that all men have hours to
kill playing Call of Duty kill Call of Duty un
(05:37):
pun but that they think that that's one reason why
adult women tend to play more on the go games
is just because we have smaller pockets of time throughout
the day. Perhaps, um, but this whole women being more
drawn to social and casual gaming as it's called. I
kind of hate the term casual gaming because it plays
into the stereotype at women aren't legit gamers. Because if
(06:04):
you start talking to quote unquote hardcore gamers and you
are a female identified, well, just get ready because they
will challenge your credibility because they're gonna want to know
as soon as you say that you enjoy games, you're
gonna need you Essentially need to resume to prove that
you know what you're talking about, kind of like talking
to like record store guys, no offense. Yeah, well so
(06:26):
you mentioned hardcore, like that's that's actually a thing. That's
a demographic. Hardcore gamers are defined by play time per
week and are basically a smaller subset of a games
core audience. These are the top ten percent of gamers
who spend the most time playing per week, at nineteen
hours a week. Nineteen hours a week. That's incredible. That's
(06:48):
a second job. That's like a part time job. And
Dennis Schameeca over at Venture be looked into gender and
core and hardcore gaming, because don't confuse core game ing
and hardcore gaming. Core gamers simply refer to anyone who
plays video games on consoles like Xbox three, sixty p
(07:09):
S three uh, as well as like Nintendo WE and
three D S. And when you look at the top
selling super genres as they're called for these core gamers,
those console players, it is a lot of guy oriented stuff.
First person shooter games, action games, sports games. Those are
the three not surprisingly top sellers, and they have overwhelmingly
(07:33):
over male audiences. Although as we mentioned in that last
podcast in Part one of our video game series. Do
not discount women for not wanting to play first person
shooter games, action games, etcetera. Because what was it like
of women enjoy playing violent video games? Absolutely, and when
(07:53):
you talk about these core gamers, these are the people
who really have the most influence over how the public
thinks about video games and gamers. So when you think
of a gamer, the image that comes to mind is
not a forty year old married woman playing candy Crush.
You think of that demographic that is playing a first
person shooter game on the Xbox three sixty for instance.
(08:16):
So when you look at the age breakdown for core
and hardcore gamers, the core audience has an average age
of about thirty and is excuse sixty forty mail. The
hardcore average age is lower, it's about five and skews
eighty five to fifteen mail. And that I mean that
(08:37):
breakdown of the hardcore gaming population is where a lot
of this idea that well, women don't play video games,
No women are actual legit gamers. That's where a lot
of this comes in. But the thing is, you got
to remember when you're hearing from hardcore gamers, we're talking
about like the ninety percentile gamers. These are the people
who play in the top ten percent, like nineteen Like
(09:01):
you said, an average that means some people play plenty
more than nineteen hours a week. These are It's like
the voices a few are being broadcast too many exactly Well, now, Christine,
you said something a minute ago about like if a
if a woman or a young girl says that she's
a gamer, she basically has to prove herself, like she
needs a resume to prove that she knows about and
(09:22):
plays games. This ties into the whole girl gamer stereotype,
and girl usually spelled when it's being used as a
pejorative term gu r L not to be confused with
the generic just a girl game or a female person
who plays games, and not to be confused with fake
geek girls. Like all of these things that arouse such
(09:43):
ire in a lot of young men playing video games,
and a lot of stereotypes that come up with this
girl gamer surround the idea that any woman or young
girl who is playing games is just doing it for attention,
And God forbid you claim the term girl gamer for yourself.
God forbids you want to set yourself apart as a
(10:03):
woman and own it, because there's that notion that if
you're doing it, you do just want attention. You're not
even allowed to own your own femininity or femaleness. Yeah,
and and this spawned an entire meme across the internet
where and you have like women participating in it as well,
talking down about oh, girl gamers. She's just the girl
(10:23):
gamerh did she instagram herself looking cute with her joy
stick in our hand? Then you're just a girl gamer.
You don't actually enjoy these games. And um, I got
into a little bit of a Reddit rabbit hole reading
up on girl gamers because it's just interesting to see
just first person these perceptions and people's supposed experiences with them.
(10:47):
And there was one woman's post on Reddit talking about
you know what, She kind of copped to it. She said,
I was a girl gamer for a while. She started
talking about how she kind of found gaming and it
was the first place where she ever received attention, any
kind of attention from God. She never really fit in,
(11:09):
she was overweight, she just never felt good about herself,
and finally when she found gaming, all of a sudden,
men were taking interest in her because she was into
this kind of male oriented hobby, and she said that
for a while she kind of played it up because
she enjoyed that so much. And to me, her experience
(11:31):
was telling because it seemed like this wasn't an issue
of oh, well, this most means that women aren't legitimate gamers,
but more just has to do with you know, flirtation,
body image, how we deal with the world and our
attractions and attractiveness, etcetera. Where But but what is what
what it's led to is a lot of slut shaming
(11:51):
that happens and just ickiness that women have to deal with.
That was one of the main things that our Facebook
stuff Mo'm Never Told you followers responded to when we
asked what we should talk about regarding video games, so
many women said, oh, please talk about girl gamers and
how I always have to prove myself. Yeah, but those
(12:12):
girl gamers are a lot of the times having to
prove themselves based on their looks, whereas if a dude
comes along and wants to play a game, it's like, okay,
well we're going to test you based on your skill.
Are you any good at this? No? Okay, well, then
obviously you're not worth it. Whereas when a woman comes along,
it's like, okay, well are you hot? Are you really
playing the game? Are you just posing with your joystick
and like licking it and posting pictures of yourself on
(12:32):
the internet, Like yeah, first of all, why are you
looking at joystick? But that's the thing, there's like that
horrible divide where men at least get the get the
favor of being judged on their actual skill, whereas women
are just like are you cute or not? Or yeah,
I don't. I don't think I've ever heard anyone termed
a guy gamer. Oh he's a guy gamer. He's just
he's just posing with that joystick by his abs, for
(12:55):
just for the just for the ladies. Well, then, I
mean that's another thing. You hear a lot of guys
saying like, shut up about being a girl gamer. I
don't call myself a guy gamer. You're just a gamer
and so, but then that discourages girls and women who
do want to own it, because yes, okay, well there's
a girl gamer demographic. That's like just doing it for attention,
according to these guys. But then what happens when the
(13:16):
girls and women actually want to say, no, I'm different
from you, I play differently, I want different things, and
why do all of these criteria have to exist? Katie
Heeney over at BuzzFeed created just such a perfect collection
of all of the slut shamy, confusing, and sometimes straight
up sexist and contradictory rules for being a girl gamer,
(13:40):
where it's like, you gotta play games, but you can't
be too obvious about it, because if you're too obvious
about how you like games, and they're just going to
assume that you're a girl gamer. And then you know,
they guys want you to be attractive because we like
looking at attractive people. But if you're too attractive, you know,
it's just like and so that's why a lot of
times women will end up going just like, won't speak,
(14:03):
for instance, on you know, like multiplayer games. They won't.
They just keep their femaleness as hidden as possible, just
to not have to even deal with it. Yeah, Blogger
Stephanie ben Dixon basically said the exact same thing. She
was talking about how she finds herself editing certain aspects
of her femininity for fear that it would somehow damage
her credibility. And I mean this gets into all sorts
(14:25):
of issues that christ and I have talked about before
as far as fem phobia goes. But Stephanie says, hey, look,
I have a lot of pink tech accessories, and she
goes into it. It starts to sound really cool, and
she's like owning her differences. She says she accepts the
term girl gamer because for now we're still a minority
that faces a wall of angry nerd rage. But in
(14:46):
talking about her pink accessories, I noticed something very interesting
because at first she's like, yeah, I'm owning it, like
pink is different. But then she says, I liked the
idea of how this obnoxiously defiant and slightly sickening color
would go against the grain somewhat. And then I'm like, oh,
it's Stephanie, Like there's still she while she is owning
pink and owning the term girl gamer, there's still sounds
(15:07):
like there's from phobia in that, because she's calling the
color pink obnoxious and sickening, and so it still sounds
like she's been discouraged over her game playing career from
kind of owning her femaleness. Well, I think it's because
of a lot of those contradictory rules in quotes that
pop up for you know, just you can't you can't
(15:27):
look like you're trying too hard, you know. Um. And
it's fascinating to me that in this segment, specifically like
in gaming, that it's such a prominent aspect of it,
like this just this common assumption that that women have
some kind of ulterior motive for wanting to play games. Um.
(15:48):
But unfortunately, like the kinds of you know, the issues
of harassment that women in the video game industry, the
ones who are making the games, sometimes run up against
another thing there was echoed among people on Facebook was
the issue of also dealing with straight up harassment from
other gamers as soon as their female identity is revealed.
(16:08):
Sometimes they just get an onslaught of come ons, or
just gendered epithets. Uh. There was a survey conducted by
Emily Matthew at the Price Charting Blog which found that
women are harassed four times as often as men, and
six reported being called a slut, whore or other words
(16:30):
that I can't say on this podcast. And there are
also lots of charming requests for women to just get
back in the kitchen and start making lots of sandwiches. Yeah,
and in that pole of the people she talked to
believe that sexism is rampant. Interesting don't but I mean,
you know, you would, you would think that they're okay.
(16:50):
So there is a degree of awareness, but it sure
is still bad out there despite that awareness. It does
go both ways. Fifteen point seven percent of men also
reported that they had experienced sex based taunting, harassment, or
(17:14):
threats while playing video games. Um and ten percent of
women unfortunately copped to using their gender for favors, basically
like strolling into a world of warcraft and being like, oh, yes,
you wanted to give me gold Shore a no problem tee. Well,
and just like we talked about in the last episode,
(17:35):
where um, a lot of well not a lot, but
but many women, probably many more than we even know.
Many women have left the industry because of the abuse.
Nearly thirty six percent of women that Emily Matthew pulled
reported having to quit playing temporarily because of the abuse
and the harassment, versus eleven point seven percent of guys
that she pulled. Game is game is you'd be mean?
(17:57):
Sometimes We're looking a little bit deeper into this issue.
A team over at Ohio University looked at the reactions
by gamers to female voices versus male voices on Xbox Alive,
like looking at first person shooter games, and they publish
a study in the journal New Media and Society, and
(18:21):
one of the researchers, why you en tang Um, explained how,
on average, female voices received three times as many negative
comments as male voices or no male voices, and on
top of that, women's voices received more queries and messages
from other gamers than male voices or no voices. So
it's kind of the same thing of Uh, just by
(18:45):
virtue of being a woman, you sort of open yourself
up to either being called terrible things or being solicited
for sex. Yeah, so you basically your option is to
speak and get abused or remain silent. Yeah, and Tank said,
the take home message is that female players when herd
aren't treated as well as their male counterparts, despite skill
(19:07):
level wins or losses. They women aren't attracting negative comments
just because they be terrible a gaming. Yeah, it's like
there's there's that little sign up on the clubhouse store,
no girls allowed. Yeah, unfortunate, Although I know that not
all male gamers are like this. Guy, guy gamers listening,
I'm gonna call you guy gamers. Don't worry, I know
(19:28):
that it's it's again. I feel like it's the loud
voices of this horrific minority that often get the most
all that they are generating all of this negative press,
because it's horrifying. It is kind of horrifying. So let's
look a little bit more maybe into what women want
in their games, aside from harassment, obviously, because this is
(19:51):
a question that ties back to our part one episode,
looking more at the industry of like what they're trying
trying to figure out of well aside front, we know,
we know the candy crush is popular, but what kind
of games do women really like playing? Because if you
look back into the early days of gaming, the titles
(20:11):
that were made specifically for women and girls were so
hilariously riddled with hearts and sparkles and pink. And there's
actually a site called femicom that's calm with an M,
which calls itself the Feminine Computer Museum. It's a website
dedicated to archiving these quote unquote girl games from like
(20:33):
the early eighties and nineties, and it's kind of fascinating
to see. I mean, these are also the days when
you have alone Carol Shaw or Donna Bailey at atari,
like the only woman like in the room. So not
surprisingly that you have such kind of overtly just let's
play house. You have to do the dishes for twenty
points kind of games coming up. Kristen accepts that challenge.
(20:57):
She will organize the dishwasher. I will I would win
that game, would but I mean, yeah, the museum founder,
I guess we'll call her, basically said that she's preserving
these games to spark conversations, not necessarily preserving them because
they are so awesome, but preserving them because nobody's playing
them anymore and nobody's talking about them. They're not talking
(21:17):
about them the way you would like duck Hunt, Like
everybody has a duck Hunt memory of standing up against
the TV with the gun even though you're not supposed to.
But nobody has those collective memories of these quote unquote
girly games. And so she is working to preserve them
just so that we can take a look at why
we do the things we do, why we look at
certain games the way we do. Yeah, And and she
(21:40):
pointed out how girly video games are rarely advertised, reviewed
or written up, and rarely demoed in stores. And she says,
even if it's a huge seller, like the more recent
game Style Savvy for Nintendo d S, which I mean
Style Savvy, come on, hardcore gamers roll their eyes. But
(22:01):
it's a big seller. And yet it's kind of like
um with fandom in general. A lot of times, girly
fandom is sort of relegated to the corner, just like
Go Go Away, hearts and Polka dots. No, no, you
over here. There's a little pink corner over here. So
behind that line, I picture like the Lego movie, Like
there's all these little universes, different universes for different videos.
(22:21):
Polka dot, polka dots. You go over there, and they're
all like sad polka dot. But the fact of the
matter is, don't don't worry women gamers listening. We're not
suggesting that Style Savvy is what women want in video games.
We're also not suggesting the Candy Crush or Halo or
Grand Theft Auto or whatever games. You know what people
are realizing, Caroline, women want different things. We don't all
(22:46):
want the same kind of game. Weird women are different
then each other. That's what you're That's what you're saying.
Women are different from each other. Yeah, you and me.
We might even want to play different games. I want
to load, I want to play the dishwak your game.
Maybe you want to play Prince of Persia, build the
Sandwich game. Yeah, this is coming from Kevin Kelly over
at joystick dot com. He was talking about how women
(23:08):
do like story driven games. We do appreciate in game tutorials,
because honestly, who reads manuals or even like instruction manuals
when you're putting together an Ikea shelf? Like nobody reads
these things. Um. But but the point is just making
women aware of more games, you know, letting them know that, hey,
they might also like Halo as well. But it's a
(23:31):
matter of not advertising it to everyone across the board
with just some busty, sexy sexpot on the cover. You know.
Keep in mind that your audience is very diverse. Yeah,
I mean, there is market research that does suggest that
certain themes, like games that are more story driven or
sort of a more communication based the sims, for instance,
(23:54):
massively popular among women. Maybe games that might be a
little more emotionally evocative tend to appeal more to women.
But don't get pigeonholes in just trying to remake those
games over and over again. Rather, you know, consider all
of these women who are also really loving to frag
(24:15):
people and see, hey, maybe we can, maybe we can
put a female protagonist in there. Put put a gun
in the hands of a woman, shall we? Video game
wise video games? Well, we are going to talk about
women in video games, the female protagonist of video games,
and and how telling their roles are. When we come
right back from the quick break. Well, since Caroline and
(24:38):
I are all about folks learning and using new skills,
Linda dot com offers thousands of engaging and easy to
follow video tutorials taught by industry experts to help you, yes,
you learn software, creative and business skills. Membership starts at
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(25:00):
dot com, you can learn at your own pace from
bite sized tutorials or comprehensive courses and things like web design, programming,
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com free for seven days by visiting Linda dot com
slash mom stuff That's Linda dot Com slash mom stuff,
so they know we sent you. And now back to
(25:22):
the show. So when we left off, we had established
that while market research has suggested that there are certain
types of games that women like, surprise, surprise, women like
different kinds of things, And yet if you look at
the legacy of female characters in especially like big name
video games, they start to fall into very predictable types
(25:46):
of roles. So, for instance, in the late eighties, this
game called Metroid came out, and I'm sure a lot
of people have played Metroid, and it features this character,
Sammy's female character, and for all of the game she's
wearing kind of this genderless robotic exo skeleton. But then
and it's like super cool because you can like play
(26:08):
Sammy's and she's doing all sorts of cool stuff. But
then when you win the game, the exo skeleton is
taken off to reveal her bikini body. Yeah, and and
an article about this had a really really important point
about this, which is that as you're playing the game,
that robot exo skeleton character, that is you, you were
(26:31):
the hero and you were shooting. But once you win
and the robots suit is removed and you see a
bikini clad woman, then that character isn't you anymore. It's
just a passive object that you get to you get
rewarded with. Yeah. Yeah, And they found we'll get into
this a little bit more. But speaking of that sort
of the role playing that happens within video games, there
(26:54):
is a type of self objectification that happens just by
virtue of playing a character, like you take on the
role of that character, and when you see that character
then stripped down to reveal a busty bikini body, studies
have shown that it makes us think about our own
bikini bodies, and usually more negative ways. And so there
(27:16):
was a two thousand nine study essentially that took a
census of video games and it found that not surprisingly,
male characters not only outnumber women in video games, but
also female characters are overwhelmingly stereotypical and sexualized. Even the
case of a potentially really cool character like Sammu's now
(27:37):
that's people are probably but Kristen, that happened in like
the eighties. That was like the eighties. Things have like
totally changed, right, No, what who are these fictional people
that you're referencing, Kristen guy gamers? Yeah, No, things are
not better. And someone who has done a ton of
research to dig into these kinds of tropes is one
(27:58):
Anita Sarkasian, who made quite a name for herself in
the video game industry, for she had done a Tropes
Versus Women's series for a while, just looking at the
portrayals of women in pop culture, and she decided that
she wanted to really dig into the video game industry
because it is such uh massively popular and growing form
(28:19):
of entertainment for people, and she began. She had a
Kickstarter campaign, and essentially she got cyber mopped by a
lot of people who are not happy about someone wanting
to talk about video games from a feminist perspective, essentially
kind of taking a deeper look at like, well, what
how do these video games portray women? And the good
(28:40):
news is her Kickstarter massively exceeded expectations because she received
such an onslaught of cyber attacks from people. She publicized
and people then rushed to her aid um, and she's
still I mean, if you google her name, especially if
you look her up in you you if you find
her videos, but you also find so many videos that
(29:02):
people trying to discredit her. So I feel like we
need to give a little context to who Anita Sarkisian is,
because if you are a gamer, you've probably heard of her,
and there's a good chance that it isn't in a
good light. But I will tell you I have watched
her videos. She does a great job of offering a
comprehensive and non threatening look at women in games while
(29:25):
admitting that she still enjoys these games. She's not saying
burn video games to the ground, but it's worthwhile to
look into how women are portrayed, because she explained this
so well in an interview with I g N, saying,
think of it this way. If gaming is the air
we all breathe. Right now, the air quality is currently
extremely polluted with thick clouds of toxic sexism, with radioactive
(29:47):
particles of misogyny floating around everywhere. Sounds terrifying, right, Well,
that's society, hello. And of course that's not to say
and and christ and I are trying to drive home
that it's not everybody, it's not all the time and
not everywhere. But there are a lot of tropes in
these games that are worth talking about, even if you
do like playing them. And we're not saying you shouldn't
(30:09):
play them. We are, And so I think Sarkisian is
pleading for a little bit of media savvy, to just
be kind of aware of what you're looking at when
you're looking at it. And anyway, one of the tropes
that she focuses hard on is the whole damsel in distress.
What harm could a damsel in distress possibly have? But
you know, a lot of these in your face things
(30:31):
that we see over and over again tend to drive
home stereotypes about women and the way we think about women.
But anyway, before we get into that, what is this trope? Basically, Uh,
it's princesses, wives, girlfriends, basically women in these games who
often end up kidnapped or somehow frozen and disempowered, or
(30:51):
they're put under a spell, or they're frozen in a crystal.
Basically they're trapped somehow. Yeah, and by trapping the women,
it gives the male hero some kind of incentive to
go through this journey. And hey, you know what, I
love Super Mario Brothers. Princess Peach what a gal. She's great,
but she's kind of the quintessential damsel in distress. Um.
(31:13):
And but this started even before Super Mario Brothers with
Donkey Kong and Pauline also known as the Lady and Pauline,
who was a damsel in distress and Donkey Kong was
actually kind of the model for Princess Peach and Peaches
kidnapped for instance in thirteen out of the fourteen Mario
games she's featured in, and she's only a playable character
(31:34):
and Super Mario Brothers too, which came out in nine
um And she also talks about how you see the
same kind of thing in Zelda named for the damsel
in distress, and she's really Zelda has never really been
to star in her own adventure. Isn't Isn't that a
sad metaphor? It is it really is, Ladies, let's not
be Zelda's Sarkisian points out how she does sometimes get
(32:09):
more active roles, she becomes more of a helpful damsel
at times, but she always ends up at least getting
re kidnapped. She has to be saved at some point,
and she says this exists and pretty much any type
of game, whether you're looking at first person shooters, RPGs, MMOs,
like you're gonna find damsels in distress everywhere and even
(32:31):
when you have a heroic archetype of the hero being imprisoned,
a lot of times the way that hero will escape
is through his own strength and cunning huzzah. And this
poor freaking damsel like so, not only is she like
imprisoned in a castle or she's trapped or tied up
or whatever, she also is the victim of pretty horrific
(32:54):
violence and all these different kinds of video games. She
tends to be basically a disposable woman who falls victim
to any number of horrific violent acts. So Sarcasian takes
through all of these different game titles about how they
follow similar paths of for instance, the hero's wife being
brutally murdered and then you have to rescue the daughter.
(33:16):
That happens over and over and over again. Or you
have a wife or girlfriend's soul being trapped in hell
and so then you know the hero has to travel
to try to like save the soul. And then you
might also have damsels who martyr themselves that will then
propel the hero on his journey. Sometimes also you have
games that force the hero to brutally kill the wife
(33:39):
or girlfriend either because it turns out done da dada,
she was a villain the whole time, or that's like
the only way that you can win the game. Violence
against women solves everything according to these games, right basically,
I mean it's sort of the way that these a
lot of these games work, is it sort of forces
you into, you know, having one sole suan, which is
(34:01):
beating up, killing, stabbing, shooting, strangling, whatever it will take
to kill these women. And that's that's not so good
Caroline now. And and you know, you could be wondering, well,
what does this have to do with anything as far
as real life goes? Why do we care about violence
and video games? Haven't there been studies showing that it
doesn't make us a more violent culture. Well, actually, unlike
(34:25):
needless violence against women and all these games actually does
have quite a big impact. Yeah. Why. Yen Tang, who's
one of those Ohio University researchers we mentioned earlier, said quote,
the general gist of sexual content in video games is
that exposure to such content leads to attitudes that are
unfavorable toward women. And you see this reflected in so
(34:47):
many studies. For instance, the two thousand and twelve study
found that a video game depicting sexual objectification of women
and violence against women resulted in statistically significant increase rape
myth acceptance a sentence really sort of rape supportive attitudes,
the whole idea of like, you know, women asking for it, essential, etcetera. Um.
And that was more prevalent among male study participants, but
(35:10):
not for female participants. But that's not to say that
these kinds of video games that sexually objectify women don't
have negative impacts on female players, right. Yeah, Stanford study
found that women who played with a sexualized avatar, whether
it was basically with her face on it or with
(35:31):
another woman's face, engaged in more self objectification and bought
into rape myths more. Yeah. You see this theme of
increased rape myth acceptance a lot in these studies. Um.
Also in two thousand nine, there was a study that
came out which found stereotype confirming virtual women correlated to
(35:51):
higher levels of sexism and again rape myth acceptance in
male and female players. And we could go on and
on and on. There are a number of study He's
finding over and over again that hey, when we basically
use women, highly sexualized women in video games as props
upon which to inflict violence or rape. There are you
(36:14):
know there there's the infamous rape UH scene in Grand
Theft Auto. There's also a rape scene I believe in
I don't know if it was in the game or
just in promotion for uh tomb Rader addition that came out,
and basically it's like, no, we don't because we're playing.
It's different. I feel like it's different from sexual assault
(36:36):
being portrayed in movies and television in a way because
it's almost more engaging because you're playing those characters, right.
And I feel like when rape and sexual assault are
depicted in movies and TV shows, it's always a bad thing.
It's always like a crime and a negative thing that
needs to be solved. Whereas if you're the first person
(36:58):
player in a video game that evolves rape and sexualizing women,
objectifying women, it's there's there's nothing necessarily telling you it's wrong. Yeah,
it's fodder for your heroism, and and that can have
negative impacts on male and female players, and the solution
isn't yet. Again, it's not a call to get rid
of video games, but rather to ask for better raise
(37:22):
the bar. I mean, you can have you can you
can shoot up as many things as you want to
in games. This isn't us railing against gun violence and
video games, but rather, like you said, you know, Sarkisian
kind of requesting a little bit of media savvy. It's
important to pay attention to what we're consuming and yeah,
(37:42):
and not do away with, like you said, shoot him
up games or whatever, but just offer more and different
things like left Behind, which has garnered incredible praise. People
are coming out of the woodwork to be like, oh
my god, this game is amazing a change in my life.
It features a fourteen year old old girl protagonist, Yeah,
(38:03):
and she also interacts with her best friend Riley, but
she still has to do a lot of really tough things.
And Laura Hudson wrote about left Behind recently in Wired
magazine and it was headlined something along the lines of
left Behind was the first video game that really made
me feel like proud to be a woman, and she writes,
(38:24):
we don't just need more women in video games, we
need more women who don't fit in boxes. And she
talks about how left Behind isn't remarkable just because it
meets a quota, but because Ellie and her best friend
Riley are people. They're fully realized. They're quirky, they're funny,
and they're dangerous. And she says that Ellie is there
because she's herself, and for once, that's reason enough. She's
(38:47):
not there to just titillate and motivate. Players are like, oh,
you know, Ellie's been beaten, so go go kill somebody.
It's all about her. And like we said in episode
number one, uh, Call of Duty. Ghosts, for instance, is
going to have a female playable character in its multiplayer component. Yeah.
(39:09):
BioWare's Mass Effect three has implemented changes that allow for
gay romance. I mean, diversity beyond just women is something
that we didn't even have time to talk about in
a two part series on video games. Um So, LGBT
acceptance and visibility in games is something too that needs
to be strongly addressed. Me. A lot of what we
(39:31):
see is is very headeronormative violence against women. Are just
headteronormative romances, and it's like, hey, uh, I'm over here,
I'm an LGBT player. I exist too, And not to
mention two racial diversity as well, overwhelmingly male or female,
the protagonists are going to be white. A lot of
(39:51):
the industry itself is very white. Um, so there's a
lot of room for improvement. And the thing is, a
lot of gamers sometimes get up in arms about the
possibility of changes. You get attached to a game, you
love a game, if you're spending, like if you're a
hardcore gamer nineteen plus hours a week with a game,
it's understandable that you might be a little resistant to change.
(40:13):
But it's only going to make things better, yeah, you know,
And it's going to make things better for you know,
not just the games, but for the people who play
them as well. And shouldn't that be the the ultimate goal? No?
Not for no. People want to people want to just
shoot things on a screen, right, Yeah? Is that's what
it is? Crush candies. I don't know the answer, Caroline.
(40:36):
This is this is why I really want to hear
from listeners on this issue. What is it like to
be a gamer, especially if you are a woman out there?
I mean, do you deal with issues of having to
prove your credibility? Um? Are you harassed or are you
immune to all of this stuff? Do you find this
kind of these kinds of issues sensationalized? We want to
(40:56):
hear from everybody. What are your thoughts on this mom
Stuff a Discovery dot com is where you can email
us or you can tweet us at Mom's Stuff podcast,
and we've got a couple of messages to share with
you right now. Well, I've got a message here from
Christopher about our men scaping episode, and he said, I'd
(41:17):
like to make a statement of opposition in regard to
your comments about male body hair still being socially acceptable
in the US. As a twenty two year old guy
with body hair, I get ridiculed and laughed at on
a nearly daily basis by my peers and coworkers, and
I'm often told that if I want to get a girlfriend, quote,
you need to not be an abominable snowman bro. Maybe
(41:39):
this is just East Coast college town culture, but my
experience here and in Houston were about the same. As
a side note, I've tried manscaping in the past, both
with near and traditional methods, but removing all that hair
is an arduous task that rewards me with ingrown hair
and the sensation of sand paper taped to the backside
of all my shirts. I can only hope that I
find a lady who doesn't mind my body here, if
(42:01):
any exists, and Christopher, they absolutely exist. Yeah, I'm pointing
at myself right here, because my question to you about
these people who are like trying to humiliate you, are
they all dudes, because there are plenty of ladies out
there who don't mind it or do like it. My
my gentleman caller does have quite a bit of hair
(42:24):
in places, and he's very handsome. Yeah. Yeah, I say,
don't don't listen. Don't listen to the hair haters. And
this is also an example too of why we wanted
to talk about this issue, because you're experiencing the same
and so many other guys i'm sure are experiencing the
same kind of body hair shame that has usually just
(42:45):
been targeted on women. But Christopher, don't worry. There are
plenty of women who don't mind and might even like
a hairy bag. Yeah, Because if you're getting a bunch
of that flak from fellow dudes, all that means is
that they're buying into the junk that like those men's
magazines are selling them, and they're probably voicing some insecurity. Okay,
(43:05):
I have a letter here from es may Um also
about our grooming episode. She says, for as long as
I can remember. As a woman, I have been very
aware of this expectation to remove almost all body hair,
and personally, it's never really sat right with me. I
was brought up with role models like Patty Smith, who
not only grew out their body hair, but we're not
afraid to show it off. The cover to Patti Smith's
(43:25):
album Easter is a perfect example of this. But as
a woman in her early to mid twenties, I've never
come across someone who shares the beauty in body hair.
I'm more than happy with every other aspect of my body,
but hate having to shave for other people. I found
it interesting when you spoke of the anxiety that some
men and women feel when not shaving, and I think
I feel the opposite. I prefer how I look when
(43:46):
I let my body do its thing, and I wish
that wasn't seen as such a disgusting choice. So thank you,
es May, and thank you for sending that picture of
Patti Smith's cover, and thanks to everybody who's written into us.
Mom Stuff at Discovery dot Com is where you can
send your emails. If you want to reach out to
us on social media, check out this podcast with all
(44:07):
the links to all of our sources, watch our videos,
read our blogs. There's one place to go and that
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