After watching the latest Jimquisition ("Creative Freedom, Strings Attached"), and following gaming on "the internets" of late, there is a lot of voice (not specifically Jim's) given to 'gender equality' being a pressing issue for games, gaming and gamers.
They do say if you want to fix a problem you must first acknowledge it. And I just don't think gender equality is the real issue. There are comments speaking about the number of male protagonists vs. female protagonists. But that isn't what gender equality is about.
Gender equality is about equal opportunity (the same applies to race, etc). As an example, look at education. In some times and places, women were denied the right to an education. So were black people, and other favoured prejudices. That is an issue of equality. If, say, a university denied access to women.
If, on the other hand, there was no policy barring women from enrolling in any class of choice, but instead gender became irrelevant to an application, that would be equality. Now say someone was worried that 90% of the students enrolling in Engineering were male, that would not be an issue of "gender equality". This is what would be called a problem of "gender diversification".
I know it may just be arguing semantics, but there are key differences. No one is being denied their rights - as a matter of fact, the 'issue' arises from people exercising their rights - choosing for or against Engineering as a course. The issue is a 'cosmetic' one - there is nothing really wrong with 90% of Engineering students being male, and also nothing to prevent a future time where the proportion is reversed - but it "looks bad". In the example, what usually happens is that the University enforces a policy to favour female applicants. But this is inherent discrimination, and should never be looked at positively (at best a "necessary evil").
I mention this because I do believe gaming has issues. Gender/race/etc diversification is one, as is over-sexualization of females; they are issues because they "look bad", and as such are a barrier to the medium. But both of those are expected given the proportion of white male game developers - you write about what you know. You can't expect the creative process of game design to adhere to a numbers policy without that policy being somewhat draconian and restricting the creative process. It's already a problem in other areas of game design - do we really want to push gender there too?
tl;dr - It's not about sexism or gender equality...it's about the lack of a natural diversity of protagonists. There is no simple solution, and attacking any creator's choice of gender for their creation is going away from a solution, not towards it. What say you?
They do say if you want to fix a problem you must first acknowledge it. And I just don't think gender equality is the real issue. There are comments speaking about the number of male protagonists vs. female protagonists. But that isn't what gender equality is about.
Gender equality is about equal opportunity (the same applies to race, etc). As an example, look at education. In some times and places, women were denied the right to an education. So were black people, and other favoured prejudices. That is an issue of equality. If, say, a university denied access to women.
If, on the other hand, there was no policy barring women from enrolling in any class of choice, but instead gender became irrelevant to an application, that would be equality. Now say someone was worried that 90% of the students enrolling in Engineering were male, that would not be an issue of "gender equality". This is what would be called a problem of "gender diversification".
I know it may just be arguing semantics, but there are key differences. No one is being denied their rights - as a matter of fact, the 'issue' arises from people exercising their rights - choosing for or against Engineering as a course. The issue is a 'cosmetic' one - there is nothing really wrong with 90% of Engineering students being male, and also nothing to prevent a future time where the proportion is reversed - but it "looks bad". In the example, what usually happens is that the University enforces a policy to favour female applicants. But this is inherent discrimination, and should never be looked at positively (at best a "necessary evil").
I mention this because I do believe gaming has issues. Gender/race/etc diversification is one, as is over-sexualization of females; they are issues because they "look bad", and as such are a barrier to the medium. But both of those are expected given the proportion of white male game developers - you write about what you know. You can't expect the creative process of game design to adhere to a numbers policy without that policy being somewhat draconian and restricting the creative process. It's already a problem in other areas of game design - do we really want to push gender there too?
tl;dr - It's not about sexism or gender equality...it's about the lack of a natural diversity of protagonists. There is no simple solution, and attacking any creator's choice of gender for their creation is going away from a solution, not towards it. What say you?
