Oh boy - lets see here... time to debunk this thing:
And let me preface by saying: No I'm not mysogenist, I think that the damsel in distress trope is overused - but I also argue that it can still be used to tell a good and worthwhile story using themes such as self-sacrifice and the willingness to help others regardless of the hardships you have to go through.
So, lets take this from the top/start of the video:
>"Over the course of the video I'll be offering critical analysis of games..."
No you don't - you simply get up on your soap box and rant. Part of a good analysis is considering alternatives, such as the posibility that you might be wrong, and allowing others to discuss your findings on an equal footing. A monologue doesn't allow this. She disables comments and ratings. That she doesn't allow others to debate her on these things makes her arguments ring hollow to me.
>"Its possible to both enjoy a piece of media, and be critical of it"
I think this is the only thing I agree on in the entire video.
>Using tons of clips of women being trapped/imprisoned from games that... well... aren't that good/interesting/known.
Sure, cherrypick will ya. Good to see nothing changed from her previous video.
>"The majority of these titles [the ones she claims denigrates women] focus on delivering crude, unsophisticated male empowerment fantasies..."
Really? Because a game where its shown that a man who loves a woman deeply, to show him go through hell (occasionally literally) to rescue her can only be bad? No redeeming qualities at all? No wait, you do say later that even setting up a male protagonist and a female love interest as equals doesn't matter.
>"Now and then damseled female characters can be well written, funny, dynamic and likable... but that just makes them being damseled all the more frustrating"
Right - there we have it. By this logic there is NO acceptable compromise for her.
>"...or they [damseled women] can kick the bad guy when he's down, but these moments are largely symbolic and only happen after the male hero defeats the bad guy"
And you of course show the crotch-punch clip that you were so very much called out on for not showing in your first vid. Cute, you DO watch your critique vids, you just don't allow people to comment directly to you. How hypocritical. You then say that such 'symbolic' gestures don't offer any meaningful change to the trope... oh they don't? But you just called them symbolic? Symbolic of what then? An undamseled woman who reasserts the old status quo where she is free suddenly means nothing because she had help getting there? Again, by this logic there is no acceptable ways for her to see women being damseled. Not even if it tells a good story about helping those you love? How heartless.
>"In the most patronizing examples, depictions of female vulnerability are used as an easy way for writers to trigger an emotional reaction in male players"
Wow, so you're saying that writers use plot devices to trigger emotional reactions to get players engaged in their storytelling? Why, I have never heard or seen of this before, how groundbreaking? No, really? What I take umbrage to here is that, as with her first video, she comes off completely heartless and without empathy here. She might as well be saying "Any game where a man has to help a woman with anything is bad".
>Damsel in the fridge, with the occasional added twist of having to save your damsel's soul
I refer back to my "So, men are pigs because they'd be willing to even go to hell and back to save their girlfriends?" observation. This one-sided perspective really irks me. She sees no redeeming qualities in how stories of Man X rescuing Girl Y from hell can be interpreted as a story of self-sacrifice or the willingness to help others, regardless of the hardships that might entail.
>all the examples of "your girlfriend is murdered, free her soul from hell"
Right. Again with the cherrypicking. Oh sure, there might be plenty of games that've pulled this - but as she points out later, then these games don't exist in a vacuum. Are the games she references in any way considered genre-defining or even hugely popular? I recall the clip from Psychonaughts, but I honestly don't recognize that many of the other games. If she chiefly picks from games that even gamers recognize at trite and boring, how can she say that they're exemplar of how the entire game industry behaves? I'm not rejecting the notion that the damsel in distress trope is overused, it is, but by gods her methodology is just so bad.
>"many of them [the games] cross the line into blatant mysogeny"
Ok, so games aren't becoming more emotionally sophisticated, they're just more mysogenistic? Don't think I agree there. But again, my above observation on her cherrypicking and lack of multiple points of view apply on this as well, plus she again reinforces the idea that to her there is no acceptable middleground. Sure, at the end of the video she says that she'll look at 'good' games in her next vid, but that falls somewhat flat when all you do is blast games without any kind of counterpoints.
>"Female characters who happen to be involved in violent or combat situations on relatively equal footing with their opponents are typically exempt from this category [that of mysogenist games], because they're not framed as victims"
You don't say. Well it seems that there are means to appease her, and she uses as a fighting game as an example. Of course, fighting games are renowned for their deep stories and fleshed out characters... right? No not really. So that's not really much of a counterpoint at all.
>Examples of damsels who were already dead, including the dead woman from Hotline: Miami
Ok, considering how minimalistic that game is - and how little you can actually identify of the scores of people you kill in that game - is that really a good example? Especially considereding how willing the protagonist is shown to be when it comes to killing people? Again, I'm just complaining about her choice in examples, how she seems to cherrypick these moments in games. She doesn't really show the context of how these events matter in the games.
>bionic commando, wife is arm
She even laughs at this. Again, no context shown. Was it a willful sacrifice by the wife? Was she subjugated? Its just used as an example of... what?
>the euthanized damsel
Ok, here is a really nasty example. And by nasty I mean nasty example of Sarcesia's lack of empathy. There's this word in mercy killing, called 'mercy', but she doesn't seem to understand the concept. She portrays all these examples of male leads killing their love interests as bad - but again completely fails/refuses to acknowledge the context of these events. Being saved from turning into a monster? Or releasing someone from the unspeakable pain of having been tortured into a mindless husk? All Anisia says here is "the male leads are made to kill their women, which is badwrongmean" - having had a grandmother slowly die to a nasty cancer, I find her lack of understanding that some states of being are less desirable than death to be... well, inhuman, especially since pretty much all the game sequences used as examples show pretty much just that: The women have been put into a situation where they for the most part themselves do not wish to go on living. You can argue that their choice or agency on the matter has been taken away, but I'd still say that without acknowledging this humane side of the issue sarcesian's argument falls apart completely.
>gta 3 ending
Right, this time she actually points out the joke... and rejects it as mysogenist. Because GTA 3 wasn't full of stereotypes bordering on parodies that didn't necesarily take itself that seriously? How about the interpretation that the GTA3 guy shoots himself? Right, because it can only be women who are victimized in games, sure...
>Duke Nukem 3D and forever
Does she even realize that Foverer was meant as a parody game of itself and everything else? If nothing else, this again highlights just how much she cherrypicks her game sequences to further her own agenda, completely ignoring the fact that everyone agreed that Forever was a bad game and not one that could ever be considered exemplar of the game industry.
>all the other examples of women where you 'have to use violence to bring them back to their sense'
Wow, again - completely disregard for the context of these events. Yes, a lot of these games make you use violence to bring the woman back to her senses, but usually its directed at the demon possessing them or the monster grafted to them... not against the girls themselves. She also leaves out the fact that the male characters who do this are quite often shown to be apprehensive and emotionally torn about it. Again, completely one-sided. She even calls this out as examples of domestic violence against women who have lost control of themselves. I'm sorry, but she uses an example where a woman was grafted onto the back of a monster, where the monster attacks the player which you then have to defeat. Here violence is most certainly not aimed at the woman. That she asks the player to end her life afterwards - again - empathy, hopeless sitation, the fact that her biology will probably fail as the monster dies... a lot of mitigating factors that Sarcesian ignores as the player is forced to kill the woman. She doesn't even mention that the agency of the player in the matter is removed as she points out that you have to kill the woman to advance in the game. This kind of dual loss of agency on both the female victim and the player's parts is a side of the issue Sarcesian never mentions, even if the topic would be rather interesting - like if she could find a game where you have the option to spare a woman in such a situation or kill her, and then test which option players take.
>She handwaves away all the "incidental narative circumstances" that are used to explain these events in the games, saying that even if its ok to commit 'violence against women' in the game relative to the game's own internal logic, then its still badwrongevil
Right, because all video games must abide by real world logic, norms, ethics and social boundaries. What part of fictional games doesn't she understand? She even called these games 'power fantasies' earlier, but now she says that them clearly being fictional doesn't mean that you're allowed to produce fictional situations where you do things you wouldn't be allowed to do in real life? By this notion almost any game would be 'bad'. All FPS games where you shoot other people, because you can't do that IRL, even things like Simcity where you can call down a tornado at will is bad because... tornados hurt people. She seems to go by the logic that what you do in games must be constrained by what you can do in real life, although its also clear that she'd prefer to see what you can do in real life constrained further by the norms and ideals she pushes in her own agenda.
>"Games don't exist in a vacuum, and so can't be divorsed from the larger cultural context of the real world..."
Right, even though you clearly picked and chose the games you've showcased very carefully here...
>"...especially in light of the serious epedemic of violence against women facing the population of this planet"
What? Since when? Oh you mean in less modern societies, or places where civil rights aren't really a big thing? But that's more a political issue, especially in old patriarchal cultures that aren't particularly democratic. Why not spend your energy improving social conditions if that's your goal?
>"Research consistently shows that people of all genders tend to buy into the myth that women are the ones to blame for the violence perpetrated against them"
Are you kidding me? What on earth is she using to back this up? Oh wait, she has a bad link to that... lets see, www.brown.uk.com/brownlibrary/WOOD.htm
Hmm... one source, its legit, peer reviewed. However, it only talks about how some abused women try to rationalize their abuse via a fairy tale mentality, or in turn a 'dark romance' narrative - based on... the testimonies of 17 out of 20 women. Ok, clearly representative of all women here. This paper is about the psychology of how abused women rationalize and permit their ongoing suffering - it has nothing to do with video games, and it says even less about men. It only mentions made-for-tv movies as media that reinforce some of these narratives. So, is this a valid source for sarcesia to base her above statement on? If she had more sources, perhaps, but she's make a VERY broad statement based on some very narrow and specific research - so I say no. I mean, really, she could have just gone out and asked people themselves "Do you think that in domestic abuse against women its usual the women's fault?" - what kind of answer do you think she'd have gotten? This all goes back to her cherry picking her sources and examples.
>Then she goes on to say that even though 'most' of the games don't explicity condone violence against women, then its still bad
Right - we've seen this argument several times before, no compromises, right.
>game devs don't necesarily partake in some grand conspiracy to denigrate women, they just don't realize they're doing it and are constrained the violent game mechanics they make
This kind of point would have been quite interesting to hear more about a lot earlier. A shame its first put out three quarters into the video - and her wording of this is also a little suspect to me. She doesn't rule out the possibility of the conspiracy, and makes it sound as if in games where "violence is the only meaningful mechanic avaliable" means that any interaction with female characters in such a game must automatically be violent as well. Now, I'm sure I could find the first thirty examples where shooters and action games contain female characters you never ever hurt (more likely where you try to save them...)
>playing violent misogynist video games don't automatically turn people into violent misogynists.
That's odd, I thought that was your point throughout this video. Again, this might have been a good thing to open with - in the first video.
>these games don't care about the women in the game as much as what the deaths/denigrations/plot conveniences the women allow for can produce for the male main character.
Well... the games are about the MAIN characters, but again this just sounds so one-sided. She's already dismissed games that attempt to develop the relationship between a male main character and his damseled love interest, and this just hammers home that point again: There doesn't seem to be any pleasing her short of painfully political correctness.
>Darkness 2 sequence with the girlfriend shot
Right, again - no context given to people who don't know the game - perfectly cherry picked little moment. Could it be that its the mobster-looking guy who actually kills the woman who's forcing his narrative/perception of the onto the player character? The woman even says that its not the players fault, hinting of something bigger that we have no clue of. This scene could have come about in any number of ways - like, if it was the woman who stole something from the bad guy and simply framed her boyfriend... and then gets inadvertently used as punishment against the boyfriend? Who knows, I certaintly don't, so this example is just plain useless IMO.
>women are framed as the reason for the heroes torment - or, his [a male main character] guilt over failing to protect his love interest
She makes it sound so cold and clinical. Isn't it a rather normal and even human motivation to protect the ones you love? I'd even go so far as to say that that's a fairly gender-neutral motivation - so that she posits that male characters feeling bad that they couldn't protect their loved one is a bad and denigrating to women motivation... Well, it actually completely rules the possibility for a gender reversal to be considered any better, because by her logic it'd mean that it'd be denigrating to men to have to be protected/rescued. Oh the idiosyncrasies of forced equality.
>its not about guilt or wanting to save your girlfriend, its about restoring your masculinity!
Wow, again - no empathy here? No room for just... say, wanting to save your girlfriend because you like her and want her to be safe? Wanting to restore her agency from those who took it from her? Again, this no-compromise one-sided perspective is just terrible.
>but its still totally ok to have women as damsels, even dead ones, as part of your storytelling - you just have to be really considerate about how you frame these events
You don't say? Why not open with this point at the start of the video, or the first video? Its like she's backtracking on all the vitriol she's been spewing
>women shouldn't just be minor plot points in stories about men's struggles with patriarchy and their failing expectations
Funny I thought she'd never mention how these games pigeonhole men just as much as women... but that's all she says about that subject too - no in depth analysis or anything. Maybe in a much later video?
Good grief. So many cherry picked references, ignored contexts, lack of human empathy and a complete and willful disregard and decrying of any in-game context for the events she calls out as mysogenist and denigrating to women. Not sure if this video was worse than the first, but its close.
