A new game has sprung up from the depths which may make games like Rapelay look like Nintendogs. It's taken me too long to write about this game. Every time I start to, I get sick to my stomach and filled with disgust and impotent rage. Imagine the sadistic depravity of games such as Tsuki Possession, Rapelay, Virgin Roster, or 7 Sins and combine it with the real-film look of The Guy Game and you may be getting close to understanding the sick trash that is Stockholm: An Exploration of True Love (Released 27 May 2009).
Stockholm is an interactive DVD in which you play a sadistic and creepy (even though it's first person) kidnapper. The point, as the name may suggest, is to get your victim to fall in love with you. This goal is to be accomplished through fear using torture, rape, forced nudity, suffocation, gassing, etc. Charming.
Billed as "The Controversial Masterpiece that was Banned from Amazon", Stockholm doesn't just trump other games featuring the domination of women in content alone. There are some things which challenge my beliefs. I don't believe in capital punishment, but Ted Bundy is a man I believe wholly deserving of that and more. I don't believe in torture, an eye for an eye, but I believe that the creator of Stockholm may deserve it.
Remember that charming game where you have to shoot down gay men because they're supposedly going to rape you in the woods? I do! And I'm sure many others have the misfortune to remember that lovely game as well.
However, the Georgia based site originally hosting the game, Uzinagaz, just removed the game and issued this statement: "Our games are not politically correct. They're aimed at teenagers (12-18) and it's true that they're of a juvenile humour. I realise now that this one in particularly could be found shocking, but I believe that you should be able to make this kind of joke in the name of freedom of speech. Incidentally, not everyone in the gay community was supportive of banning the game."
Not much of an apology...I'm still all for free speech, but when it strips a group or person of their agency and incites violence against them, I don't think it should be protected. If you want to have a game called, "find the Bible passage admonishing homosexuals", that's great. And actually...
Biblical Tip of the Day: There are only 6 passages in the big, bad Bible that supposedly reprimand homosexuals but around 362 reprimanding heterosexuals. But rest easy, heterosexuals, God does not hate you (or homosexuals, for that matter). God apparently just has much more to say about how much you're likely to piss him off. Apparently, homosexuals can only piss him off 6 ways...instead of 362.
Anyway, a group called Gay Armenia is the one that pressured the site into removing the game. Not the UN, not GLAAD, or the HRC. Nope. It's cool though. The game has only been around since, what, 2002? So it's understandable. Besides, it only took Gay Armenia and I'm guessing countless strongly words emails 7 years to get it pulled. I mean, where would the dramatic tension be if any of the aforementioned groups had actually cared and stepped in?
So props to Gay Armenia for standing up and actually doing something to not only stop more affirmations of anti-gay violence, but for making the gaming world a little less sucky. That's one small step...oh wait...it's just one small step. But it is a step.
Here is the paper I presented at Queertopia! 2.0 today. This conference has been one of the reasons I have not been able to write as many articles lately. The other reasons all relating to finishing up my last semester of coursework on my MA program in Women's and Gender Studies. Is this a promise of more material soon? Yes. Yes it is.
"Queering the Game: Video Games, Queer Nerds, and Activism"
Presented at Queertopia! organized by Northwestern University's Queer Pride Graduate Student Association
The stereotypical gamer, that paste-white and pimple-ridden boy, unkempt and immature, can no longer serve to represent the gaming community as a whole. More and more, the gaming industry is discovering that this boy does not constitute the only demographic to market to. Time and again, articles in popular gaming, marketing, electronics, and communication magazines proclaim that, against all apparent odds, despite an industry which ignored them, women play games too. This industry has turned its eyes toward the female gamer, that elusive creature who defies the conventions of the 'standard' gamer. Academia had turned in that direction long ago but the market lagged far behind. With even more lag, the white skin of that prototype gamer is changing as well thanks again, in part, to game studies. One striking absence, however, largely remains both in academia and the gaming industry: Where are the queer nerds?
Over the past decade in particular, popular cultural LGBTQ representation has increased in television and film. The substantial discourse surrounding queer visibility in shows such as Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Will & Grace, Queer as Folk, or The L Word, however, has not made its way as prolifically into the video game genre of pop culture. Nor has that visibility transferred as noticeably to this medium. Queer nerds have begun to receive increased attention over the past decade, but not nearly with as much visibility as in other visual media forms. Whereas Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Brokeback Mountain, or Ellen have become household names, video games with queer content do not enjoy the same proliferation of visibility. Outside of the geek community, titles with queer content such as Fable, Fallout, or The Temple of Elemental Evil are not frequently dropped in everyday conversation. As it were, there is no “Fab 5” of the gaming world. While the positivity of queer representation in other media is disputed, queer representation in video games remains a largely unremarked upon phenomenon. Aside from this, the games I mentioned merely give the option of queer activity. Queer as a predefined, predetermined, or central aspect of gameplay, or presented as a definite in the overall plot, has yet to present itself in any salient way. Generally speaking, the presence of queer in video games is subtle and take the form of the ability to make “queer” choices.
The Timothy Plan is a "Christian financial planning" firm which "avoids investing in companies that are involved in practices contrary to Judeo-Christian principles. Our goal is to recapture traditional American values. We are America's first pro-life, pro-family, biblically-based mutual fund group." Intrigued yet? Their claim is that, "If you are concerned with the moral issues (abortion, pörnography, anti-family entertainment, non-married lifestyles, alcohol, tobacco and gambling) that are destroying children and families you have come to the right place." Among the services they offer, they produce a report on video games and the "Top Offenders" of games which, apparently, lead down the long hard road to a hellish disregard and potential destruction of the coveted traditional American family. Truly, I wish that I could hate them more than I do. Their mission goes against my own. Their purpose in existing runs counter to anything I can really get behind. At the same time, however, it's difficult for me to hate them wholly or with complete vengeance as they feel that their mission is right...just as I feel my mission is. Unlike other standard Christian Right organizations, they seem to realize that their particular values aren't necessarily for everyone, stating regarding the video game report, "This is purely meant to inform parents who are concerned with the moral content/issues contained in video games and make available to them information which is not easily found."
That being said, I still feel that Christian Right values, in the variety of forms they take, are nigh completely conduits of hate. Whether the organization or individual itself pronounces their mission or views, through materials or speech, in more obviously hateful ways or not, hate still lies behind all of it. Fear, too. And, given all the recent activity in same-sex marriage/union laws in the past couple of weeks (with Iowa, Vermont, Colorado, and Washington DC - Read more at Huffington Post, I feel it is worth looking at now - even though the Timothy report came out last December. What do seemingly innocuous organizations contribute to hate? If The Timothy Plan takes pains to state that they don't mean to tell others what to believe, how can this be so bad?
It often feels to me that while the racism of today, that modern racism where people only use derogatory epithets in private, in whispered jokes, or start a statement with "I'm not racist, but....," is engulfed in attempts to hide it, the heterosexism and homophobia of today is still something which people feel entitled to. No, racism is certainly not dead, and perhaps attempts to brush it under the proverbial rug simply means that we have less ground from which to resist it, that people can more easily deny it, and that it isn't a concern for today. This being the case, I often wonder, though, if gay "is the new Black."
Of course, I don't mean by saying this that racism is always subtle, nor do I mean to imply that it is somehow "better" than heterosexism. What I do mean, is that heterosexism is more accepted and its manifestations happen to manifest more boldly, with more venom, and tend to have the 'backing of God' according to some, such as the "God Hates Fags" group.
And the way that I'm looking at this is in the la-la land of video games.
Under-representation in games is not news. At least, it shouldn't be. Neither is stereotypical representation. Web and Flash games have been the basis for much argument over free speech and video games and on Video Game laws springing up in Louisiana. Games like Ethnic Cleansing and Border Patrol are at the center of this debate (discourse has also focused on Rapelay).A search for "Ethnic Cleansing game" returns your standard fare of racist (insert expletive of choice) websites as does a search for Border Patrol, but both are mostly relegated to the racist websites. Border Patrol is slightly more prevalent in "non-racist" sites under the guise of anti-immigration commentary. Both searches at least return a number of sites, at the front of the search, which express outrage and concern.
There is another game, however, that has recently drawn my attention: Watch Out Behind You, Hunter!. In this game, you play a camouflage-wearin', gun-totin' hunter who is "under attack". Naked men crawl out from under bushes, tall grass, and trees and amble toward you in a zombie-esque fashion. These aren't zombies, though. They're gay men. If you let them catch up to you without shooting them, rather than trying to eat your brains, they rape you - thus the title informing you to "watch your back". Like all gay men, apparently, these men are attracted to unfashionably dressed straight men to such an extent that they simply can't control their sick, animalistic urges. You must then protect your man-hood in the only way you know how - to kill them. It's "smear the queer" with guns and a purpose.
Rape in video games is, unfortunately, a more common occurrence than some may believe. This is particularly true of Hentai (anime porn) games. Perhaps it is common among other games as well, but I'm much more aware of this theme in hentai.
News somehow hit big on the internet gamer circuit that Amazon was carrying the rape simulation game, Rapelay. Rapelay is a gem of a hentai game in which the entire purpose, as suggested by the name, is rape. At least I'm assuming that that's the purpose - I think I'll pass on playing the game to find out. In this particular instance, feminists are not alone in their anger over the situation. The reception that the news received was actually surprising to me. Generally speaking, feminist issues tend to be a source of ridicule in the gamer circuit. This, it would seem, crossed a definite line for many. According to the Belfast Telegraph the game was listed on Amazon as:
Rapelay Japanese PC game
by Illusion
Game description on Amazon
Rapelay is an offshoot of the Illusion series, Interact Play. You, like in previous installments, play as a public nuisance that gets away from captivity and starts scouting for new targets. This time around you find a family of a single mother and her two daughters. You quickly begin your hunt and capture each woman one by one. The gameplay involves an amusing training/disposition system with which to break each respective target to your liking....
If we think about who we are as individuals, there are myriad of ideas that pop into our heads. It is difficult, if not impossible, to come up with one unifying concept or theme to describe our personhood. We may even take offense if someone were to try to sum us up in a word or phrase, feeling that they are reducing us to a shallow representation of ourselves. Using this thought, we can better see the reality of oppressions. The disenfranchised people of the world are often reduced in just this way. People are handed labels throughout their lives which can work to reduce them to a set of traits based on assumptions packed with prejudice and stereotypes. What prejudices does a black lesbian, for example, suffer from? Can we say that her identity can be broken down into black/woman/queer? Further, can these categories be assigned different levels of relevance in her life? That is, can we claim that she faces struggles more as a woman than as a “non-white” or as a lesbian? Which oppression matters most? This is a question which can never be answered because all systems of oppression work in conjunction with each other.
Feminist theory has struggled to address these issues. Complaints have (quite rightfully) been lodged against much of early feminist theory regarding the dominance with which white, heterosexual, mid-to-upper class feminist issues have been addressed while issues outside of these were largely ignored. Here I want to give a little history of the feminist movement and the notion of interlocking oppressions. I also wish to help clarify the nature of oppression and privilege which feminist theory is positioned to combat. In explaining these issues, I hope to make clear the exact purpose of this website. In making this website, I am faced with many of the challenges inherent in feminist theory. And, with these issues in mind, I will be first to admit that the goals of the site are lofty and there will be difficulties in staying entirely true to this mission as there exists a vast number of differences in experiences of oppression and privilege.
To say that people are different from one another is to state the obvious. We clearly possess many different traits and are shaped by many different experiences. In feminist theory, the idea of human difference has been applied to the experiences of people within different groups. This group concept of difference, according to McCann and Kim (6) was first used in feminist theory to describe gender differences, but then came to be used by women of color to call attention to differences within women’s experiences. It is also applied to "[disrupt] the very notion of a stable identity, arguing instead that identity positions are multiple, fragmented, and mobile” (6). That is, an individual’s identity cannot truly be broken down into a neat and tidy static self. Many feminist theorists emphasize the multifaceted nature of identity and the differing experiences of oppression to “unsettle the notion that race, nation, class, sexuality, or gender can be treated as independent categories" (7). They further explain that:
There are dangers in treating race, nationality, class, and sexuality as if each category captures some perfectly shared common experience or identity. […] Furthermore, in treating one factor as the principle focus of analysis, important interactions with simultaneously present other factors can easily be obscured or misconstrued. (148-149)
bell hooks, an influential African American feminist theorist, has poignantly addressed this issue. She explains that:
A central tenet of modern feminist thought has been the assertion that “all women are oppressed." This assertion implies that women share a common lot, that factors like class, race, religion, sexual preference, etc. do not create a diversity of experience that determines the extent to which sexism will be an oppressive force in the lives of individual women. Sexism as a system of domination is institutionalized but it has never determined in an absolute way the fate of all women in this society. (5)
The Combahee River Collective (CRC) share hook’s sentiment. They describe themselves as a:
Collective of black feminists who have been meeting together since 1974. […] We are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking. (164)
Difficulties have arisen for them in their work in separating race, class, and sex oppression as "in [their] lives, they are most often experienced simultaneously" (166) and they fight to address a "whole range of oppressions" (168).
hooks adds that U.S. feminism began to focus on global oppression, thus contributing to a wider range of oppressions being addressed. This, however, was also laced with similar near-sightedness for, as she explains:
This was a major contribution to feminist struggle [but] in their eagerness to highlight sexist injustice, women focused almost exclusively on the ideology and practice of male domination. Unfortunately, this made it appear that feminism was more a declaration of war between the sexes than a political struggle to end sexist oppression, a struggle that would imply change on the part of women and men. […] Fundamentally they argued that all men are the enemies of all women. (33, original emphasis)
"All men as the enemies of all women" is a notion that I do not wish to follow in the design of this site as I don’t feel it is a terribly useful starting point.
Part of this lack of utility has to do with what privilege and oppression entail. Privilege is, as I take it, the more invisible side of the "isms". Privilege is something that happens to such a pervasive extent that we don’t have to acknowledge (and, indeed, might not even see) that we’re benefiting from it. As Johnson explains, being a white American means not having to think about privilege. Further:
We could say the same thing about maleness or heterosexuality or any other basis for privilege. So strong is the sense of entitlement behind this luxury that males, whites, and others can feel put upon in the face of even the mildest invitation to pay attention to issues of privilege. 'We shouldn’t have to look at this stuff,' they seem to say. "It isn’t fair."(25).
Oppression is a horn on the same beast. It is the slightly more visible side of the "isms", though, we may not always see it; I would argue that oppression as a potentially invisible force stems from privilege, and the definition of oppression that Johnson offers up runs concurrent with this:
For every social category that is privileged, one or more other categories are oppressed in relation to it. The concept of oppression points to social forces that tend to 'press' upon people and hold them down, to hem them in and block their pursuit of a good life. Just as privilege tends to open doors of opportunity, oppression tends to slam them shut. (39-40)
Therefore, it isn’t that men are the enemies of women, that whites are the enemies of people of color, that heterosexuals are the enemies of bi/homosexuals. Merely, we all experience the world based partly on these differences in "identity." Our experiences will differ accordingly and living outside of a certain position makes it much easier to deny the existence of these differing experiences. It is because of this that I do not find utility in making an enemy of the allegedly opposite. Setting others up as enemies simply keeps them from acting as allies.
It is with the theories of hooks, CRC, Johnson, and others like them in mind that I weave this website (as I said, my goals are lofty). Video games are the source of my dissent because of my love of them as well as my occasional discomfort, even anger, with them. It isn’t difficult to privilege and oppression at work in video games. Portrayals of women, of people of color, of GLBT, of anything outside of the white-hetero-male-norm (and even inside that norm) can reach the extreme ends of stereotypes and prejudices. That is, when portrayals of women and minorities occur at all. A study by Children Now found that females accounted for only 17% of total characters in video games. In fact, non-humans outnumbered females (12). They also found that 56% of all human characters studied were white, 22% were African American, and that Asian/Pacific Islanders constituted 9% (22). Further, these systems of oppressions and privileges intersect. The same study found, for examples, that “African American females were far more likely than any other group to be victims of violence” (23) and that Latina characters were completely absent.
Many would likely claim that video games exist only for recreation and have no impact on, or base within, reality. I believe, however, that a distinction between video games and real life is a false distinction. Video games exist as a part of real life. They are a very real reflection of the privilege and oppression outside of the pixilated world, serving as a reflection of popular culture with an even more direct connection to the "powers that be" in game design. Additionally, they can provide the basis for further stereotyping. As Leonard quotes a discussion of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas from the white supremacist website, Stormfront.org,:
But for those of you who have played it, have you seen how much of our point it stresses. You run around and you shoot people, you can go in peoples houses and steel tv’s, vcr’s, stereos, etc…In my opinion, this is one of the greatest games around. It blatantly show how the negroes have corrupted our society. (87)
While it will be difficult to accomplish all of these goals with perfect clarity, I believe that it our responsibility to look outside of our own comfort zones to see what issues exist outside of our own experience. Although this site may not be perfectly able to address all issues of race, class, gender, GLBT, etc, that arise, it will serve to work toward the fulfillment of this goal. So, while this site may not change the world, it will (hopefully) contribute something toward that end. As Johnson ends, so will I:
The human capacity to choose how to participate in the world empowers all of us to pass along something different from what’s been passed to us. With each strand of the knot of privilege that we help to work loose and unravel, we don’t act simply for ourselves, we join a process of creative resistance to become part of the long tradition of people who have dared to make a difference – to look at things as they are, to imagine something better, and to plant seeds of change in themselves, in others, and in the world.(171).
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