Violent Vixens

May 15, 2003

Forget golf. Video games are where the sexes are really battling it out as more female characters are cast in fighting roles, according to this.

As vastly improved technologies enable electronic game characters to look, sound and move in a more lifelike way than their forebears, action- adventure and fighting games are taking on new sexual dynamics, mesmerizing some people and disturbing others.

The new female characters may be clever, karate-kicking protagonists controlled by players of either sex. They can also, depending on the player's ability and the game's design, be victims of breathtakingly violent assaults by men with fists, feet, knives or bullets...

For the feminist author Jennifer Baumgardner, watching women do combat in video games is empowering. "I love having images in popular culture and these games that include women as fighters," she said.

She suggests that that casting women as gladiators challenges images of women as passive targets of violence...

Yet critics like Bell Hooks, a feminist theorist, challenge the notion that the emergence of a warrior class of video game vixens is something worth celebrating. By projecting hyper-sexualized women as heartless killers in popular entertainment, real people are being sold a mixed message, she said...

Most disturbing, she said, the female protagonists who engage in physical combat in popular movies, television programs and video games encourage women "not to challenge patriarchy."

The effect is especially potent in video games, she said, because the games' fantasies are so immersive.

Ultimately, Ms. Hooks said, "They take people's minds away from really how much power females are losing in real life."

Talk about immersion in fantasy.

Comments

s.m. koppelman|5.15.03 @ 6:31AM|#

Joe, you took the words right out of my mouth. First "feminsm" gets raked over the coals for allegedly being doctrinaire. Now it's raked over the coals for encompassing a diversity of thought. If I didn't know better, I'd start to wonder here if, um, "the feminists" are right when they say a lot of what passes for criticism of feminism is just plain misogyny.

Feminism is a field of discourse (like philosophy, cultural anthropology and fly-tying), not a self-contained, doctrinaire philosophy (like Maoism or Objectivism). Pretending it's the latter in order to make straw man arguments is lazy at best.

And though ms. hooks sometimes has interesting things to say, I think she's out of her gourd on this one. The population in which I'd be more inclined to wonder whether violent female videogame characters engender a complacency about women's societal gains is men, not women--and I can backhandedly thank ms. hooks for making me wonder about that just now.

Mark S.|5.15.03 @ 8:31AM|#

"Most disturbing, she said, the female protagonists who engage in physical combat in popular movies, television programs and video games encourage women "not to challenge patriarchy.""

Huh? So all those portrayls in the past of the "helpless, fainting, woman" who needs the big, strong, male to protect her WAS challenging her notion of "patriarchy?"

Just goes to show that with feminism, you just can't win.

omnibus bill|5.15.03 @ 10:02AM|#

Yep, wimmin are increasingly marginalized in modern life according to mISS hOOKS.

True facts: Nearly 60% of undergraduate students are women; that means that the percentage of men is approaching 40%. Each year, the gender gap grows.

Initially, I was tempted to dismiss mS. hOOKS comments as paranoid and silly, and hilariously oblivious to factual reality.

Then I realized, that when womyn are finally 80% or 90% of college grads, it will make more sense for men to stay home and raise children, and for women to slave away in the workplace. Yup, our patriarchal male domination will then be complete...

As the dogbody Baldridge used to say on "Blackadder", "I've a very cunning plan."

Phil|5.15.03 @ 10:08AM|#

This is the same Bell Hooks who wrote an impassioned essay about how she wanted to kill the white man next to her in first class on a plane flight, because he wouldn't give up his seat to her friend. Seems he had the ticket for the seat, and she didn't, through what may have been a screwup by the ticketing agent, and he didn't feel responsible. So she wanted to, literally, kill him. I guess THAT'S "challenging the partiarchy."

Plutarck|5.15.03 @ 10:12AM|#

I believe the label "Single Issue Fanatic" suits them quite well.

Do "feminists" realize they have become outright poster-girls of the Fastidious Bitch female stereotype? Does anyone else find that as ironic as I do?

|5.15.03 @ 10:16AM|#

To me, the sign of the times when it comes to "feminism" and "women getting violent" is a simple comparison of two movies. First, look at "Sleeping With the Enemy" from about ten years or so ago. Julia Roberts has an abusive husband. What does she do? She runs away from him, assumes a new identity, and finds another man to help protect her. A very non-aggressive, non-violent response to abuse. Just ten years ago. Next, consider the movie "Enough". Jennifer Lopez has an abusive husband. What does she do? She takes martial arts lessons and kicks his ass. A very aggressive, violent response to abuse. Which is preferable? If I am to believe Baumgartner, the violent response by J-Lo is the way to go. On the other hand, if I am to believe Hooks, both movies are ultimately harmful because although both women take steps to get away from their male oppressor, movies such as these that show women as somehow "empowered" detract from the fact that women, in real life, have no such empowerment.

Is it any wonder so many people are confused by feminism these days?

|5.15.03 @ 10:28AM|#

So we're supposed to hate feminisim for being stultifying and unwilling to tolerate dissent from orthodoxy. Except when we're supposed to hate it for being complicated, inconsistent, and subject to internal dispute. The only coherent message is that anyone who talks about gender roles and images is wrong.

Do images of sexy women being violent promote women's empowerment by promoting postive images, or create a fantasy of women's empowerment? That's an interesting question. Too bad there is nothing in libertarian thought that helps answer it.

Beanie|5.15.03 @ 10:57AM|#

I think the real issue with Feminism (why it may garner such confusion and hostility) is that it's an incomplete and idiosyncratic philosophy. There is nothing Feminism can offer that would not otherwise be covered more thoroughly (and honestly) by Individualism or Humanism. Does an honest person really distinguish Mozart as male and Hildergaard of Bingen as female in any other context beyond historical curiosity? (or Super Mario and Lara Croft, for that matter)

|5.15.03 @ 11:13AM|#

If all political philosophies were as incomplete, idiosynchratic, subject to internal debate, and adaptable as feminism, the 20th Century would have been a much nicer time.