fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2872 ]

[ SECRET POST #2872 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2872 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 019 secrets from Secret Submission Post #410.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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Yeah.

Could be a matter of opinion but I think it's absurd. Rape as a topic is not inherently anti-feminist. The city elf origin had a threat of rape, yes, directed at an oppressed people from a man in power. The man in question is a villain. No rape is shown, nor is anything remotely sensual about how the plot is handled. Nothing at all to suggest it was done for "sexy" purposes - and by the way, probably something near half the cast is female and they don't face threats of rape, so it isn't a matter of all female characters facing that.

I don't even understand the argument, unless it's that any plot ever involving the word rape is sexist. And... it's Dragon Age, I don't think there are many more feminist video games out there.

On its own the origin wasn't that bad, but I think the idea is that you don't need to use rape threats to establish that people are oppressed, and that when you look at the origin in the context of all the other games that use violence against women in order to make their world more gritty and realistic, you start seeing a troubling pattern.

But IA that that clip is overused, considering there are games out there that really gratuitously and tastelessly use rape as a plot device or mood setting. I think the rape in the origin was unnecessary, but it was still handled better than most games handle it. YMMV, of course.

I agree that you don't need to use rape threats to show people are oppressed, but that doesn't mean rape can't/shouldn't be used in a story, or that it's unrealistic. I am absolutely willing to criticize rape scenes - when they are portrayed as violently sexy, overly graphic without a purpose, or there are no female characters who don't exist without threat of rape. But in the case of Origins, none of this even applies. There isn't even a "rape scene" to speak of. The oppression in question is against a fictional race (elves) after all, and no female character aside from this incident is threatened with rape. As the series expands, threat of rape, when it occasionally is alluded to (it's never shown), seems to apply equally to the male characters.

I just don't think Dragon Age applies to this trope. I think there are video games with problematic rape/threat of rape scenes, but I do think it's unfair to take one scene out of context and act as though it implies something more than it is. Trends in video games are important to point out but I don't see the point in falsely accusing non-sexist media in order to make an argument.

It's just so fucking played out, though. Want to threaten women in fiction? Hey, rape's always good. Insensitive in real world terms and unimaginative in fictional universes.

NAYRT

Except the city elves are an apartheid group in a pretty well-off city, and most of them have jobs as servants, if at all. The man in question is the son of a lord of the city, and a right bastard. He has ALL the power over the elves, and could bring them down with a wave of his hand if he so pleased.

History shows that, time and again, with that power dynamic rapes happen. So it's not unimaginative, it's realistic.

But, but, but I really wanna introduce rape cuz it's edgy and cool and whatnot and REASONS why rape should be included because it's edgy and cool and whatnot and FUCK THE HELL OFF. Rape is not entertainment for a fucking GAME. A GAME that fucking teenage boys are beating off to. Jesus fucking Christ. Games aren't HISTORY they're fucking GAMES. These are fucking games that basement dwelling losers will use to justify making death threats to Anita and Zoe and anyone who dares to criticize their creepy loser culture. They're not history, they're escapism. Fuck off.

Obvious troll is obvious.

nayrt

They're kind of right though, if a bit extreme in the wording.

da

No, no. They definitely are not even remotely right.

Yes, bad things should never be included in media ever. No murder, no torture, no people get beat up, no muggings, no rape. Games are supposed to be fun. That's why we should only play Mario. Oh wait, that has killing of koopas, thus animal abuse. Let me think... Farmville perhaps? Because we all know "escapism" is only relevant to happy sunshine daisy land.

Every single tragic backstory trope has been played out. It's not like every origin had a rape threat.

But it's a thing that actually happens and has happened throughout centuries of history. Are people just supposed to act like it doesn't exist and that it's never used as a threat against women? Because I find that a hell of a lot MORE offensive.

You know what else doesn't exist? Elves and magic.

I don't really see this point. One can't or shouldn't deal with mature real-life issues simply because there's magic? I'm actually interested in mature fantasy. I want fantasy that includes real issues, I'm in the market for that genre. I'm not interested in sexist treatment of female characters or rape done to be sexy or edgy, but since neither of those arguments applies to Dragon Age I'm not sure what we're discussing.

Well, here's where not everybody agrees: some people don't necessarily want to deal with rape in their games, because it's enough to deal with it in real life. From that perspective, I think that asking why sexual assault has to be common is a legitimate question. There are plenty of other real-life issues that aren't as commonly dealt with in video games, even though they're present in real life.
I will take your word that concerning Dragon Age, she took things a bit out of context. But are you really saying that there is no merit to any of what she says, sexism is dead, videogames are all A+ and address rape and assault in tasteful, thoughtful ways?

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2014-11-14 15:21 (UTC) - Expand

Please tell me why a game that deals with issues such as classism, racism, genocide and torture should not be allowed to also touch on rape.

But it's NOT "played out" in Dragon Age. I'd agree if all the women, or a lot of the women, were threatened with rape. But 99.9% of them are NOT. The rape mention only happens in one possible origin story. Sure, I agree it's done to build angst for the main character as much as world building and drama building - but every single origin story is about building angst for the main character and 7/8 of them don't deal with rape, not to mention rape isn't used for plot at any other point in the game so most players are unlikely to ever encounter it.

I get the point that it can be exhausting to see it time and time again, but the suggestion seems to be that rape should never ever be used in fiction, which I think is untrue. I think it's worth bringing up games that overuse rape as a threat against women, especially taking into account how the female characters are treated overall. But I think it's useless to dismiss a game completely because it had one scene that dealt with rape, that doesn't represent the game's treatment of women even remotely.

Showing the clip by itself on Colbert didn't really showcase the whole of the argument. The point of that particular video, as with most of her videos, wasn't that every specific instance of rape/violence towards women is by itself sexist. It's that there are so many examples across so many games that it becomes kind of normalized. Like, if your game is at all adult or edgy, there absolutely has to be a strip club/brother, or there's usually women being abused at some point, and every villain can be easily identified by the fact that they're sexist assholes. Some gamers will argue that any setting won't feel "mature" or "realistic" if those things aren't included, even in settings where the culture has been created from scratch.

Or an example Anita didn't actually use but I've seen elsewhere, Mortal Kombat (I love MK). Why are all the women dressed in string bikinis? Because Shao Khan is a sexist asshole. And that's a worthy explanation, because he's the villain. But when every other villain has the same reasoning, it feels less like justification and more like an excuse to have women in bikinis.

It's not about individual games, it's about the pattern across all games.

+1000

A comparable example from different media: it's like the dead queers trope that used to be overwhelmingly present in books, films, etc. and that still lingers today. Is it inherently bad to kill your protagonist(s), regardless of their sexual orientation? Of course not. But if the vast majority of straight protagonists survive to the end of their storylines, and the majority of queer protagonists die miserably, then that sends a really negative message.

There's also the fact that the examples provided are disproportionately male on female rape, even though male on male rape is just as common and just as damaging. Not to mention that, frequently, it's tossed into a female character's backstory to make her "tough," even though male characters of similar grittiness rarely have any sort of sexual abuse in their backstory. Rape threats are also often used to show that female characters are in a nasty predicament, even if just plain ol' threatening her life like a male character in a similar situation would work just as well. Lazy writers use it as the "tragic past" du jour of female characters without giving her alternative venues of proper development that could suffice. Writers who throw this trope around often don't do any research into it, and sometimes make the PTSD magically go away when the heroine has consensual sex for the first time.

Some women like to look to fantasy as a source of escape. When it feels like almost every single female character is being threatened with rape or dealing with the consequences of being raped, you can get pretty sick of it, especially if it's something you had to deal with in your own life.

Yeah, exactly this. If there were plenty of games (or movies or shows for that matter) that showed women being strong and interesting and complex without resorting every other time to some kind of sexualized violence, the ones that employ it could simply stand on their own merits. But because these tropes are used so often, it gets tiresome and starts to feel like more than just artistic choice.

And defending every individual game on the grounds of, "It's not sexist because the villain did it," "It's not sexist because it's not a major plot point," etc doesn't help change that pattern.

I think that a lot of people ignore the point she's making because of individual game context, and don't register that the point is showing a pattern.
I mean it's like having tragic dead gay characters. There's nothing wrong from a story perspective with killing off a gay character more than any other. But when all gay characters tend to end up tragically dead, you have a trend there worth considering.

The problem about Anita: She often doesn't really take an example of the thing and says "this is an example of the thing", but instead takes a terribly researched, reaching, not-clear-at-all and open to interpretation thing and says "this is an example of the thing".
It's like criticising a movie for the dead gay character trope when it either doesn't have any gay characters or you complain about that one gay guy dying when the character who died wasn't the gay character in the first place.

That's why a lot of people are so frustrated with her videos: There are actual issues, and they should be talked about. But taking bad examples and not knowing what she is talking about is not the way to do it.

I accept what you're saying. However, I really wish that more often when there is conversations about her videos people would actually point out mistakes and correct them, rather than go of spewing vitriol and calling her a lying skank. Because I'm not really invested; all I know is that she presents her arguments without a lot of drama, for you to agree or disagree with, but the furor around her has exploded into disgusting name-calling.
I do take what she says about games with a grain of salt, but I have to say, seeing some of the footage she's posted it's made me not want a whole lot of games to ever enter my house.

That, I agree with. It probably doesn't help that she never permits any ground/opportunity for actual, level headed discussion, also hiding behind the "I can't because everyone will hate on me again" problem.

I would really like to see her in a discussion with someone who can counter her points in a civilised manner (like this person: http://dpadblog.com/2014/06/17/critique-of-sarkeesians-women-as-background-decoration-video/).

(no subject)

ketita - 2014-11-14 14:25 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2014-11-14 14:49 (UTC) - Expand

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