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dontexpecttomakesense:

I know
making a review of this now that is over is kind of a moot point. But truth be
told I never sat down watched what all of this is about. Now that I have seen
it, freedom of expression allows me to say what I think about it.

 Now I could
make a minute by minute review of the episode(s), but I don’t have the time so
I decided to make a bullet point of the main issues I have with the episode(s):

•  The “videogames cause sexism” line
  of thinking

Talking about that is like beating a dead horse,
but I have to make reference to it. Anita constantly (but never overtly)
references how this trope born out of outdated gender roles is constantly reinforcing
said outdated gender roles and enabling an “epidemic” of gender violence
against women. Given that it has been proven that videogames don’t cause an
increase of violence in people it’s highly unlickely that they do cause a rise in
sexism. The only prof Anita brings to the table is that there are sexist people
in the world and that there are sexist moments in videogames. Therefore, Anita
is constructing a cause effect where there is none, given that a very similar
cause effect has been disproven.

•  Female characters are objects,
  either a prize or leftovers in a fridge

1.       Women are objects. In videogames
everything is an object. They’re pixels, data, not real. So you can’t objectify
something that is already an object. But given that one of videogames
objectives is immersion, will leave that aside for a moment. Anita proposes
that the damsel is a prize to be won, devoid of any kind of characterization.
While that is true in the oldest games (I’d like to point out that the rescuer
didn’t get any more characterization either), nowadays the are far more
developed, even if I must admit that more often than not said characterization
revolves around the rescuer.

2.       The woman is a prize. It is not.
Plain and simple. Because when she is saying that, she’s erasing the emotional
factor that pushed the saviour to go rescue the damsel. Peach is not a prize,
she’s Mario and Luigi’s friend, as well as the rule of the kingdom they live
in. All of those protagonists that have their daughters kidnaped are fathers,
those whose girls are kidnaped are boyfriends in a committed relationship, and
so on. When doing this Anita is striping those Damsels of the characterization
they have while simultaneously saying that the male saviours don’t or can’t
feel any kind of emotion.

3.       The woman in the refrigerator. I’ll
admit this trope is, usually, a shallow attempt at drama. But again Anita is erasing
the emotional connection and depth that there is between the characters.

• Male characters are owners or a “male
  power fantasy”

1.       The male saviour wants to get back a
position or regain his masculinity. Another sweeping generalization. This one
goes linked to the first two in the fact that the male saviour is more
concerned in regaining his possession or his masculinity rather that the
emotional bond that he and the damsel share. Anita states that the male desire
of revenge doesn’t come from love but from shallowness or emasculation. These
reaches it’s peak in the section of “the euthanized damsel” where Anita’s many
references to mutilation, deformity or monstrosity makes me think she’s
implying the male saviour is doing this not out of mercy to a suffering soul
but because the damsel is no longer pretty, all while she constantly ignores
the context of these situations and the emotional impact that these carry.

2.       The male character is a “male power
fantasy”. Or is to say an avatar which the skinny ugly virgin nerd can feel hot
powerful and sexual. What is being said here is that the player (always a
straight male) is playing because he obtains some kind of sexual gratification
out of it. Instead of playing the game because it’s cool or the gameplay is challenging
or engaging. It also conveniently ignores the themes of male disposability that
are so present in the damsel in distress trope: men throw themselves in front
of danger without regard from themselves to save someone they love, whether
they survive or not doesn’t matter as long as the damsel does.

• Ironic sexism vs satire and
  deconstruction of sexist tropes

Anita says that games poking fun of this trope
keeps being sexist. This misses the point that satire needs of an audience that
understand what is being said. They do that, because they expect the audience
to know it’s a stupid trope, that should not hold any value in real life.

• Distressed dude

The assumption her goes with the line of
thinking that games cause sexism (against women only). Women as damsels is
sexist because it reinforces the gender roles, but the reverse doesn’t hold any
water. In here let’s study where this need men have to protect women comes
from. Many will say that is a paternalistic attitude because she is the weaker
gender. In my opinion that is not actually true (but there are men who do cling
to this idea), men protect women because the future of our species hangs from
them, they’re special and must be protected at all costs (from here also comes
the gender role of male disposability mentioned before). While coming from this
explanation what Anita says is still kind of true (the damsel and the dude don’t
hold the same “weight”) in the Damsel in distress trope what pushed the saviour
to act is an emotional attachment, therefore it doesn’t really matter the
gender of the “damsel”.

• Why it’s the trope still prevalent

There are many reasons why. One of them is,
like Anita mentioned it’s a very old trope, so there is a lot of material to
take inspiration from (or just recycle), another is that is an easy resource,
and another one is that it allows us an escapist option, a world where we can
take matters into our own hands.

My opinion on this is that while the trope
doesn’t need to go away and doesn’t cause sexim, and in fact the trope itself has been simplificated focusing only in the woman and ignoring the man and the connection they have. Still I must add that diversification from the traditional Damsel in distress needs to be encouraged, and allow more women rescuing women (like in Bayonetta 2) women rescuing men
(Anita does mention some of these, but of course they’re not good enough), or
men rescuing men (The Evil Within does a good job with having to rescue Joseph
or Leslie).

As concluding remarks I just want to point out
that what Anita is doing is not presenting a conclusion that comes from analysing
and making a critique of modern and old videogames, but she is charry piking (and
sometimes not even that because she has to take away the context for the
example to fit) what is best to push a preestablished narrative
that serves an agenda.

Damsel
in distress – Ms Male character – Women as background decoration
– Women as rewards – The lady sidekick – Not your exotic fantasy
– Sinister Seductress – All the slender Ladies – Women are hard
to animate – Lingerie is not armor – The Male gaze – Strategic
but coverings

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Conclusions