From the ‘Me’ generation to the ‘Mine’ generation
Generally, I try to avoid writing zeitgeist-style posts because if given the opportunity to wax philosophic about “kids these days” I generally edge into an uncomfortable rhetorical zone where I feel I’m one generalization away from declaring that Geritol is awesome and those damn kids need to get off my lawn. And frankly, the Jade Raymond thing has already been covered extremely well by others, and having come a bit late to this particular party, I don’t think I could add any insight to this particular case per se beyond the abundant other instances of asshole gamers acting like assholes. Nevertheless, this is a blog for Feminist Gamers, so here we go.
In case you haven’t followed it, here’s a quick rundown of what’s happened. One of the most highly-anticipated new-generation console titles to come out this year, Assassin’s Creed happens to have an attractive woman producing it. Her name is Jade Raymond and as a game producer charged with drumming up interest in the title, she has appeared in several interviews and conventions to plug the game. Unable to step away from the stereotype that all gamers are sexually frustrated males, a series of inappropriate “Jade Raymond: I’d hit it”-style articles appeared on some of the top gaming news sites, and culminated in a cartoon depicting Ms. Raymond prostituing herself and being sexually humiliated. Ubisoft is issuing cease and desist letters over the comic, which is naturally bringing out trolls describing the company as a bunch of “pussies,” and declaring that Jade Raymond is just a “touchy bitch.”
And in case you’re wondering, the comic wasn’t even remotely funny. It served only to humiliate Ms. Raymond and reinforce the sexual availability of women that videogames have been mired in for too long.
It’s often been said that the Baby Boomers were the “me” generation because they were supposed to be “the most self-absorbed generation in history.” But as I review this latest scandal, and collate this information with other studies that have been done showing that those of us who spend most of our time on the internet pretty much keep ourselves inside the strict confines of our own desires, I’m tempted to declare that the post-Gen X-generations are the “mine” generations.
When we look at the surfing and consumption habits of the younger generations, we find that we are very savvy about consuming what we like. We have a wealth of information at our fingertips, and as we act as the content management for ourselves, we’ve gotten very good at focussing our efforts on finding content that appeals to us, and filtering out content that does not. Mostly, people talk about this in the political sense, but it really extends to all corners of our consumption of self-driven information. Someone interested in videos of people being punched is not going to search for “cute kitten” on YouTube, and someone interested in degrading pictures of women is more likely to regularly read Something Awful than they are Feminist Gamers. Because a person hand-selects the content that they are consuming, it gives them a feeling of ownership of the content. Just ask a successful blogger who has had a meltdown in their comments section because some of their posters decided that the blogger had done something “inappropriate” to the spirit of the blog.
Gaming sites are an interesting microcosm. There are the more high-minded sites like Gamespot and 1Up, who are reluctant to engage in editorial misogyny, sites like Joystiq which attempt to be generally nice to the ladies, but which have their occasional cock-ups (if you’ll forgive the pun) but who aren’t particularly interested in moderating their forums, then there’s Kotaku which has had some very questionable frat-boy writing, and finally there’s Destructoid, which actively encourages misogyny and degradation of women. And this stratifying model works incredibly well for gaming sites because their regular readers can select the gaming news site that best suits their needs. If a male is sexually frustrated and can’t look at a picture of an woman without commenting loudly to others about her fuckability, it might seem like a good idea that they have their own little troll den safely tucked away from the rest of us. Unfortunately, because they’re off in their own little troll den where they’re patted on the head and given lulz for admitting that they view women as objects to be consumed, there’s no real opportunity to correct this behavior. So when a cease and desist letter lands in the middle of the den, they become confused and beligerant.
It takes an even more interesting dimension specifically when it involves misogyny, because this is absolutely the gaming industry reaping what it sows. So even though Ubisoft’s offered up girl gamer softcore in the form of the Frag Dolls, it finds itself in a rather difficult position of explaining to the hordes that Jade does not belong to them, which is a concept so foreign to these folk it might as well have been delivered by a talking platypus with an alien slimecreature playing the flugelhorn upon its back.
Gamers have been provided a perfect buffet of women served up for their consumption. They can enjoy furrie catgirls, doe-eyed schoolgirls, saucy adventuresses, quasi-doms who can play hard-to-get until the sun dims, helpful nurses — you get the idea. What they rarely get is a woman who is an autonomous, thinking being not there for the challenge of conquering or for pure beat-off value. And when those characters do show up, they are duly dressed-down in the dark crevices of DeviantArt. So when gamers are presented with a woman in the context of a videogame, it’s quite natural for them to see her as something to be consumed.
Notice anything about this video? Jade Raymond is a gamer without any pretention or giggly self-promotion that accompanies a lot of industry-sponsored girl gamers. She’s not playing to the camera, she’s not talking in a husky “pardon me, boys” way. She’s talking about the game in a way anyone else charged with drumming up interest in the game would. It’s not that they found a woman who is hot to plug the game, it’s that the woman who is plugging the game happens to be hot. And because the fanboys can’t relate to a woman in a non-ownership capacity, creating a sexually objectifying narrative for the woman in question becomes a top priority in order for her to make sense within her context.
If the “me” generation were ultimately a bunch of self-absorbed teenagers, the “mine” generation is a bunch of bratty toddlers. Photos of pregnant women’s bellies showing cellulite? Rage about how disgusting and fat those women are because they don’t meet your needs. An attractive female game producer? Draw a comic where she’s sexually humiliated so that you get what you want out of her. If she objects, rage and storm over “as if that stinkyhole isn’t using her sex appeal to sell her game anyway.” Defecate, retrieve, render.
There will probably be a little bit of legal wrangling over free speech vs. libel vs. defamation in this whole brouhaha, which is a difficult tightrope to walk even if you have mental capacities above simply “Me like tits. No tits? Waaaaaah!” So watching the fallout from this particular legal battle play out on the forums of places like Something Awful might only be entertaining if you happen to like the semiotic equivalent of YouTube videos of toddlers getting kicked. And God help me, maybe I do.
November 20th, 2007 at 6:22 pm
A friend of mine worked a summer at Electric Playground and he was disgusted with the comments trolls on the forums would make a bout Jade.
November 20th, 2007 at 6:31 pm
Once again, MP, you hit the nail on the head with a different perspective on this story as how this generation has become really worse-off than the old one.
As a white, 20-year-old male gamer in college, I am consistently embarrassed of being part this demographic when something like this pops up on the gaming radar. Good god, is this really the group that I belong to, even implicitly? Am I really one of the exceptions to the rule (at least, I’d like to this so) because I find the obsession/fascination with Jade hitting a level above creepy, and because I happen to think that the trolls and that comic artist are in the wrong? Is an intelligent, attractive woman in gaming really all that amazing to look at for the average gamer? It’s hitting the point where those are rhetorical questions.
Yes, Jade Raymond is a pretty lady. Yes, she is attractive and even more so because she is a gamer. Yes, she is a real smart woman for making it big into the field, and having the computer science background to prove it. After all, how many women can claim to breach this male-dominated industry and actually become the producer of one of the hottest titles of the year? But jeez, all of the sudden an intelligent (and by chance, attractive) woman becomes a producer who does her goddamn job and then she becomes the proprietary eye-candy of every girl-deprived and over-porned late teenager and early twenty-something? These trolls actually try to excuse their art and their articles that smell just short of stalker-like because she’s pretty, because she had it coming, and because they have the right to be assholes? Are you fucking kidding me?
The only time I saw of Jade beforehand was probably here in Feminist Gamers where she was describing how the cities in Assassin’s Creed were based off of real documents (and she does it again in this interview). I thought to myself, “Great, I love seeing a woman make it big in the gaming workplace, and her creative potential and gaming background is nothing to shake a stick at (pun intended). Those are some sweet cities she’s showing.” I saw this interview just now. Not once did she say “So, boys, you enjoying what I’m showing you so far?” or anything porn/”slut”-like that I’d expect a Frag Doll to say to titillate the viewer.
I admit, out of perverse curiosity I started to search for the comic, but thought better of it and gave up on the search. I don’t want to lose more faith in my demographic more than I already have. On the plus side, that YouTube video has a version with Street Fighter sounds, and it puts the hilarity somewhat above ‘gut-busting’ level. I think I may be less moral-minded than I thought for laughing at that.
November 20th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
The comic is tasteless. The artist is a sexist waste of talent. Don’t waste your time.
I also feel disgusted for being lumped together with these misogynists for sharing the same interest and gender. I try to speak up against it when I can, but I think lone voices would benefit from an anti-sexism gaming community. You know, with something to identify and promote anti-sexist sites, clans and servers, and perhaps an anti-sexist gaming blog to match the sexist Destructoid. Etc, etc.
With Street Fighter sound effects, the baby kicking video is indeed hilarious: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaQx6FW7l7o
November 21st, 2007 at 2:55 am
You know what meme really bothers me? The phrase “attention whore.” If I had more time right now I could probably empirically verify this, but I would bet that about 90% of the time the phrase is used, it is being used to describe a woman. And, as a practical matter, it generally means “a woman who has the audacity to appear in public/allow it to be known in a public forum that she is a woman.” I think it ties in a lot to the studies that show that women who talk at all are subconsciously perceived as dominating conversations, even when they do less than an equal share of the talking. It’s considered natural for men to make public appearances and talk about their games because that’s what men do. But when a woman talks at all she becomes an attention whore, because she’s talking more than she should. The whole attention whore idea is one I see a lot on blogs as a way of dismissing any woman who makes a cogent point, and I really wish it could be stomped to death.
As for the legal side of things, it depends upon the jurisdiction in which suit is brought. Ubisoft has the luxury of being able to pick their venue, so that’s nice for them. On the other hand, American libel laws are generally pretty favorable to libelees. This, I think, is why most of the letters I’ve seen posted from Ubisoft’s lawyers focus on trademark violation rather than defamation; I don’t think Ubisoft, if they brought suit, would try to bring suit for libel. Rather, they’d be trying to use America’s more favorable IP laws and California’s Right of Publicity laws.
I still don’t know how this would go. I’d like to think that people who do law for a living, like the attorney at Nixon Peabody who sent the letter, know a little more about law than people who are professional assholes, like the SA folks and the comic’s author.
Oh! I know what’s going on here! It’s the Communications Decency Act! The CDA provides broad protection for webhosts of all sorts, including operators of websites and discussion fora, from liability for any of the content hosted or linked to by users of their site unless the web host personally authored the offending material. This includes defamatory material, as determined in the oft-cied case Zeran v. America Online. But the CDA includes a big carve-out for IP law. Thus, on the CDA alone, web hosts are immune from any suit based on content unless the suit is IP related.
For IP suits, you have to go to the DMCA’s safe harbor provisions, which provide a bunch of safe harbors for web hosts that can meet certain criteria. But! The DMCA’s safe harbors only apply to copyright- and patent-infringing material, not trademark infringing material. This was pointed out in Gucci v. Hall & Associates, which determined that web hosts are broadly liable for trademark infringement that occurs on their sites and can avail themselves of neither the CDA’s exemptions nor the DMCA’s safe harbors.
That’s what’s going on here. Ubisoft is phrasing their claim in terms of trademark infringement, not in terms of defamation, because even though it might be a weaker claim it means that SA and their ilk can’t claim any broad statutory immunity.
November 21st, 2007 at 8:21 am
I’ve been braving another forum on this issue as well (the same forum where I got into the fight over the dad who bought a Wii behind his wife’s back then tried to paint her as a badguy).
All of the responses are leaning toward the typical “what about Roberta Williams!? She didn’t say there was a problem with an Old Boy’s Club in the gaming industry” — yea, because it was Peter Molyneux who drew the comic, dipshit. Sexism within the industry isn’t the issue here, it’s the fans.
There are also a fair amount of people criticising this photo:
The gist of their argument being “look how she’s singled out from the guys! She’s an (drumroll please) attention whore! Ubisoft is pimping her out, so why is it a big problem if she’s sexually humiliated!?”
Uh, maybe because she’s the producer of the game?! It’s hard enough to find shots at all of a producer along with their development team, much less shots where the producer is just blending into the crowd. And yes, she’s an attractive woman which means that they’re more likely to single her out. That doesn’t mean that it’s open season.
There are of course a bunch of pseudo-intellectual apologists on that board. I have a real distaste for bringing their exact same arguments into rape scenario, but in this case I think less because I don’t want to water down the experience of rape and more because I imagine these fuckers would just apologize for that, too. I remember when I joined that board I was impressed with how egalitarian people were and how little tollerance there was of base sexism. I don’t really see much to distinguish it from other gaming sites now.
Good thing there’s the Iris Network.
November 21st, 2007 at 9:34 am
All of the responses are leaning toward the typical “what about Roberta Williams!? She didn’t say there was a problem with an Old Boy’s Club in the gaming industry” — yea, because it was Peter Molyneux who drew the comic, dipshit. Sexism within the industry isn’t the issue here, it’s the fans.
Exactly. And, while I have great love for Roberta Williams (Space Quest! Kings Quest! Hero’s Quest/Quest For Glory!), she’s not exactly “highly visible” on most fanboy’s screens these days. For gods’ sakes, the woman retired a decade ago. The nature of gaming has changed a lot in ten years, and the explosion of the internet as a networking/communication tool has really changed the face of fandom.
November 21st, 2007 at 9:39 am
I guess she worked on Portal, but yeah, she hasn’t been heavily promoting it. She gave her first interview in years a little over a year ago and I was knocked over with a feather because she was someone that I really idolized as a kid playing the Sierra games.
November 21st, 2007 at 2:23 pm
I don’t want to be seen as a whiner, but the latest generation of video game and anime fans are really just… assholes, to be academic about it. It really is “mine, mine, mine” all of the time. And I know generalizations are unfair, etc. I went to a local gaming club to play some board games recently, and some of the men there were so foul, you could cut the misogyny in the air with a knife. And there was no reason to even speak about women, as none were present, and it was in no way relevant to any conversation going on at the time. It was completely out of the blue.
I don’t know if you’re following this mini-scandal about a cosplayer named Adella:
http://sexyvideogameland.blogspot.com/2007/11/flower-girl.html
But the outlines of it are the same. Not sure if the girl is a truly a jerk or not, but the absolutely white hot, psychotic hatred towards this woman is appalling.
She is also an attention whore, a bitch, a tease, a slut… it’s obviously part of the same pattern.
November 21st, 2007 at 10:01 pm
My father, normally an intelligent person, made the following “joke” when I was watching the interview video:
“She must have gotten the job because she’s pretty.”
Um, no.
I tried to explain to him the significance of what he just did, but he didn’t get it. He asked me why I should care, because I’m not female and it’ll never get back to her anyway. After some more fumbling for words on my part, trying to explain the reaction she generated, he said “People have the right to be offensive, and since when do you care about feminism and social causes?” I replied “Since I started reading feminism blogs about six months or so ago.” He resorted to “It’s just a joke, you shouldn’t be so annoyed.”
My father is always making inappropriate jokes despite the best efforts of everyone around him, but they’re usually not inappropriate in this manner.
Anyway, could you please send some hate mail to scheinberg@ccny.cuny.edu for me?
November 22nd, 2007 at 2:32 am
[...] the latest boys-behaving-badly incident in video-game-land that hasn’t already been said. Feminist Gamers has a good roundup of all of the coverage. All I gotta say is that it looks like an Asian guy did [...]
November 22nd, 2007 at 10:55 am
A better name for us would be Generation Ego.
November 22nd, 2007 at 2:24 pm
Doug — I don’t really save my hatemail (they’re comments, mostly, and I don’t want women gamers to feel that this is a hostile place). If you’re interested in surveying what sort of crap feminist (esp. gamers) bloggers have to put up with, I would recommend reading Tekanji’s amazing post about silencing through harrassment. Also, Jade Reporting on the Iris Network does a weekly link roundup–look through its archives–there’s a whole “Harrassment” section where assaults against women bloggers are chronicled. You can also check up under “Real Life Impact” for other examples of why it’s important. Finally, if you haven’t seen this sites “It’s just a game” page (from the main page, it’s at the top of the right column), there’s stuff in there about why this is important.
November 22nd, 2007 at 5:25 pm
HertzaHaeon said:
You mean like the forums on the Iris Gaming Network? There’s also the directory of sites by women gamers. In terms of news, we have Latoya Peterson’s Gaming in the Media Blog, but it’s only as good as a blog run by a single person can be. We have trouble enough finding contributors for Cerise and Jade Reporting is basically being supported by 100littledolls alone (with no volunteers in sight), but we do our best to contribute to the anti-sexist gaming community.
November 22nd, 2007 at 5:54 pm
I didn’t mean “copies of the hate mail you receive”, I meant “write him some hate mail for being a sexist pig.” (I’m not sure if I’m joking or not.)
(Is it okay to see “important attractive woman gamer” and immediately react with desire to worship her like the stereotypical “screaming 14 year old girls” worship Orlando Bloom or other famous attractive celebrities? Yes, the impulse that drives celebrity-worship is a bit silly, but it’s probably a little more respectful than whatever desire is feeding the troll frenzy.)
November 24th, 2007 at 12:05 am
Doug, may I humbly suggest: “Free speech cuts both ways, Dad. You have the right to be offensive, and I have the right to point out that you’re being a shriveled, pathetic shitbag who could use a few decades of therapy. You don’t have *issues* about successful women, Dad–you have entire fucking subscriptions.”