Videogames and Gendered Invisibility 11

11 Videogames and Gendered Invisibility Stephanie Patridge 1. Introduction Over the past several years, feminist criticisms have made their way into the larger public discourse about videogames. This heightened awareness of feminist criticisms began with the harassment of feminist videogame critics like Anita Sarkeesian by those who aim to resist the supposed illegitimate incur- sion of so-called social justice warriors (or SJW for short) into videogame criticism. In 2012, Sarkeesian began a Kickstarter campaign to support the development of a series of videos called Tropes vs. Women in Video Games that examines the depiction of female game characters. Videos in this series, the first of which was published online in 2013, examine a range of feminist issues including the limited range of body types of female characters com- pared to their male counterparts (Sarkeesian, 2016a), a tendency to rely on a “damsel in distress” or “save the princess” plot device to motivate male pro- tagonists’ actions ( 2013a , 2013b ), and a tendency to portray female villains in a way that “demonizes femaleness itself” ( 2016b ). As the result of the Kickstarter campaign, Sarkeesian was the subject of anti-feminist backlash that often took the form of harassment. In a particularly notable example, a videogame called Beat Up Anita Sarkeesian in which players bloody an image of Sarkeesian was developed and shared online ( Sterling, 2012 ). In 2014, things took a notable turn for the worse for women in games. Under the guise of an attempt to clean up supposed bias in game journalism, female videogame critics (including Sarkeesian) and developers were subject to what has been described as “an on-line harassment campaign” organized under the hashtag #GamerGate (Hathaway, 2014). At the height of Gamergate, feminist game critics and developers were regularly subjected to several harassment tactics, including sea-lioning (repeatedly demanding proof for a claim), dog piling (overwhelming someone with harassing tweets), doxing (publishing someone’s personal information, such as their phone number, address, and social security number online), and on rare occasions swatting (calling a local police department to report a live situation so as to trigger the deployment of a SWAT team to the target’s house) (Sinders, 2015). It was a notably bad year for women in videogames, and the public noticed. 162 Stephanie Patridge Despite the fact that issues at the intersection of gender and videogames have made their way into the public consciousness, feminist philosophers and philosophers of videogames have largely ignored such issues. 1 The goal of this essay is to contribute to the feminist understanding of videogames by identifying and critically examining several related lines of feminist criticism of videogames. These arguments, which I refer to as “invisibility arguments,” are commonly found in feminist videogame research in the social sciences, and in popular videogame criticism online. Common to all invisibility arguments is the charge that videogames systematically underrepre- sent female characters and misrepresent them as passive, in need of saving, and as hypersexualized. Since (most) academic invisibility arguments and their popular counterparts take slightly different forms, they each war- rant a distinct focus in their own right. To this end, I first identify, outline, and criticize academic invisibility arguments, which I divide into what I call first- and second-generation invisibility arguments. Second, I identify, outline, and criticize popular invisibility arguments. I then argue that both academic and popular invisibility arguments fail on empirical grounds. So, going forward we should work to produce more cogent empirical data, and work to develop invisibility arguments that are independent of at least some of the empirical data that popular invisibility arguments rely upon. 2. Methodology: Feminism and Intersectionality, Trans-Inclusivity, and Gender Non-Binary Before I begin, a few words about methodology are in order. This is a piece of feminist philosophy of videogames. As such, its goal is to help end the subordination of females in videogame contexts. For this reason, I’ll often employ binary gender terms such as “male” and “female.” However, this way of proceeding invites the following challenges. First, we might worry that there is nothing common to all females, and to the extent that feminist philosophy does not recognize this fact, it marginalizes and alienates some females, for example, females of color.2 Though I disagree that there is nothing common to all females—for example, all females share general concern about the impact that sexism has on their ability to be self-determining—I agree that feminist philosophy should also attend to intersectional issues. For that reason, I will keep my eye not just on general gendered representational issues, but also issues related to race. 3 If videogames are doing better with respect to gendered representation, but these gendered representations skew white, I think that this is an issue not only for anti-racists but also for feminists.4 Second, one might challenge that feminist philosophy’s reliance on binary gender categories like “male and female” illegitimately presumes (and so reinforces) a gender binary that alienates and marginalizes trans people including trans women.5 , 6 For my part, I think that Katharine Jenkins (2016) is right to employ a dual notion of the gender concepts. On her view, we should follow Sally Haslanger (2012) in thinking that gender terms are class Videogames and Gendered Invisibility 163 terms that function to impose a social hierarchy on individuals. However, Jenkins recommends that we also see these terms as having another function, one of gender identity. So, to be a female on Jenkins’ view is to either be classed as such, or to identify as such (or both). That is, gender terms like “man,” “woman,” “male,” and “female” have a dual function, to impose a social hierarchy on individuals and to allow individuals to identify with a particular gender (assuming that this individual’s gender identity legitimately tracks the class function). So, when I use the term “female” in this essay, it will often be in the classing sense, because I will be reading representations and game mechanics in light of how they fit or fail to fit our contingent gendered social hierarchy. This should be a concern for all individuals who identify as females or whom are identified as such, as well as for those who are gender fluid. Moreover, it should be a concern for anyone who is inter- ested in issues of justice. Further, I think that feminists would do well to keep in wider gender issues that are relevant for trans people. So, though the primary focus of the essay is on female subordination in our shared expres- sive culture, I’ll also contextualize them alongside some relevant trans issues (but I make no claim to being exhaustive here, as such a task would require a different focus). 3. Academic Invisibility Arguments While feminist philosophers have largely ignored videogames, there is a growing body of feminist social science research that focuses on them. Much of this research focuses in some way on a representational claim that is key for all invisibility arguments, both popular and academic. In what follows, I divide academic invisibility arguments into what I call first-generation and second-generation arguments. First-generation arguments aim to establish the baseline claim that videogames systematically misrepresent and under- represent females. These first-generation representational claims are then widely cited by advocates of second-generation invisibility arguments in the social sciences that aim to show that consuming videogames harms players in various ways. 3.1. First-Generation Academic Invisibility Arguments In the most recent first-generation invisibility study, Williams et al. (2009 ) analyze the 150 top-selling videogames from 2005 to 2006 and find that just over 10% of primary, playable humanoid characters, and just under 15% of humanoid characters overall, were represented as female. Earlier first- generation research is roughly consonant with this finding. Dietz (1998 ) focuses on the 33 most popular Nintendo and Sega Genesis games and finds that 60% of games with human characters lacked females altogether. Heintz- Knowles et al. (2001) focus on the 70 top-selling videogames across six platforms from January to May 2001, and find that 73% of characters are 164 Stephanie Patridge represented as male, 17% as female, while only 12% of playable characters overall are represented as female. Dill et al. (2005 ) look at the 20 top-selling PC videogames from 1999 and find that 70% of the primary characters are represented as male, while only 10% are represented as female. They also find that 55% of secondary characters overall are represented as male, while only 31% are represented as female (Dill et al., 2005 ). And, Downs and Smith (2010) analyze 60 top-selling games from 2003 and find that male characters were represented 86% of the time, and female characters were represented 14% of the time ( Downs and Smith, 2010 ). Things appear to be even worse representationally for females of color. Dill et al. (2005) and Williams et al. (2009 ) both find that characters in their data set are overwhelmingly white, and non-Hispanic. So, those very females who, in the actual world, are subjected to systematic, intersectional oppressions, that is, along race, gender, and racio-gender dimensions, are rendered even more invisible than are white females in videogame worlds. Moreover, two of the aforementioned studies also find that videogames systemically misrepresent females in ways that are troubling. For example, Downs and Smith (2010 ) find that female characters in their data set are more than ten times more likely than male characters to be depicted either as partially or fully nude. And Heintz-Knowles et al. (2001) find that female characters in their data set are more than twice as likely to wear revealing clothing as male characters are.

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