We are Women

September 2014

How women are treated culturally is an incredibly touchy subject, even today. So touchy that even I, a woman – or girl, or whatever – find it difficult to write about. What do you say? Which battle do you pick to fight? Who do you risk offending?

After about a week of going over my choices, I’ve decided that the battle I choose to fight today concerns women in video game culture. There’s been a scandal going around quite recently – the Zoe Quinn video game scandal – so, hey, why not strike while the iron’s hot?

The basis of the scandal is that Zoe Quinn, a video game developer – see ‘Depression Quest’, an indie text-based game – broke up with her boyfriend, who then started a ‘Hate Blog’ about their relationship. He published personal details about her, including private chats. He wrote about how she cheated on him and slept with a bunch of different guys while they were dating.

One of those guys turned out to be a reviewer for this game review website, Kotaku. This has caused people to attack Quinn simply for being a woman in the video game industry, using her personal details against her and accusing her of sleeping with a man to get good reviews for her game, even though this ‘review’ doesn’t actually exist.

Past the technicalities of the situation, though, the Zoe Quinn scandal sheds light on a part of gaming that generally doesn’t get that much attention. Women can be gamers just as men can be gamers, so why are they treated so differently? There have always been outcries from women saying that once men find out that they’re women, they get verbally abused, or called ‘not real gamers’, or a plethora of other things that are just not okay. But the Zoe Quinn scandal really puts it on the front page.

What makes a guy more of a gamer than a girl? Some backwards, misogynistic stereotypes that say that ‘videogames are for guys and barbies are for girls’? Also, what gives anyone – not just men, but anyone – the right to use a person’s personal life details, that they did not give consent to be shared in the first place, against them?

Some people say that this story highlights the undercurrent of misogyny that runs through the gaming world, going mostly unnoticed or ignored. Others would argue that it’s a freak case or that people are mad at lack of transparency within the gaming industry is, not at Quinn. But even if the second one was true – which I’m not too sure it is – the first one is undeniably wrong. This is not the first time this has happened.

Anita Sarkeesian, a woman who makes youtube videos criticising the underrepresentation and discrimination of women in video games, is another example. Although her videos have valid points, and people don’t have to watch them if they don’t want to, she has reportedly been attacked via social media and recently had to go to the police because of a threat that mentioned knowing ‘where [she] lives, and where [her] dad lives’. Almost all of these threats are misogynistic in nature, talking down on her because she is a woman who ‘doesn’t know anything about video games’, and sometimes even worse.

Feminism criticizers constantly use ‘there is no need for feminism’ as one of their major points. Women can vote, they say. They can go to school and work for the government and even – God forbid – go to the army. Women are equal. There is no need for feminism.

If that is true, though, why does this happen? Why do men discriminate against women, why is there rape culture, why are girls still held against unrealistic expectations – and boys, too? There will only be no need for feminism when gender is no longer a weapon that can be used to beat people down. When people can feel comfortable to do what they want and not be criticised for it because they are a girl, or because they are a guy. When girls can play video games and guys can wear dresses and everyone accepts it because it’s none of their business – then, and only then, can we say there is no need for feminism.

Until then, though, people like Anita Sarkeesian will keep pushing the limits, knocking on the fragile glass dome that encases the gaming industry and pointing to the crowd of women lining up for their games, saying ‘We exist. We want acknowledgement.’

‘We are women.’