For the past few weeks I’ve been playing Dragon Age 2, a “sword n’ sorcery” role-playing game (RPG) produced by Bioware. The game has earned mixed reviews: many critics raved about the decade-spanning story or the improvements made to the combat mechanics of its predecessor. Others complained about the repetitive nature of the quests, the many glitches, and the painful lack of variety in environments. Speaking of which, I must have visited the exact same cavern about 30 times. And I visited the exact same sewer passage about 40 times. And half the game is spent wandering around just one city (it got really fucking tedious is what I’m saying). But for more than a few people, the biggest flaw in Dragon Age 2 isn’t the repetitiveness or the bugs. It’s that the game is kinda gay.
I’ll provide some background: Bioware RPGs almost always include a romantic sub-plot, where the player’s avatar (referred to as the Player Character, or PC) has the option to romance one of his/her traveling companions. In most RPGs, the romantic options are exclusively straight. If the PC is male, he can only romance female companions. If the PC is female … you get the idea. But Bioware has the habit of including at least one gay romantic option, and Dragon Age: Origins included gay options for both men and women. Though it’s important to note that there were also exclusively straight companions who could be wooed only by PC’s of the opposite gender. So there was a little something for everyone (well, not exactly everyone, but certainly a larger demographic than just straight men).
Dragon Age 2 upped the ante by doubling the number of same-sex romantic possibilities, and in the process eliminated the exclusively straight romantic option. There are four companions, two male and two female, that a PC of either gender can woo (as a side note, your PC always has the last name of Hawke). So is this a universe filled with bisexuals? Possibly, but only one of the companions (the pirate wench, Isabela) makes comments that clearly establish her bisexuality. The other characters do not discuss their sexuality without reference to Hawke, which means that the player effectively determines their sexual orientation when he/she selects a gender for their PC. As an example, the male companion named Anders only expresses homoerotic desire if Hawke is male, but he shows no interest in men if Hawke is female.
A few fans have referred to this feature as “subjective sexuality,” meaning the sexual orientation of supporting characters is not fixed, but dependent on the player’s choices. This goes beyond the simple empowerment fantasy of most adventure games, and actually brings gaming closer to fan fiction (or slash-fic, in this case). Like a fan-fic author, the player is crafting the story and the romance to their liking, but unlike fan-fic, the in-game romances are actually “canon.” As an approaching to virtual romance, subjective sexuality is quite inclusive.
Perhaps a little too inclusive for some people’s tastes. But I’ll let Captain Cornhole at the Bioware Social Network speak for himself in a thread titled “Straight romances got screwed, no pun intended.”
“No seriously for those of us who like straight romaces [sic] we all got screwed over big time. Before I go any further let me clarify this is not a condemnation of homosexuality or bisexuality by any means.
Now sure your Hawke is female you can romance Anders or what have you, but it isn’t a truely straight romance. Every romance option is bi, and it’s just not the same knowing Anders or Fenris will flirt with male Hawke just as much.
Bottomline it is disgusting and I’m a tad upset there is not a single straight person in the game, and frankly there isn’t anyone that I want to romance because of it. It’s a shame really.”
Even more outraged was the commenter named Bastal, who posted a Unibomber-quality manifesto in the thread titled “Bioware Neglected Their Main Demographic: The Straight Male Gamer.” You can probably guess the gist of his complaint. These comments were not isolated incidents, and they attracted the attention of the gaming press, and eventually elicited several responses from Bioware staff.
David Gaider, one of the Lead Writers of the Dragon Age franchise, responded to the Cornhole’s comment (with far more politeness than was deserved):
“… [I]f the concern is you might accidentally be exposed to an unwelcome sexual advance– oh well. One would hope you’d deal with it in the same mature manner you’d do so in real life …
Fenris and Merrill [two other potential love interests] don’t initiate a romance with any gender, and really their sexuality is the most subjective since they don’t discuss it. Regardless, why someone would be concerned about what other people might do in their playthroughs is difficult to say. If the idea that a character might be having hypothetical sex with someone of the same gender in an alternate dimension bothers you, then by all means don’t continue with their romance. That’s why they’re optional.”
It’s tempting to just dismiss this fanboy whining as homophobia and be done with it. But there’s another facet to these types of complaints besides the usual “gays are icky,” and Gaider’s response doesn’t quite address it. This facet is not about a fear of queerness in itself, but a fear that there is nothing else. It’s a discomfort that was inadvertently expressed by one of my friends (they shall remain nameless) who also played Dragon Age 2. Like the commenters at the Bioware Network, he was unhappy that the male traveling companions (and several other male supporting characters) flirted with him. I responded by noting that he didn’t have to flirt back, but it wasn’t so much the flirting that bothered him but the absence of relationships with men where flirting didn’t occur. He wanted un-erotic relationships with other men, in other words, straight male friendships. At that moment, part of me agreed with him. While I don’t presume to speak for all straight men, there’s something comfortable about my friendships with other straight men, when sex (at least on a conscious level) is out of the question. What my friend wanted, and what I suspect many other straight male gamers also want, is the virtual version of these “safe” friendships.
But this safety relies upon the rejection of a romantic possibility. There are endless opportunities for romance or non-romance in the real world, and my decisions have no effect on the options of the vast majority of humankind. But the virtual world of Dragon Age is finite. There are only so many characters and only so many romantic possibilities. When I start insisting that certain sexual identities become fixed so that those friendships feel safer for me, what I’m also saying is that a romantic option for a gay man (or for a woman who enjoys the fantasy of being a gay man) cannot exist. And in the balance of who’s gaining or losing, I’d say that losing the easygoing quality to a friendship with a nonexistent person is a very, very small price to pay so that someone else can have the same freedom that I possess when creating their ideal fantasy.
Or it might be possible, in theory, to create their ideal fantasy if less of the game took place in that one goddamn cavern … I’ll stop harping on that now.
As someone who is not straight, I feel kind of uneasy about what you describe as “safe straight friendships.” You characterize them as relationships where sex is out of the question, but that also describes my relationship with all my straight friends. I.e., it’s not necessary for both parties involved to be straight for sex to be out of the question.
Although I suppose you probably didn’t mean sex as in “the possibility of sex happening between us” but rather sex as in “the possibility that I could be the object of the other’s sexual desire.”
I don’t know. I guess I understand your point, but I find it kind of depressing to think that if my straight friends feel the same way you do, then there’s a level of (non-sexual) intimacy between us that is somehow rendered impossible by my queerness. It’s really unsettling to think that there’s a kind of friendship between straight males that is unavailable to me.
I suspect that the straight male friends to whom I feel closest don’t feel that way. I’ve never detected any hint of them feeling the relationship was somehow unsafe. I hope I’m not mistaken.
But you’re probably right that a lot of straight dudes do feel that way, so now I’m wondering whether this is a form of (mild) homophobia or not.
I’m not sure.
As a straight guy, my experience of friendships with other straight guys doesn’t exactly fit with what Richard’s saying, I don’t think….or, at least, I’ve had close friendships with gay men, and they didn’t seem different in kind, or more dangerous, than friendships with straight men.
I’d guess part of the issue is just knowing the possibility is there in the game might make straight men skittish (we’re an awfully skittish bunch.) In real life, there really isn’t the possibility of sex with most people of any gender or whatever sexual orientation.
Eve Sedgwick kind of turns this around, and argues that intimacy between straight men, and indeed any kind of intimacy for straight men with anybody, is crippled not by the possibility of gay sex, but by the fear of the possibility of gay sex.
Basque – bear in mind I’m not really defending my flaws so much as explaining them, and I don’t think all straight men have the same issues (Noah clearly doesn’t). And you’re friends are probably more like Noah than like me or my friend.
I don’t have much of substance to add to this discussion other than I don’t feel sorry for these straight privileged fucking crybabies. But I’ve had a couple glasses of wine.
There’s a very easy solution to this problem (which I’m sure has been suggested before, but I don’t frequent those message boards nowadays). Those mildly homophobic straight males (Basque’s label) should just play the game as a female character. Heterosexual males have a long history of liking girl-girl scenes. And they get to ogle a naked woman when the straight sex occurs (but maybe that doesn’t work so well if you really buy into your character). I think even gamers will agree that the only thing more backward than superhero scene is the gaming scene.
Damn it…I was just reading a really fun post by Quinnae Moongazer about men adopting female characters in (multi-player) games and how it could be an eye-opening/feminist experience, in terms of being made aware how women are treated differently in gaming environments. But now I can’t find it again.
Anyway, to Suat’s point…there are lots of films which get men to cross-identify. Like you say, it’s a fetish. Forcing people who have identified as men to identify as women though has definite feminist and queer positive implications/potential.
Oh, and to Richard….it’s possible I’d be uncomfortable in the game setting. It’s hard to say. Straight male identity is really strongly policed, internally and externally, in lots of ways. Moreso than straight female identity, I think (as Sharon Marcus sort of said in that discussion we had.) LIke funnyanimalbooks said (and as you said too basically in the piece) whining about that is fairly repulsive, since the policing is so closely connected to being in the position of privilege…it’s kind of the reason for the privilege and the consequence of it. But it’s definitely worth doing what you’re doing, which is talking about the policing and the whining and the implications, since the privilege means that straight guys’ gender and sexuality issues not infrequently impinge on everyone.
I wasn’t being completely facetious in my recommendation. Since most games (?>95%) are from the same boring male perspective, being a “woman” once in a while keeps things interesting. Your “positive implications” don’t work for a game like Tomb Raider or even most games in general however. I’ve actually played a few RPGs as a female character: Fable 2, Dragon Age 1, Mass Effect 2, Oblivion etc. Maybe others. I can’t say the experience is that different since the game makers are into some sort of vague equality (plus it would take up too much game space to change things too much).
Yeah; it needs to be in a multiplayer setting or in something that’s more character driven (like a romance plot.)
It’s what Marston is after fairly explicitly in Wonder Woman. (Or one of the things he’s after.)
Found the Moongazer article here. Read only part of it so far but she does mention the Elder Scrolls series of which Oblivion is a part of.
As a queer person who is attracted to all kinds of people, I do not have the privilege of having a group of people with whom I can assume that all friendship is motivated by platonic and not romantic or sexual interest. And you know what? It’s not some kind of big deal – I never even think about it.
Is this really “homophobia?” It’s heterosexism, to be sure – but depending on the language you prefer, this would be “biphobia” or “queerphobia.” “Homophobia” is not a blanket term for prejudice against LGBTQQIA* people, much as some folks treat it that way…
The heterosexist privilege being waved about by these douchebags is tremendous. These are the same kind of people who like to say that they’re “okay with gays as long as you don’t push it on other people and don’t hit on me.” In other words, it’s just peachy-keen to have billboards by the highway covered in male-gaze, sexist and heterosexist images of femme cis women barely clothed, but if you have a rainbow bumper sticker on your car, you’re taking it too far and PUSHING YER QUEERNESS ON ME! My goodness, stop violating my boundaries with your refusal to be “straight-acting” everywhere but the bedroom!
Also, “him or her” language may be valid for the characters in the game, because (as far as we know) they all identify as male or female, but for the players?
I’m not male and I’m not entirely female, and I played Dragon Age 1. Do I not count? Just wonderin’…
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On March 6, 1995, Jenny Jones taped an episode called “Same Sex Secret Crushes” on which Scott Amedure, a gay man, confessed to his best friend Jonathan Schmitz, that he had a crush on him. Schmitz’s response was mostly humorous as he laughed about that revelation in front of the audience. However, three days after the taping, Schmitz, allegedly upset over that incident, killed Amedure…
Schmitz’s history of mental illness and alcohol/drug abuse came to light during the trial in which Schmitz was later convicted of second degree murder. He is currently serving a 25-50 year prison term…
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jenny_Jones_Show
Unfortunately the whole isn’t online, but in the “New Yorker” article “Funny Like a Guy — Anna Faris and Hollywood’s woman problem,” Hollywood — and mainstream movie audiences — come across as revoltingly piggish. (Women can get better, more substantial roles in TV ’cause audiences on the average are demographically older and more female.)
The abstract of the article mentions:
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The Bechdel Test is a way of examining movies for gender bias. The test poses three questions: Does a movie contain two or more female characters who have names? Do those characters talk to each other? And, if so, do they discuss something other than a man? An astonishing number of light entertainments fail the test. This points to a crucial imbalance in studio comedies: distinctive secondary roles for women barely exist. For men, these roles can be a stepping stone to stardom. On the other hand, relatively unraunchy female-driven comedies have all done well at the box office. So why haven’t more of them been made? The answer is that studios, as they release fewer films, are increasingly focused on trying to develop franchises. Female-driven movies aren’t usually blockbusters, and studio heads don’t see them as repeatable. Men predominate in Hollywood, and men just don’t write much for women.
…Relatability for female characters is seen as being based upon vulnerability, which creates likability. So funny women must not only be gorgeous; they must fall down and then sob, knowing it’s all their fault. Ideas for female-driven comedies are met with intense skepticism…
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http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/04/11/110411fa_fact_friend
Yeesh! Some more from my subscription copy:
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Studios also believe that making comedies for women flouts the almighty Laws of Date Night, which hold as follows:
–Men rule. Men decide which movie a couple will see…
–Men are simple. Don’t confuse them.…Male moviegoers care chiefly about the male star and his buddies. “Often, the woman is in a movie just to make sure the audience knows the guy isn’t gay”…
–If a woman is the star, it better be a romantic comedy.…
…Despite the diversity of [female role] stereotypes, none of these roles allow a woman to enjoy a career and a man simultaneously. “It’s a relatability issue,” Terry Press, a marketing consultant and former DreamWorks executive says. “In ‘The Devil Wears Prada,’ Anne Hathaway gets the guy only when she gives up the high-powered job, and her boss, Meryl Streep, can be a big deal at the magazine, but then she can’t be happy at home…she has to be punished.”
To make a woman adorable, one successful female screenwriter says, “you have to defeat her at the beginning. It’s a conscious thing I do — abuse and break her, strip her of her dignity, and then she gets to live out our fantasies and have fun…”
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Noah – I think you’re right that men would get an eye opener if they played female characters in an online setting, such as a MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game, for you non-geeks).
The flip-side is that it’s often easy to tell the difference between real women as women and men as women. One of my female friends who plays games loves MMORPGs, and she jokes that it’s easy to tell which female characters were created by men, since they’re the ones that aren’t wearing pants.
Suat – I’ve played a few Bioware games as a female, and had a similar experience as you – gender doesn’t have much effect on story, except some dialogue changes and different romantic options. But I actually think there’s something of value in treating heroism as a gender-neutral quality. This may be why all my female-gamer friends are big fans of RPGs like Dragon Age, Fallout, etc.
Anja said, “Also, “him or her” language may be valid for the characters in the game, because (as far as we know) they all identify as male or female, but for the players?
I’m not male and I’m not entirely female, and I played Dragon Age 1. Do I not count? Just wonderin’…”
Anja, you absolutely do count, and I apologize for being careless with my language. The gender binary in the game is a reflection of the developers’ limitations (both psychological and technological), but the real world is obviously more complex.
Hmm, there’s been an inquisitorial tone to the comments on this article.
I think everyone’s ignoring the central fact: it’s essentially a ‘bot, people.
You can have any hideously deplorable, ‘phobic relation with it that you want, so far as I’m concerned.
It’s a ‘bot!
Alex, this is about the *social implications* of said ‘bots.
I mean, inanimate objects can’t possibly have social impact. Newspapers, for example, and televisions. Those don’t have any social impact at all, right? The Internet doesn’t have any social impact, either. It can’t – it’s not a person.
Right?
Richard, you wouldn’t believe the places I hear “men and women” language – I was at a rally to protest violence against transgender people yesterday, and the speakers – mostly trans people themselves! – kept saying “men and women” *over* and *over* again. I knew a number of people in the crowd, and a fair chunk of them were not binary-gendered.
Anarchists do it all the time, as do various kinds of state socialists – and of course, you can always rely on an “LGBT” organization to throw *all* trans people under the bus while denying non-binary people even exist.
Arglebargle! Rrrrgh.
Way to miss the point, Alex. It’s always annoying when people dismiss discussions they’re not interested in having by saying, “It’s just comics, people,” or “It’s just video games.” It may “just” be a bot, but what we’re discussing are the attitudes of human beings. Those attitudes may not affect you personally, but I can assure you that they have a very real impact on my life. And hence they are worth discussing.
Besides, “inquisitorial tone”? Let’s not get hysterical. We’re just having a conversation and everyone’s being remarkably respectful and insightful. Nobody here’s out for blood.
I guess games are the art form even comics nerds love to dismiss….
I was reading about the Turing Test recently, and saw several articles which pointed out that many, many programs had successfully passed the test, since porn chatbots had been hugely successful in convincing people that they were human.
The point is…people can have really intense interactions with computer programs, just like they can with any creative medium.
I think there needs to be a Sexual Gullibility Clause added to the Turing Test to explain such a thing… I try to never underestimate the possible depth of someone’s self-delusion when an orgasm may be involved…
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Noah Berlatsky says:
…I was reading about the Turing Test recently, and saw several articles which pointed out that many, many programs had successfully passed the test, since porn chatbots had been hugely successful in convincing people that they were human…
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I have the feeling it was overwhelmingly males whom those “porn chatbots” (Gad, that sounds so SF-ish! My age is showing) convinced they were women. And that women — most expecting emotional depth and such — would’ve been much more difficult to fool.
Lemme Google some added info and see if my prejudices are confirmed…
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Porn Bot Passes The Turing Test?
from the suspended-disbelief dept
… the article then points to the success of a porn chat bot that users can SMS and have a “dirty” conversation. Apparently, it can hold up its end of the conversation very well, and most users have no idea they’re not chatting with a human (and are thus convinced to keep on sending more expensive SMS messages). The system works like most chat bots, in trying to determine the best response, but also converts it to “txt speech” and throws in a few random spelling errors. Perhaps the scarier part, though, is that some users who do know it’s a bot like that and find it even more appealing.
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http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20040220/130251.shtml
From the original article:
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…The next candidate for smartest machines are the computer controlled opponents, or ‘bots, found in many computer games.
In the shoot-em-up game Unreal Tournament 2004 the ‘bots that take part in some multiplayer games sling guns, insults and “smack” talk as proficiently as humans.
…”In an environment as simple as a first-person shooter game, a computer can be pretty convincing,” says Dave “Fargo” Kosak, executive editor of the Gamespy website.
…Julia was created to be a hockey-loving ex-librarian with attitude – a combination that proved irresistible for some.
One user, called Barry, never worked out that Julia was just a program.
Some of their conversations were eerily human.
At one point Barry spent 13 days trying to get Julia to go on a virtual date with him…
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/3503465.stm
Gee, a bunch’a games-playing males never figured out that “a hockey-loving ex-librarian with attitude” wasn’t real. Who’d have thought?
A commenter on another site adds:
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Porn industry leads the way
As with many other internet technologies, it was the porno industry that lead the way in technological development. People may not know, but chatbots have been in commercial use for many years in the adult industry. The chatbots are hooked up to 900 numbers and SMS/text messaging systems for ‘dirty sex talk/messaging’. The beauty of the system is that a single chatbot can handle hundreds of horny men at the same time. You also don’t need any advanced chatbot or AI capabilities – porn talk is highly repetitive and the vocabulary required barely reaches 100 words, so a primitive chatbot can do it all.
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http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17518&ch=infotech&a=f
Can’t help but be reminded of the “pornovacs” in “1984”; computers that cranked out porn writing. Even back then, it didn’t take much of a stretch to figure that highly-formulaic porn scenarios would be easy for computers to devise.
Basque:
“Way to miss the point, Alex. It’s always annoying when people dismiss discussions they’re not interested in having by saying, “It’s just comics, people,” or “It’s just video games.” It may “just” be a bot, but what we’re discussing are the attitudes of human beings. Those attitudes may not affect you personally, but I can assure you that they have a very real impact on my life. And hence they are worth discussing.”
No, we are NOT discussing the “attitudes of human beings”.
We are discussing the attitudes of a ‘bot!
A bot is not autonomously intelligent: it’s an expert system, mindless.
If you’re disturbed by a “male Gay” ‘bot coming on to you, there’s something deeply wrong with your worldview.
The person who is disturbed is a human being. Dismissing them as deeply disturbed doesn’t change the fact that they are human beings. Moreover, just because they are deeply disturbed doesn’t mean that they are anomalous or unusual.
The person who created the bot is also a human being (or human beings.) So the behavior of the bot certainly tells you something about people and how the think.
People are disturbed by people being killed in horror movies, even though no one is actually being killed. People are disturbed by explicit sexual violence in, say, comics, even though no actual people are involved. People have been known to be disturbed by gay relationships on television, even though the gay relationships aren’t “real.”
You can say, well all those people are deluded and foolish. But having emotional connectiosn to artwork is so common that at some point you’re basically saying that the vast majority of human beings are deluded and foolish. Which isn’t necessarily wrong, but I don’t think that it exhausts all there is to say on the subject.
Alex, it sounds like you’re being thick on purpose. How hard is it to understand that there are necessarily human beings involved? I agree completely that it’s more than a little silly for someone to be bothered by a male fictional character in a video game flirting with your male avatar. But the person who feels this way is a human being. And in my opinion it’s absolutely worth talking about why they feel this way and what the implications are.
As long as there’s homophobia in our society, it affects me. Because I’m an actual queer human being, not a bot. And if some people feel uncomfortable about gay bots, then they probably feel uncomfortable about me, too.
It’s nice that you apparently have the luxury of not being affected by any of this. But I don’t understand why you waste your time trying to silence others who wish to talk about it.
I’m with Basque on this. Also, the idea that anyone who’s liable to emotionally respond to a computer program is somehow deeply flawed is, well, *ableist* and ridiculous. I spend plenty of time emotionally responding to inanimate objects – novels, comics, journalism, philosophical and theoretical writing, movies and shows, and sometimes video games. That doesn’t make me deeply flawed, that makes me pretty normative. That computer programs are able to elicit emotional response in humans speaks to the sophistication and craft that went into making the computer program, not to some sort of mental flaw in the human beings concerned.
This seems to me to boil down to thinking that fictional characters in video games are somehow inherently “cheap” or “bad,” because they’re in video games, which are inherently Bad and Not Art, etc. It’s pretty alarming seeing that kind of thinking coming from a comics person.
Emotional response is fine. But discussion should bear the artificial, fictive nature of the experience in mind or you slowwly slip into the delusional, like those soap opera fans who can’t tell the difference between actors and characters.
“Ableist” my foot.
And Basque, you know very well that I wasn’t trying to silence anyone.
Hah! An ableism-denier, right here on HU. Alex, if the common pastime of calling anyone who doesn’t fall within the range of what you consider sensible worldviews, emotional make-up, priorities etc. crazy or deeply flawed, etc. isn’t insulting and demeaning to actual people with mental illness or mental disabilities, what is it? Come on, try me – see if you can come up with something new. I’ve heard a lot of funny rationalizations in my short years already…
You’re trivializing the effect that media such as games have on real-life social issues, which you probably wouldn’t have such an easy time doing if you were personally effected by said issues.
Also, if that level of emotional response were being garnered by, say, a novel, would you have a problem with it? Or, again, is this about a distaste for video games as a medium?
Fighting with you on two threads…I’m going to forfeit any possible future ally cookies, but…
I’m having trouble with the ableism charge as well. Alex is suggesting that people who have these responses are actually neurotic or mentally ill. I don’t agree with him and think that’s silly…but where exactly the line is drawn in terms of neurosis and mental illness is pretty subjective and hard to pin down. Arguing over that line isn’t insulting and demeaning to mentally ill people in general (though like I said, I think Alex is wrong as far as where that line should be drawn.)
Also, a worldview can be deeply flawed without implicating mentally ill people at all.
Anja:
‘Hah! An ableism-denier, right here on HU. Alex, if the common pastime of calling anyone who doesn’t fall within the range of what you consider sensible worldviews, emotional make-up, priorities etc. crazy or deeply flawed, etc. isn’t insulting and demeaning to actual people with mental illness or mental disabilities, what is it? Come on, try me – see if you can come up with something new. I’ve heard a lot of funny rationalizations in my short years already…’
Except I never said any such thing. Here’s what I actually said:
‘If you’re disturbed by a “male Gay” ‘bot coming on to you, there’s something deeply wrong with your worldview.’
Not a single even glancing reference to mental illness.
You can have something deeply wrong with your worldview without being insane. I think that of Creationists and Randians, for instance. You think it of ‘ableists’.
If you wish to argue using slurs and insults, I warn you in advance: the only person looking bad will be you.
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Richard Cook says:
…Dragon Age 2 upped the ante by doubling the number of same-sex romantic possibilities, and in the process eliminated the exclusively straight romantic option…
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(Emphasis added)
It’s easy to mock the “I don’t want to worry about another guy coming on to me” mentality (I find it stupidly insecure, m’self), but isn’t there something obnoxious about the game designers thereby deleting a huge portion of human “affectional preferences”?
In their defense, the Dragon Age designers might just have been wanting to get more “juice” from their limited stable of characters; in the same way most TV show leads are single, because that opens up so many more plot possibilities than being in “wedlock“…
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Ng Suat Tong says:
…Heterosexual males have a long history of liking girl-girl scenes…
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Yup! Personally, I find these irritatingly exploitative; lesbianism reduced to titillation for straight guys who’d be revolted by male-on-male scenes.
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Alex Buchet says:
Hmm, there’s been an inquisitorial tone to the comments on this article.
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A pretty wussy inquisition, though: http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2010/235/7/c/Commission__Negima_Tickling_by_FeatherJedi.jpg
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I think everyone’s ignoring the central fact: it’s essentially a ‘bot, people.
You can have any hideously deplorable, ‘phobic relation with it that you want, so far as I’m concerned.
It’s a ‘bot!
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But, suppose the black ‘bots in a game were all rounded up and lynched by the gamers. Though hardly legally actionable stuff, wouldn’t you find that behavior off-putting? Likely indicative of troubling attitudes?
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Anja Flower says:
…you wouldn’t believe the places I hear “men and women” language – I was at a rally to protest violence against transgender people yesterday, and the speakers – mostly trans people themselves! – kept saying “men and women” *over* and *over* again. I knew a number of people in the crowd, and a fair chunk of them were not binary-gendered.
Anarchists do it all the time, as do various kinds of state socialists – and of course, you can always rely on an “LGBT” organization to throw *all* trans people under the bus while denying non-binary people even exist.
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I hope attitudes have changed about this, at least: I remember when many gays of both genders denied that bisexuality existed; insisted those people were simply “uncommitted” heteros or homosexuals.
Mike – When I say they eliminated the exclusively hetero option, I simply mean that in any given playthrough, there are no characters that can only be romanced by a PC of a specific gender.
But that doesn’t necessarily translate into being that there are no hetero characters. This is where the concept of subjective sexuality comes into play. If a companion shows romantic interest in a male Hawke in one playthrough, and shows interest in a female Hawke in another playthrough, does that make the companion bi? Remember that each playthrough is, in effect, an alternative universe. We simply don’t know how the character would react to a male Hawke in a universe with only a female Hawke, because male Hawke and female Hawke are mutually exclusive. And with most of the companions, the game is deliberately vague about their general sexual preferences. And remember that this is a role-playing games, so a certain amount of imagination and “filling in” on the part of the player is expected. If you want to believe a character is straight in one playthrough, gay in another, and bi in another, that is your prerogative as the player.
As an aside, the original title of this post was “Schrodinger’s Cat Goes Both Ways.”
Mike – That “bisexuality doesn’t exist” bullshit is still around, and is still being thrown at bi/pan/queer folks on a pretty regular basis.
The “men and women,” “boys and girls,” “ladies and gentlemen” “wo/men” etc. language is still so entrenched that I hear it being spouted by People Who Should Know Better all the time, even after they’re requested to do otherwise – drag queens, speakers at LGBTQ* events, Women’s Studies majors… it’s amazing
Alex – You’re right, actually. You never deployed the “everyone who disagrees with me is crazy” line of reasoning that I thought you had. The point stands, though, that slinging “yr crazy!” at one’s opponents, using the word to describe things that one finds exciting, exotic, unusual or over-the-top, etc. is ableist. I just read that into your comments when it wasn’t actually there.
Also, “ableist” isn’t a slur any more than “abled” or “able-bodied” are. They’re descriptors; “ableism” is a descriptor of something negative.
>>>The “men and women,” “boys and girls,” “ladies and gentlemen” “wo/men” etc. language is still so entrenched that I hear it being spouted by People Who Should Know Better all the time, even after they’re requested to do otherwise – drag queens, speakers at LGBTQ* events, Women’s Studies majors… it’s amazing>>>
Well, like any other binary, it doesn’t hold up under all circumstances, and I personally am happy to agree with/support anyone’s personal identification. BUT. It’s also a binary that’s entrenched in virtually all writing/discussion/thought about gender in human history! Boundary pushing, blending, encouraging people to see spectra where once there were hard lines, are all really valid and exciting pursuits. But this is the lens by which almost everyone in our culture, myself included, views gender relations. It could be that at some point in the future this will change, but it’s hard, for me anyhow, to see it happening in my lifetime. Man/woman is a useful binary, for a whole host of reasons, and it seems unlikely that it will go away. And when it does come, it will probably be from people being better acquainted with friends/friends of friends/relatives that have these concerns, rather than from people policing the language of others.
Well sure, yeah, a lot of people have no idea that people outside of the binary exist. I’m talking, though, about people who do or should know, and who should know better. If wanting my existence acknowledged when people are intentionally using so-called “inclusive” language constitutes policing, then sure, I’m language-policing.
Anja:
“Also, “ableist” isn’t a slur any more than “abled” or “able-bodied” are. They’re descriptors; “ableism” is a descriptor of something negative.”
But Anja, it is a slur when it’s applied to someone totally innocent of ableism.
Alex, I didn’t use it to describe you, but to describe something I thought you had said. Our culture is laced with oppression; ableism is everywhere. I slip and say ableist things sometimes, and I hang out on anti-oppression blogs. I wasn’t making you out to be some sort of uniquely terrible person, I promise – I was just calling you out on something I thought you had said.
ALEX: “And Basque, you know very well that I wasn’t trying to silence anyone.”
You were. There are many ways one can attempt to silence people. One of them is to tell them directly to shut up. But there are more subtle ways, like accusing people of using an “inquisitorial tone.” Especially when nothing in this thread even remotely fits that description.
By the way, you still haven’t addressed the actual point of my earlier reply to you (i.e., the bot vs human thing).
I’m really, really dicey on the idea that the use of the term “crazy” is oppressive in any context (i.e., it is crazy to bomb Libya.). Do most people who have experienced mental illness see the term as offensive in such a context? Do their families? Do even a sizable minority of them see it as offensive? Isn’t it possible that you slip, and people on those anti-oppression blogs slip, not because you’re not sufficiently sensitive, but because this language is not in fact especially problematic?
Language does matter…but at some point you can move past being respectful and on into ritually emphasizing victim status, which isn’t ideal either. And I think broadening your net to stigmatize common expressions which don’t really offend (most of) the people they’re supposed to harm can also undermine the case for stigmatizing language which really is hurtful, and really does offend.
Language prescription is problematic in obvious ways and for obvious reasons, but that doesn’t mean that said prescription – including in cases that may not be immediately obvious to everyone involved
Obviously, most people with mental illness or disability tend to keep that fact to themselves as much as possible, and I haven’t conducted any polls, but as someone who is non-neurotypical (Nonverbal Learning Disability, Sensory Integration Dysfunction feature), trans, queer, and has dealt with serious depression all my life as well as other mental illness – yeah, being called “crazy” and then hearing that word applied to everything bad in the world hurts. A lot. It’s also used to deride and insult people with mental illness, as though we chose to be mentally ill and deserve to be mocked for it – just as “stupid” is used to deride people who are not good at communicating, as though we can measure the contents of someone’s brains by what they communicate.
Some linguistic prescriptivism can be excessive, it’s true – and I get that it turns people off, especially people who are relatively privileged and aren’t interested in questioning their own behaviors. Still, “most people don’t find it offensive” has never been a particularly convincing argument to me. Large amounts of people believe all sorts of things that I disagree with, including things about themselves. There are plenty of words in common use – “dumb,” “lame,” “retarded,” “cunt” as an insult, “pussy” as an insult – that I don’t like and refrain from using, because those words equate being Deaf, physically disabled, mentally disabled or having a vagina with being bad in some way.
I get the reinscription-of-oppression argument, too, but just as often, people who are against linguistic prescriptivism (and I’m not necessarily saying you’re in this category) simply don’t want to be forced to look at the oppression that’s actually there.
Certainly “crazy” isn’t as problematic as, say, “ni**er,” but it still isn’t so great.
Basque:
“ALEX: “And Basque, you know very well that I wasn’t trying to silence anyone.”
You were.”
Bullshit.
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Richard Cook says:
Mike – When I say they eliminated the exclusively hetero option, I simply mean that in any given playthrough, there are no characters that can only be romanced by a PC of a specific gender…
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Thanks for the clarification!
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Anja Flower says:
Mike – That “bisexuality doesn’t exist” bullshit is still around, and is still being thrown at bi/pan/queer folks on a pretty regular basis.
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*Sigh..* But then again, simplistically binary, either/or thinking is sadly typical. I recall reading of a biracial child who was asked “what are you?” by a black kid, the questioner expecting to hear either “black” or “white.”
And then there are all the forms where I’m asked to choose between either “white” or “Hispanic.” Well, my father was Anglo, my mother Cuban, which leaves me in nowheresville. Guess that interbreeding was too mind-bogglingly bizarre a possibility for the forms-people to even consider.
(Not to mention that Caucasian Hispanics would resent that their Hispanic-ness somehow means they’re not white…)
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The “men and women,” “boys and girls,” “ladies and gentlemen” “wo/men” etc. language is still so entrenched that I hear it being spouted by People Who Should Know Better all the time, even after they’re requested to do otherwise – drag queens, speakers at LGBTQ* events, Women’s Studies majors… it’s amazing…
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And how about the way that “guys” is now often used to address/refer to groups of people which clearly include plenty of women? (Not to mention other groups…)
“Large amounts of people believe all sorts of things that I disagree with, including things about themselves”
Then you get into false consciousness arguments, though, which seems especially problematic when referring to people with mental illness….
Anyway, I’m happy to agree to disagree. Just wanted to say where I was coming from.
Sheesh. If you want to keep talking Alex and Basque that’s great, but the accusation/denial back and forth has probably run its course, huh?
Yeah, yeah. I’m done.
Hah, I just realized that I left the first sentence of my previous post hanging mid-sentence!
Noah, I see what you mean re: false consciousness arguments and mental illness (or mental non-normativity, period). And, you know, I have a friend who refers to eirself as a “cripple.” People reclaim words, and that’s totally okay. I’m not going to dive in front of em and cover up eir mouth every time ey calls emself that. That’s not to say that eir strategy is unproblematic – it might have the negative side-effect of making able-bodied people think it’s okay to call people “cripple” – but it’s eir strategy to choose, not mine. Anti-oppression activists do tend to get a bit paternalistic sometimes, which is why the relationship between activists and the population their activisty about can be complicated. The example of Western feminists flying into Africa to try to get women to stop ritual clitoridectomy is a pretty famous one, and it continues to be controversial – I was discussing it with some real, live non-internets activisty types yesterday (I know, right? Real-life human contact!), and nobody could really decide which side they were on. Neither could I, for that matter.
False consciousness arguments may be problematic, but I nonetheless don’t think it’s too far-fetched to say that there *is* a lot of false consciousness floating around out there. Trying to fight it gets into dangerous territory, of course – but in the trans community, I see a ton of it. Trying to act like it doesn’t exist has never seemed particularly helpful.
What I note is that you seem incapable of apologising for your smearing me, Anja.
Basque, thank you.
Alex, a mistaken call-out is not a “smear.” I’m not going to waste my time arguing this with you.
Annnnd I’m going to close this thread at least for a bit, in the hopes of letting things cool down.