Women in videogames & further feminist theory

Part 1: Background reading on Gamergate

Read this Guardian article on Gamergate 10 years on. Answer the following questions:

1) What was Gamergate? 

Ten years ago, a game developer’s aggrieved ex-boyfriend published a vindictive screed accusing her of trading sex for favourable reviews of her indie game. This was leapt upon by the least savoury corner of the 2014 internet, 4chan, and kicked off a harassment campaign that broadened to include all women working in video game development or the gaming press, as well as the industry’s LGBTQ+ community. 

2) What is the recent controversy surrounding narrative design studio Sweet Baby Inc? 

Sweet Baby Inc is secretly forcing game developers to change the bodies, ethnicities and sexualities of video game characters to conform to “woke” ideology. 

 
3) What does the article conclude regarding diversity in videogames?

The games industry knows that a greater breadth of content, featuring a greater breadth of characters, made with the contributions of a greater breadth of people, is good for creativity and for business, no matter what some aggrieved gamers may think. This time, it must make its support perfectly and unequivocally clear.

Part 2: Further Feminist Theory: Media Factsheet

Use our Media Factsheet archive on the M: drive Media Shared (M:\Resources\A Level\Media Factsheets) or here using your Greenford Google login. Find Media Factsheet #169 Further Feminist Theory, read the whole of the Factsheet and answer the following questions:

1) What definitions are offered by the factsheet for ‘feminism ‘and ‘patriarchy’?

Feminism is a movement which aims for equality for women – to be

treated as equal to men socially, economically, and politically.

Patriarchy (male dominance in society).

2) Why did bell hooks publish her 1984 book ‘Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center’?

She had identified a lack of diversity within the feminist movement, and argued that these diverse voices had been marginalised, being put outside the main body of feminism.

3) What aspects of feminism and oppression are the focus for a lot of bell hooks’s work?

hooks used her work to offer a more inclusive feminists theory that advocated for women within a sisterhood to acknowledging and accepting their differences.

4) What is intersectionality and what does hooks argue regarding this?

argued that poor black women have more in common with poor black men, than with the white middle classed feminists, and this had been ignored by white academic feminists.

5) What did Liesbet van Zoonen conclude regarding the relationship between gender roles and the mass media?

6) Liesbet van Zoonen sees gender as socially constructed. What does this mean and which other media theorist we have studied does this link to?

Van Zoonen concludes that there is a strong relationship between gender (stereotypes, pornography and ideology) and communication, but it is also the mass media that leads to much of the observable gender identity structures in advertising, film and TV. This links to Judith Butler "gender is a performance"

7) How do feminists view women’s lifestyle magazines in different ways? Which view do you agree with?

Women’s magazines mediate images that tell women “how to be a perfect mother, lover, wife, homemaker, glamorous accessory, secretary – whatever suits the needs of the system”. Feminists of the 1970s saw the ‘media-created woman’ – the wife, mother, housekeeper, sex object – as a person only trying to be beautiful for men.

8) In looking at the history of the colours pink and blue, van Zoonen suggests ideas gender ideas can evolve over time. Which other media theorist we have studied argues things evolve over time and do you agree that gender roles are in a process of constant change? Can you suggest examples to support your view?

Gauntlett - I agree that gender roles and representations are definitely evolving like Gauntlett argued. For example, the way that men are represented in magazines are different.

9) What are the five aspects van Zoonen suggests are significant in determining the influence of the media?

Whether the institution is commercial or public

• The platform upon which they operate (print versus digital media)

• Genre (drama versus news)

• Target audiences

• The place the media text holds within the audiences’ daily lives

10) What other media theorist can be linked to van Zoonen’s readings of the media?

Judith Butler.

11) Van Zoonen discusses ‘transmission models of communication’. She suggests women are oppressed by the dominant culture and therefore take in representations that do not reflect their view of the world. What other theory and idea (that we have studied recently) can this be linked to?

Clay Shirky - End of Audience

12) Finally, van Zoonen has built on the work of bell hooks by exploring power and feminism. She suggests that power is not a binary male/female issue but reflects the “multiplicity of relations of subordination”. How does this link to bell hooks?

It looks at intersectionality so it's also taking into account class, education, race, sexuality together instead making it simply men vs women when it;s more complex than that.