Damsel In Distress: A Response

Some time ago, Anita Sarkeesian started a Kickstarter to fund a three part video series on how women are portrayed in video games. I have watched all the videos, the third of which was released 11 days ago. There was some controversy about the way she made the money and about her ripping off her backers. I have no idea whether this is true and frankly I don't give a damn. She made the videos. And since she disabled comments on her Youtube videos, I will be responding here.

I won't deny that there is definitely A LOT of games that portray women as helpless damsels that need rescuing. And there might very well be some deep seated cultural issues with the trope over all. But I have a problem with HOW Anita portrays video games in these videos. She, very one-sidedly, condems video games as a medium for maintaining the trope of the Damsel in Distress.

And she makes good points. Princess Peach using her mood swings as her powers in her first starring role is pretty stupid, and shame on you Nintendo. But she doesn't acknowledge the number of games that either overcome imagined gender roles, or flat out ignore them in favor of making a fun game. Some truly fantastic games are made that don't rely on the damsel in distress trope. Skyrim is an entirely gender neutral game that successfully allows ANYONE to make their own story. She glances over the strides made in the latest Tomb Raider game and glaringly omits any discussion of Samus in the videos.

Just off the top of my head, I can think of a game released recently that makes excellent strides with the damsel in distress trope. In Shadowrun Returns, an early mission has you tracking down a fellow runner who has information you need. It turns out she got captured during a job and you and her boyfriend need to save her. BUT, once you free her from her torturer, she pulls a shotgun and helps you shoot your way out of the building. And from then on you can hire her to help you on jobs. She isn't portrayed as a damsel, per say, she is portrayed as a professional who messed up and needed help. The fact that she was a women was irrelevant, especially considering how inept her boyfriend was.

And Shadowrun is a recent game that I can think of just right now. There are plenty subversions of the damsel trope in games. Anita makes almost no mention of them. Its not that counter example's don't exist, she just doesn't want to talk about them.

Another point I would like to make is that video games are certainly NOT the source of the trope itself, nor are they the most damaging example of its use. In my opinion, movie's are a far worse purveyor of the "Women are to be saved" mentality. This is because video games are primarily interested in being fantasy worlds, while most movies give some indication that they are based on reality. Young children are unlikely to draw much from Mario saving Peach all the time, but they may very well be influenced by Adam Sandler's never ending stream of sexist jokes.

This simply comes down to presenting both sides of an issue. It may not be necessary to always do this, but these video's definitely would have benefited from a more balanced view of the game industry. Anita seems like a smart women who knows her feminism (in a good way) and did her research on the video game industry. As such, I can only assume she neglected to mention GOOD examples of female's portrayed well in games deliberately to strengthen her argument. I find this practice, combined with her disabling of comments on her videos, distracting from the value of her message. Please, open the forum and mention the positives.

Enviable research 

http://www.feministfrequency.com/2013/03/damsel-in-distress-part-1/