Video Game Culture and Feminism

There's been a longstanding stereotype of internet and video game culture as anti-feminist in its rhetoric. The internet culture's anonymous nature and irreverence seem to fuel this type of imagery. There are numerous examples online of this. The most recent example that comes to my attention is the sexual harassment for female players that occurred in a Starcraft 2 Thread on Teamliquid.net

What's interesting is that the social normative in these cultures almost seems to be okay with all of this sexist ideology. And what's even more disturbing is that it's almost expected and accepted behavior. The 'trolling', or 'griefing' mentality comes into play.

It's even become an issue with the webcomic colossus, Penny-Arcade.

Penny-Arcade, an internet media empire based on the eponymous webcomic, has a rabid and loyal following that numbers in the millions. They have become well respected figureheads in the video game movement in the United States. In a 2006 article from MTV news, they are listed as one of the top 10 most influential video gamers of all time:

"The Advocates: Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. If there's one thing game-playing generates, it's vociferous opinion about all that is right with games — and so much of what is wrong. Most of that group-grumbling has no clear effect, but that's not the case for Washington state's Krahulik and Holkins. Eight years ago, the two friends created the online comic strip Penny Arcade and began merrily skewering all that was wrong with games. They developed an online following of millions and have become proven tastemakers, even on a Web that is cluttered with gamer opinion ... But more importantly, they have become the closest the medium has to leaders of a gamers' movement, going so far, a couple of years back, to launch [the equivalent of] an annual E3 for gamers, the Penny Arcade Expo."

Not only that, they have generated millions of dollars for their Child's Play charity, a fund that helps give children toys and games in hospitals. So it sounds like these two guys are great advocates for gaming culture's progress away from this stereotype of immaturity. They even banned booth babes from their Expo.

Enter then, the Dickwolves controversy.

It's a really long story. And actually quite complex. But basically - and I'm probably not doing the entirety of the story justice - the Penny-Arcade guys wrote a comic strip that offended a subgroup of feminists and the feminists were vocal against it. The strip in question had a rape joke in it, and these feminists were calling it out as normalizing and perpetuating rape culture. Penny Arcade, thinking it was the internet and things would blow over, and that this group was overly sensitive to the issue, retorted with a follow up comic. It probably wasn't the best idea.

Unfortunately for them, they should have been more attentive to the feminists motivations and studied up on the issue. The entire controversy could have been avoided if they simply said they didn't intend to offend anyone. But instead they dismissed the feminists arguments entirely and played it off as another joke. This of course drove a huge backlash by the feminist community and there was an ensuing battle between the two camps.

Things escalated quickly to catastrophic levels, to the point that Penny-Arcade made T-shirts that had the Dickwolves depicted as a type of team Mascot. Many feminists viewed this as instigating the notion that the shirts literally espoused rape as a sporting event. The feminists then said to boycott PAX (the Penny-Arcade Expo convention) because they weren't comfortable in that environment anymore. PA subsequently removed the shirts from their online store.

It's gotten to the point where both sides have literally received death threats and both camps have called their followers to stop with the trolling.

Critically, I have to side on the feminist group here. I love reading Penny-Arcade and the comic strip that sparked all of this did not seem offensive to me. But just because I did not find it personally offended I can understand how others would. But that's not what this debate about and why I would side on the feminist camp in this issue. It was the handling of the situation after the first comic that made it such a big controversy. Feminists and rape survivors who are advocating against Penny-arcade just seem to have the moral high ground here.

That is too bad, because on a net benefit level, I think the Penny-Arcade guys do a lot of good. They just royally messed up in this department.

So, as both a video gamer and a feminist, I think the internet and video games have a lot of growing up to do. I'm sure that the Penny-Arcade guys are not for rape and don't want to perpetuate the culture through normalization of jokes about it. And I'm pretty sure they're regretting how they acted. But this raises a good question about feminism in internet culture. I believe that the stereotypes about the internet have some truth to it, because it replicates our current societal and cultural viewpoints. After all, the internet is just the space and sounding board of our behavior.

The grander question in the framework of feminism then, is what is wrong with our current culture and society when it deals with hate and bigotry?