"Anita Sarkeesian Was Right"

Amazingly, I don't think I've ever blogged about video games and sexism. I suppose that I don't say much about video games because I really don't play many of them. (I mean, I've owned every Nintendo console but the Wii U, but I wouldn't call myself a gamer and I don't think that would qualify me, regardless.) But it's still a bit odd, isn't it? Anyway.

You've probably heard about Anita Sarkeesian, or are at least familiar with her Tropes Vs. Women series of videos. (And if not that, you've probably noticed that the heroes and villains in most video games are men, and that women are often reduced to the role of victim, prize, or simply eye candy. Right? Right.) For her effort, Sarkeesian has been threatened with rape and murder by dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of male video game fans, who perceive the criticism of their games as personal attacks. There have been apps that simulate beating her up, attempted hacks of her Twitter and Google accounts, threats against her family, and bomb threats preceding her speaking engagements. She's had to call the police, had a case referred to the FBI for further investigation, and briefly went into hiding, recently.

Let me spell out the irony, if it isn't already painfully obvious: Sarkeesian points out that video games are dominated by narratives of masculine violence and feminine submission; her critics, who deny the veracity of her claims, demand her submission and threaten her with violence. No, really. You can't make this shit up.

Anyway, a month ago, my brothers and I attended Fan Expo Canada in Toronto. It's a geek convention - comic books, anime, and video games, mostly - and one of my brothers wore this:

A lot of people are confused by the use of the past tense.
In true geek culture mash-up fashion, the shirt is simultaneously
an homage to Magneto, whose teenaged supporters have been
known to wear "Magneto was right" t-shirts.
So, it's a thing, not a mistake.

Needless to say, I think, this shirt is about as controversial as it gets at a geek convention. A lot of people feel strongly that Sarkeesian is right or that she's wrong. And when these people who strongly feel she's right speak up and say so? They're also sometimes threatened with rape and death.

Well, some of them are threatened, at least. When an activist named Stephanie Guthrie spoke out against the 'Beat Up Anita Sarkeesian' game, she was also threatened, repeatedly and by multiple people. And so, as my brother walked around this convention with a shirt that practically begged people to threaten him with rape and death - and almost immediately posted pictures of it to Twitter and Facebook, increasing the likelihood that the right/wrong people would see it - I wondered... would this muscular, tattooed white dude get even a fraction of the same response?

So, I gave it a month. Five weeks to see whether anyone would bat an eye, whether the guys claiming that Sarkeesian was the real sexist would prove themselves equal opportunity harassers. And our friends were curious, too. Here are the first two responses to the picture on Facebook:

The finally tally on Twitter? 419 Retweets, 1264 Favorites. Two jokes that he should ask for a refund. (Though these responses were made in response to me, not him.) One accusation that he was being a "white knight". And one threat of a "shanking". That's it - and the tweet seems to have since disappeared.

My brother also told people that he received nothing but compliments - most notably from Sex Criminals artist Chip Zdarsky, aka Steve Murray - but this isn't entirely true. Sure, everyone who spoke to him complimented the shirt. What he didn't see, though, were the sideways glares and glowers, which usually only happened after he had passed by and which I noticed because I was sometimes walking behind him. I only saw a half-dozen or so of these, but I wasn't paying exceptionally close attention. It was clear that the shirt surprised, annoyed, and/or upset some people. It just didn't surprise, annoy, or upset them enough to say or do anything to the guy who was wearing it. (I won't explicitly speculate as to why that is. I'll leave that part up entirely up to you. Give it a try. It's just as easy as it seems!)

So, the negative reactions were there. They just weren't particularly loud or threatening or... anything, really. Just deafening silence.

We still need to talk about nudity on Game of Thrones

Like a lot of other Game of Thrones actors, Oona Chaplin, who plays Talisa, the Queen in the North, has appeared naked on the show and, subsequently, been asked her opinion on it. (For the record, she's happy with it, provided that it's "beautiful" and "honours the female form.") But one of her most recent comments has earned some interesting responses. Says Chaplin,

“One of the girls in the show who got her kit off the most in the first couple of seasons now doesn’t at all because she said, ‘I want to be known for my acting not for my breasts.’” 

Now, while there's a lot of nudity in the show, the large majority of nudity is provided by background or very minor characters. So, there aren't a whole lot of options, and most people assume that she's referring to Emelia Clarke, who plays Daenerys. You might remember that she was constantly nude in the first season, and that she made the news more recently for her performance in Breakfast at Tiffany's, where her nude scene was interrupted by a flurry of flash photography. For better or worse, she's become known for her naked body.

But this blog isn't about any of that. Well, not directly, anyway. Instead, it's about the unsympathetic fan response to Clarke's purported annoyance/discomfort:

"Didn't the actress read the part before she signed on? There is alot of this stuff in the books.. get a grip and learn what you're doing before you jump in with both feet"

"Exactly what I was thinking, the books are full of references which then would need to be translated into the show in order to maintain the level of authenticity many fans desire. I'm tired of this whole 'nudity is bad and detracts from seriousness' debate."

"Didn't halley [sp] berry win an Oscar for a role she appeared nude in?"

Ugh. Obviously, I'm reproducing these comments because I think they're off-the-mark. Here are a few reasons why:

• Unfortunately, Clarke - and I'm assuming that the anonymous comments do belong to her - is right, she is known for her breasts. So much so that it's a huge distraction, as it was in her Breakfast at Tiffany's performance, where a significant number of people valued her performance precisely because she would be naked. And probably did a lot to ruin the show for everyone else, too. (Though, as I understand it, it wasn't a particularly good staging to begin with...)


• Further, GoT is just generally infamous for its excessive female nudity.  This is why SNL was able to make a hilariously on-point parody like this one, which claims that the show owes its success in equal parts to George R.R. Martin, writer of the books, and a 13 year-old named Adam Friedberg, whose only job is to add more boobs:
  
  
  
  
  I should add that, when I watch the show and breasts make an appearance, I immediately think of Adam Friedberg. So, there's another knock against too much nudity - as entertained and immersed in the story as I might otherwise be, I immediately think of Andy Samberg's impression of a 13 year-old.


• Some fans seem to think that fidelity to the books is an absolute defense. If Daenerys was often nude in the books, then Clarke should accept that. Never mind that men are also often naked in the books, and yet we've only seen a few asses and no penises. Or that there's no rule stating that any TV adaptation needs to be perfectly faithful. (See: The Walking Dead, which departs in significant ways from the source material. Or don't, because most of those differences are awful ones.)


• But most problematic, I think, is the implication that an actor can't re-assess the situation, take account of new information, reflect on her experience, and... change her mind. Clearly, she was comfortable with the nudity in the beginning. Now, seeing the unpredictable kind of notoriety that it's earned her, she's decided that she doesn't much like it. That actually strikes me as pretty reasonable.

[Correction: I originally attributed the quote at the top to Natalia Tena, who plays a different character on the show. This is because The Mary Sue made the same mistake, and I didn't bother to double-check the source. My bad.]

CBC Kids doesn't want white people, and it's not racist or even a big deal

So, Kids' CBC is looking for a new co-host for their morning programming. Presently, the morning show is hosted by Patty, a 40ish white woman, and Mamma Yamma, a yam-shaped puppet. So, I guess that means that Sid Bobb, an Aboriginal man whose on-air role has noticeably declined in the last few months, is moving on to something else.

For the record, I've consistently watched Kids' CBC - sometimes more frequently than other times - with my daughter for more than 3 years, now. Aside from some bizarrely interesting musical guest choices - Billy Bragg singing with a puppet-crab, for instance - it's a remarkably tame show, no different from any other morning show aimed at the kindergarten demographic. So, this shouldn't be big news. But it turns out that it is. (Again, it shouldn't be, but it is.) Because this is what a hiring agency posted for the CBC:

The contentious line is the last one in this screen cap - "any race except Caucasian". (That this is the only contentious line is a hilarious irony that exposes the ridiculousness of the 'controversy', but I'll get to that later.) Twitter erupted with rage over the exclusion of white men, and both the CBC and the casting company they hired apologized. The casting agency also amended the ad so that it no longer mentions race, and you can read more about the agency and CBC's responses here. You can also check the coverage of this story at the Huffington Post, where Marni Soupcoff makes a number of observations that I both agree and disagree with, but all of them are quite thoughtful.

But as for that rage... the ads elicited a predictably conservative reaction, but I think that it's probably fair to look at just one. A friend of mine tweeted that it was an example of "sickly racism" and added the familiar cliché, "how about hiring the BEST host, rather than one with certain skin pigmentation?" He also made a connection between these hiring practices and the spotty record of Affirmative Action in universities, posting this link to a story in The Atlantic.

To that, I say "bullshit". (Well, in the actual interaction I called it a "non sequitur". But, y'know, it's bullshit.) The story in The Atlantic is about admitting students who lack the preparation and skill to compete at top-tier schools; this story is about a children's morning show host. The story in The Atlantic mentions that academic "mismatch"* might be responsible for black students dropping out of engineering programs at more than twice the rate of white students; but this job is literally not rocket science.

Some of the Kids' CBC cast: Sid, Patty, Captain Claw,
Mamma Yamma, and Salmon. Not rocket scientists.

There are two main points that I want to make, one in response to my friends complaints, and another more broadly in support of the CBC's hiring directives.

One, there is no "BEST host" out there. No one is finishing in the top-percentile of the Standardized Hosting Test and being overlooked because he's white. And to the extent that the CBC should be looking for the "BEST host", it's worth considering the actual needs and objectives of the program. Reasonably, I think, Soupcoff points out that "we also have to remember that what we're talking about here is casting an entertainer in a dramatic enterprise, not staffing a position in the bureaucracy."And indeed, a letter from the CBC told the hiring agency that they wanted actors who reflect "Canada and its regions as well as the country's multicultural and multiracial nature", since the show is very much about showcasing various regions and people in the country. In that case, the "BEST host" might very well be one with a particular race or gender that is otherwise under-represented.

And this leads directly into my second point. Regardless of the CBC's responsibility to aspiring hosts, they have a much larger responsibility to the kids that watch Kids' CBC. Canada's multicultural and multiracial nature? It's the audience for this show. Those same non-white kids? They can look forward to years of TV and film programming filled with the faces of white men, with the stereotypes of their own race and ethnicity, or with the exclusion of their race and ethnicity altogether. Representation is power, and for non-white kids watching a morning show that's populated only with white people? Well, it follows that lack of representation is disempowering.

I mentioned, at the top, that there was an irony to all this outrage. And it has to do with the fact that all the anger is directed at the exclusion of white people. The thing is, they're not the only demographic groups that were denied the opportunity to apply. Let me spell it out, in case you missed it. This was the very first requirement listed:

• Male between the ages of 23-35yrs

So, who else can't apply? Anyone under 23. Anyone over 35. And women. No women can apply. An entire gender has been barred from applying. And where's the outrage? Where are the cries of sexism? Why aren't the people who successfully lobbied CBC to consider white men also asking them to consider women of colour?

Unsurprisingly, those hypocrites are nowhere to be found.


[*According to the article, "mismatch" is the term for situations where the student simply doesn't have the proper educational background for their program. The reasoning is that we don't want mismatches because we're doing those "mismatched" students a disservice - we should, instead, nudge them toward easier programs. What the "mismatch" rhetoric fails to address, of course, is that systemic racism has a lot to do with the lack of preparation - the disservice is done well before they ever set foot in a university classroom.]