benlehman

So I recently got involved once again in a discussion about institutional discrimination (in this case, sexism) in which that same old pattern reasserted itself: the people involved ignored the women who were pointing out the problem, but were willing to engage with me, another guy. Previously, I've seen this in discussions of racism, when white people were willing to listen to me but not my black and Chinese friends who were saying, substantively, the same thing.

The discussion was about the game Where We Remain which -- let's be clear -- is a very good game, and prevented from being a great game by a couple of systematic mistakes and some aesthetic decisions which totally undermine the nascent theme of the game. The frustrating thing is that the theme (about love, murder, and forgiveness or lack thereof) is so close to actually getting developed and explored, but it gets totally and viciously squashed by the sexism.

[here's an aside: I am a lot more tolerant of sexism and racism in media if there's actually a good thematic development and resolution in the story: that means that the characters are going to be presented as real people, which means even if there are racist or sexist themes there's room to deconstruct and explore the issues. I can expand on this if people like.]

There are a lot of reasons for why I'm the "rational one," although they all boil down to different aspects of privilege. For one, I speak native whiteboy (in particular for this case, I speak nerdy whiteboy) and whiteboy is a language with most women and minorities are not native speakers of. For two, I have an inherently privileged voice: signing a letter with my real name (which is also present in my e-mail address, so no avoiding it) means that my voice is inherently more the more "rational" and "in the right tone."

With no disrespect to the designers involved (who are as enmeshed in our society's power structures as anyone else, and thus as much victims as antagonists), I find this whole dynamic inherently problematic. There are obvious reasons for this: if my voice is inherently privileged, should I be monopolizing the dialogue this way? Also, there are issues of me "speaking for" other races or genders, which I don't want to do: I try -- not always successfully -- to frame my critique in terms of my own experiences, rather than trying to talk about other people's experiences, but that doesn't wholly eliminate this element. On the other hand, my options are to speak up or say nothing: if someone is incapable of listening to messages about their behavior from those immediately harmed, isn't it better that they get the message from me rather than not at all?

What's additionally frustrating is the way that both my and Anna Anthropy's points got re-cast as a referendum on the designers' sexism in a really sophmoric "are they or aren't they?" way, which is, at least speaking for myself, not what I was talking about at all. First, discussion of whether a piece of media is sexist is not really related to the question about whether the designers are sexist at all. But second, and much more importantly, the goalposts have been shifted from a literary discussion* to a much more simple identity politics discussion. That sucks a lot: it cheapens the serious discussion of a literary game -- which is something we need more of.

* The literary point is: this game's themes were destroyed by internalized nerdy whiteboy gynophobia and something else which I'm not quite able to put my finger on -- the idea that the [presumed male] protagonist should not -- cannot -- be held responsible for his heinous actions but that the game's [female] agonist must suffer eternally or die for her lesser† role.

† She may have been responsible for the deaths of hundreds, but she's at least not a traitor.