Jaicee said:
There are a couple of things that I think are worth clarifying. In the OP, I listed two categories, not one, and that was meant as sort of a thematic hierarchy of feminist qualities, as I see it. The games in the second category are somewhat less compatible with my idea of what feminism is than those in the first category, but still have many pro-feminist elements in my view. With that said, lesbian feminism (the small school of thought I subscribe to) is considered to be a branch of radical feminism and I would have to agree that there aren't really any video games that clearly and specifically qualify as radically feminist. What I was gauging were like degrees of compatibility with lesbian feminism. I think you will find that feminist ideas exist in the following spectrum... ...with degrees of radicalism being measured essentially in degrees of female separatism. In this spectrum of ideas, female-only communities obviously represent the most radical end of the spectrum, while intersectionality theory and gender identity politics conversely represent the liberal, more mainstream end of the spectrum. Liberal women want admission to the existing society, radical women are more inclined to try and form their own because they view the existing society as structurally masculinist, i.e. ultimately non-reformable. It's essentially a question of on who's terms positive change for women can be best realized: can we persuade men to afford us an equal station or can we achieve liberation from a male-dominated societies and cultures only on our own terms? I highlighted the games I did as compatible with my way of thinking on these matters because they focus narratively on relationships between females, and essentially on the cultivation of positive ones; on a sense of sisterhood, if you will. Very few video games (even ones that technically center a woman as the protagonist) actually do that. Strikingly, even many games that use female lead characters won't have any other female characters at all, for example, or might utilize some kind of reverse-traditional trope like the dude in distress scenario or revenge for a murdered brother or husband or boyfriend as their main story arc. Games that actually focus on like promoting positive relationships between females, or just don't include male characters, are rare; far more so than their logical opposites. (In keeping with this, the reason, for example, that Life is Strange falls into the second tier rather than the first with me is because, while the bulk of the story that it tells is about the cultivation of female friendship, the game concludes by portraying that friendship as immoral. In say Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, by contrast, the narrative structure moves along the opposite trajectory, where a pair of seemingly incompatible women learn to work together and become friends.) If there is one game that I would say is like THE most compatible with my way of thinking about these issues, it would be Gone Home. With its open celebration of early '90s riot grrrl culture (which was generally considered to be on the more radical end of the feminist spectrum ideologically, with its thematic emphasis on universal sisterhood, female naturalism, anti-corporate do-it-yourself culture-building, revolutionary change, and significant degrees of female separatism) and narrative focus on romantic intimacy between girls, I find that game to be especially compatible with my worldview, thematically speaking. That would be really the ultimate existing example of a feminist game, IMO. |
ah wonderful, so you subscribe to the form of feminism that wants to deny men the ability to form their own male only business groups and clubs, but that allows women to create their own.
