Tropes vs Women, Part 2: Ms. Male Trope, Token Chicks, and the Smurfette Principle

Part 1 Source, with transcript

Note: this review is probably not as polished as I would like it to be. But time constraints are a bitch. Still, I hope that you can follow the general arguments.

Presented below are my thoughts, interpretations, and conclusions of nearly everything said in this video, written with the intent that we discuss the arguments themselves in a more holistic sense rather than target a single aspect of them (or a single aspect of another video) to discredit the entirety. But since such a large body of text may not be conducive to conversation, here are some questions to ask in order to start a line of dialog:

1. What do you think of the video’s conclusions? And, if different from mine, which passages did you interpret differently—and why—to reach a different conclusion?
2. One of the key points made in the video is that representing a large demographic with a single character is prone to engendering a disproportionately negative response. While Anita focuses on female representation, and therefore discusses a topic that plenty of males may not readily empathize with, I would like to ask if the example of the Chris Hemsworth character in the Ghostbusters reboot is a good example of how the “token dude” phenomenon can likewise elicit a negative response among men? Obviously, this is a more extreme example, but it remains one that nonetheless can showcase the emotions that such a trope can induce. Do you think that the Ghostbusters reboot provided a compelling example of how the negative handling of the ‘token dude’ can irritate a demographic it may represent?
3. It’s understandable that the points made in this video are presented in an authoritarian, definite tone and hence may imply little ambiguity and that the effects of certain media can be ‘The Worst Thing Ever’^TM . However, isn’t it more educational to approach this with the question about whether it is possible for our environment to induce certain feelings rather than insisting that these feelings be surveyed? That is, do you think it’s required to use research to suggest what emotions that people can feel from art? Even if a thoughtful, introspective, and empathetic approach may yield conclusions different from what the author intended, wouldn’t this be a much more productive form of analysis than simply denying what others feel until data is available?
4. Perhaps the most controversial point made in this video is that Ms. Male characters, when presented in sufficient numbers, can cause impressions that females are ‘derivative humans.’ I can imagine the thought momentarily passing through the minds of people, before quickly being disregarded, so I agree with the premise that Ms. Male inculcates some notions but I doubt that any effect beyond a transient musing will occur (except among certain people with a strongly religious mindset). Still, I thought that a lot of the other points earned much more validity. Is it fair to disregard every argument just because one argument may be wrong?

After reviewing Part 1 of Anita Sarkeesian’s analysis on the Female Tropes in Videogames, some common complaints were raised, namely that interpreting any single example of her work in isolation is unacceptable (this mainly manifests as a vitriolic remark about a misunderstanding of just one comment from one game, Hitman, ironically enough, but we might review that next time). Another criticism is that insufficient evidence is provided (only some of her videos cite research), but let’s not use this to dismiss arguments altogether and instead tackle this like we’re tackling the likes of the psychologist Sigmund Freud and certain high-concept economists: right or wrong, they show that theories can be introduced to reevaluate what we know, to make us think at a different level, and to spark conversation—that is, by challenging our preconceived notions, we can get a better sense of what we believe, why we believe, and what we should believe, as well as develop a more comprehensive body of work illustrating this debate outside of trollish accusations. People didn’t go around disproving Freud by calling him a liar, troll, idiot, or—if he were Anita—an SJW, nor by insisting on proof that we have certain subconscious desires, and then calling it a day. Let’s just look at the arguments and ask ourselves whether being exposed to X may lead to some thinking Y. This is ultimately an analysis intended to draw out some of the less superficial discourse. (And I swear, if another person brings up Hitman as an excuse to discredit everything she and I say in this analysis, then you clearly have no intention to argue the subject directly, or at all).

Since this review involves assessing an author’s given body of work without their clarification, I will aim to be as fair as possible and try to read what’s presented in good faith. This is because even the basic process of talking to someone about different opinions frequently yields clear discrepancies with how language is used and interpreted. As much as we are convinced that words have definite meanings and connotations, the truth of the matter is that everyone has different pasts, brain chemistry, context, and priorities, which means that everyone has a rich internal world which contains a vocabulary of potentially endless differences from anyone else’s, and that these differences often don’t even become apparent until people have been arguing for hours. My personal (least) favorite example is when I spent days arguing with someone who inexplicably said, ”Yes, the jungles will regrow under those conditions” one day and then, “No, the jungles cannot heal under those conditions” the next, over and over this repeated until it was realized that I was using the words “heal” and “regrow” interchangeably and he was too pedantic and dumb to say, “Hey, I know that they mean the same to you but they don’t to me; forests are composed of many life-forms and therefore cannot technically ‘heal’, so please use ‘regrow.’” Seriously, days of talking in circles—and all because he was too set with his definitions to bother correcting someone else. Another example is that someone was espousing free speech … while favoring censorship … under the notion that “free speech” means “deleting anything that makes people angry.” Why would anyone claim that free speech is about utilitarianism is beyond me. So basically, I know that my brain is programmed to think words mean a certain thing, and it will interpret someone in that specific way even if it makes the other person sound like they need mental help. So, I will aim to be more than fair so that I won’t resort to the first knee-jerk reaction that leads me to accusations which tarnish all desire to learn further. You are free to provide differing interpretations, but you should point out specific parts in the treatise that are wrong or need further context. You can also provide instances when Anita was more explicit about a specific thing she said.

I will also use whatever conclusions derived from here to reflect on conclusions from prior posts. We’ll see if my mind changes once I've learned a bit more about Anita’s philosophy.

Another common complaint heard about Anita is that ‘She’s trying to convince people that gaming will turn them sexist, while cultivation theory states that they will more likely just think that the world is more sexist, plus the theory cannot turn someone into something they’re not already predisposed to.’ Perhaps she makes the claim that gaming creates sexists in another video, but here I don’t think that’s the case. She uses terms like “reinforce” and “normalize” to suggest that preconceived notions of sexism already present in individuals and society are perpetuated (rather than created) and that we don’t actually go around thinking of women as weak or inferior because of the Ms. Male and associated tropes. For the latter, it seems more like she’s saying men may ascribe impressions that we think are ‘normal’, or in other words ‘harmless’, that females may not fully appreciate. For example, the (somewhat outdated) stereotype, “Girls don’t play games” is simply used by the adherents as a matter of fact, neither good nor bad, not a statement of desiring exclusion but rather a reflection of observations we have from our exposure to other people (at least for most), while girls who want to game may wonder how such a silly stereotype ever came into prominence. That is, innocuous thoughts that girls are “different” or “other” may spread and, without conscious thought of their implications, other people might feel alienated and that they are perceived in a negative light.

Okay, now let’s review the video itself.

This episode centers around several different topics that are united here by how they “reinforce a false dichotomy wherein male is associated with the norm while female is associated with a deviation from the norm.” We’ll discuss the accuracy and emotional impact of this observation later; for now, we’ll discuss the overall premise of the argument, then the imagery itself, and then the process for how concepts are extrapolated from it.

This norm-deviation dichotomy is ultimately done in two ways: (1) men, in abstract, are often depicted as the default, with women depicted by having features added onto the male frame. And (2) likewise when women are represented by a single individual, then their characteristics are generalized in sometimes less than appealing ways.

Now that we have the short explanation out of the way, let’s delve into it with more detail about how art can define female characters as “derivative copies of men.” This seems to more closely occur in instances when the art is simplistic, with characters defined by symbolism, and these symbols are almost invariably added onto the male version. Add a bow, hair, eyelashes, makeup, or jewelry to a male figure and suddenly a female one is formed. In contrast, it’s rare to add, for example, a beard, baseball cap, or tie to a female character to generate a male one. Okay, so from this simplistic observation we can see that art may be construed in such a way, that the phenomenon exists to some degree. So what ideas people may gleam from that?

I disbelieve the criticism that Anita thinks that these tropes turn gamers into overt misogynists: the tropes exist because people think that it’s correct to put these portrayals in their art. According to the video, people don’t actively think these thoughts in a negative light, nor make these generalizations with deprecating intent. Therefore, the tropes themselves are looked at as normal and therefore benign, not worthy of a second thought unless one is made aware of the trend and considers their implications. Each example is no concern by itself, but together they establish a pattern that people can observe to get a sense of how women are thought about vis a vis how they’re portrayed. But what myths are normalized and perpetuated unconsciously by this? For a more overt example, someone put a bow on Pac Man to create Ms. Pac Man, which was considered normal; and then the next person thought it was normal to put a bow on their own “Ms. Male” character and the next and the next until Ms. Explosion Man in 2011 (close to when this video was released). All of this is indicated here:

“And taken on their own, each individual example we’ve covered in this episode might seem relatively benign or trivial, but the reason this series focuses on tropes is because they help us recognize larger, recurring patterns. Both the Ms. Male Character and the Smurfette Principle have been normalized in gaming and in mass media more broadly. So much so that the two tropes usually pass under the radar and are often reproduced unconsciously – which is part of what makes the myths they perpetuate about women so powerful and insidious in our culture.”

“There is no inherent problem with the color pink, makeup, bows or high heels as design elements on their own. However, when designers choose … to specifically distinguish female characters from the rest of the cast … it has a few negative consequences.”

But no, that’s clearly not it. There’s more. What myths are “powerful and insidious”, and what are these “few negative consequences”? We’ll look to that in just a bit.

The second method of the dichotomy presented by Anita is similar. Though it doesn’t seem to go so far as to suggest that women are “derivative”, it does serve to present girls as “different” by virtue of likewise adding features onto a gender depicted by a single representative in an otherwise all-male group. This would be the “Smurfette Syndrome” or “Token Female Character”, which are prone to having their select few female characters often restricted –in terms of appearance and personality traits— by these avatars having the role of representing women as a whole. If done with symbols that are simply added onto a male frame, then the sense of derivation is more explicit. But if it’s done with actors and more realistic animation, then it’s less about derivation and more about establishing key differences, differences which are liable to be of poor taste. The idea is that representing several different women encourages the creation of different personalities and looks to grant them more fleshed-out characterization and appearances, while being limited to one person tends to narrow the freedom of artists who find themselves needing to define such a large demographic in a way deemed universal and therefore liable to be stereotypical or reductive. By limiting an entire gender to a single character and then applying a stereotypical trait, the woman in question can be denoted by a generalized fashion sense or they may also appear to have Female Personality Syndrome (especially if they're villains), which essentially means that their character flaw reflects a problem presumed common among women (bitchy, emotionally volatile, etc.).

As for what kind of impressions, in particular, they inculcate, they may just feel lazy and use an outdated range of gender signifiers that no longer seem sensible:

“The truth of the matter is that there’s really no need to define women as derivative copies of men or to automatically resort to lazy, stereotypical or limiting gender signifiers when designing video game characters.” So, it seems that there’s 4 aspects of these insidious, negative consequences:

1. Being considered derivative is bad.

2. Gender signifiers can be lazy.

3. Gender signifiers can be stereotypical.

4. Gender signifiers can be limiting. [e.g. fashion-restricting]

I addition, I would like to add a 5th, this one specifically directed as a consequence of the ‘derivative’ argument: 5. “This has the, perhaps unintended, effect of devaluing these characters and often relegating them to a subordinate or secondary status inside their respective media franchises, even when they are, on rare occasions, given a starring role in a spin-off or sequel.”

For the first of these two topics, the ‘argument of derivation’, I don’t believe Anita actually presumes that guys think, “You are just a spinoff of me, therefore inferior”, nor the inverse by women (unless one takes the story of Adam and Eve a bit father than most), but rather that, by the trope’s ongoing use, it continues to become acceptable to use imagery that can be interpreted this way, potentially corroborating similar notions. I'm intrigued by the notion that it ‘devalues’ the characters, especially with them being considered subordinate, but I think the only example she gave of that was Mass Effect’s portrayal of FemShep in marking. So, while I'm open to the possibility that this Ms. Male characters are looked upon without as much appreciation, I’ll need some examples to showcase this, and certainly more than just ‘they’re less appealing because they suggest being derivative’ argument. I’ll go into more detail about other impressions when covering the Pac Man example, mainly because I'm getting tired of writing this and moving huge blocks of text around for the sake of editing would be annoying. Still though, I can more readily grasp the notions that Ms. Male can be considered lazy and stereotypical.

For the second of these two topics, I would say the inverse could happen for men: if there’s one guy among a female cast and he’s dumb or brutish, then men may look at him and think, “This guy seems to have Male Personality Syndrome.” Or they’ll just cry SJW and whatnot, same difference. Let’s consider an example from the Ghostbusters movie reboot. In that movie, the main cast is defined by several women, each with their own distinguishing personalities, and they’re supported by one guy whose most clearly defined trait is being a complete dumbass. I'm going to say it: guys did not respond favorably to that portrayal, so it’s not unreasonable that girls had similar thoughts whenever they underwent the Smurfette Principle. Now imagine that more and more movies are presenting guys in such stereotypical fashions while women at least get more variety in their roles. I think that some guys would develop a greater resentment to the film industry than they exhibit now. A person’s mileage may vary, but I think it’s reasonable for some people to have a poor reception of their group when it’s presented in a lazy, cliché, and perhaps even derogatory way by a single character meant to reflect such a large and diverse population. Personally, I think that anti-SJWs who make these sorts of claims are acting like childish buffoons, so, if I want to be fair by treating different groups equally, then the outcry of feminists over similar matters deserves a “shut up and let the artists make whatever they want” too. Yes, I believe that their angst is real, and artists should listen to this sort of criticism, but there does come a point when criticism just turns into whining and I won’t want to hear any more of it. So I agree with Anita, but with reservations about how far she wants to complain about this specific issue. Making token or Smurfette characters is a concern, but it’s one that deserves merely a ‘token’ remark of dissatisfaction and not a rant or accusations against the writer/director.

So let’s see how Anita covers the tropes and how she references the 54 games to discuss them and their inversions.

From the very start, Anita introduces Pac Man for being the archetypical source of this episode’s trope. And, by doing so, she introduces an interesting point. She quotes the creator of Pac Man saying that the game was intended to be appealing to women by being based around the action of eating. She calls it a sexist mind-set, but then adds that these “regressive personal or culture notions” are, “not reflected in the finished game itself.”

This is interesting because it seemed that, in the previous review, she was concerned about accidental misogyny depicted by clearly feminine avatars. Basically, by combining these two arguments, she now clearly divorces authorial intent completely: if it looks sexist or plays sexist, then that alone suffices for it to be sexist, regardless of the author being sexist. Ultimately, what this means is that she’s focused on just two factors: representation and how it affects men and women. It doesn’t matter if it was accidental: if a demographic is put into a bad light, then the art sends a bad message about that demographic that can promote bad impressions.

And then she provides a very accurate history of how college students offered the American developer of the game, Midway, a new take on the character. As an aside, I’d like to comment about another instance when the introduction of Ms. Pac Man was described in a way that some people, including some noteworthy anti-SJWs, admonished for nitpicking reasons. It’s no big deal, but Anita talking about Midway brought back memories of people ridiculing Adam Conover, in his show Adam Ruins Everything, for saying that “the developers” made this second version of the game. Yeah, Midway helped with developing the original game, at least on the porting side, so they technically were Pac Man developers; and they accepted the designs for the new version to finish programming it, built arcades for it, and shipped it around the country, so they didn’t start Ms. Pac Man but they did help make it. So Adam’s story was true, if kept simple to maintain a 4-minute runtime. People just tried really hard to call him an idiot and a liar for that, among other complaints. Here it is if interested.

So yeah, Ms. Pac Man became a beloved character for years afterwards and earned the title of being the first Ms. Male in videogames, participating in the legacy of Minnie Mouse, Supergirl, and other characters since the early 20th century.

So how do we differentiate between the man and the woman? Though not mandatory, this is done by the addition of “stereotypical design elements”— “arbitrary and abstract” ones— such as:

1. Bows (headwear and hair being most common)
2. Color (i.e. pink for women, another very common case)
3. Red lipstick
4. Eye with makeup, lashes
5. Mole as a beauty mark
6. Long legs, high heels, jewelry, and a boa (in promotionals)
7. Pigtails
8. Painted nails
9. Midriff-bearing outfits
10. Exaggerated breasts
11. Heart motif

I can sort of see her point. If “Ms. Pac Man” was instead the original icon, just as a plain yellow circle, then if the male version was portrayed with a beard, baseball cap, or tie, then I might have the question, “Why am I being defined by these ‘extra’ traits that I don’t even have nor want?” For example, most men these days shave off their facial hair, so what does it mean for a character who represents men to have a beard? Why did we choose to deviate from this physiological norm? Or if I see more cases when guys wear baseball caps, would I continue to not wear caps with the thought that I am going against a common fashion? Sure, in the grand scheme of things, with the thousands of games that showcase so many different ways to portray men and women, and the sparse few dozens that make use of such simple methods of differentiation (and in a cartoonishly abstract way, no less), then I might consider those cases to be outdated outliers and move on. In addition, the changing of fashion and the sheer variety of ways that we can express ourselves via clothing can counter things like the ‘bow tie’ stereotype—especially when it’s used infrequently, often in older and simpler games, and therefore be considered an outdated mode of thought. Seeing a character wear a 19th century top hat, as another example, would bear no applicability to the fashion of current time and therefore not apply to myself, and the same could be said about women and Ms. Pac Man (more on that later). At worst, I think most people would raise the question internally and then dismiss it, with maybe some lingering thoughts about what these sorts of tropes connote. “Why is it considered acceptable to be depicted in such a basic way?” Or maybe the response would be about as bad in the reverse case displayed in the Ghost Busters reboot. I think it’s safe to say that notions can be raised based on how we observe how we’re represented in art, though to what extent relies heavily on other sources of influence, the predominance of the art in question, and how legitimately we may construe the author’s intent as having verisimilitude. So, I'm tentatively concluding that self-impressions would hardly be affected by the likes of Ms. Pac Man and other Ms. Male characters. However, I do think that restricting designs to specific features is more or less always considered lazy—if I saw a bunch of games where guys are clearly delineated by features such as baseball caps, ties, and beards, then I would consider that a limited design (especially as someone who cares little for baseball caps). So more often than not, I think the general response to seeing such a basic use of clothing to denote gender would cause one to scoff at the unoriginality of the authors. So I would agree with Anita that these depictions are, at the very least, not in good taste.

Then she introduces the concept of the Smurfette Principle. Why? I guess it’s because those characters typically display Personality Female Syndrome that ties it with Ms. Male, or else it’s to emphasize another way that girls may feel like they are the outliers: “Both the Smurfette Principle and the Ms. Male Character trope create scenarios that reinforce a false dichotomy wherein male is associated with the norm while female is associated with a deviation from the norm.” She follows that with the “Token chick” phenomenon, wherein a group of guys in a more typical society also includes one girl. I think it’s say to say that there are good ways and bad ways of handling a ‘token’ character, so it’s not a problem in and of itself, but it’s also the case that handling a token character in the wrong way produces a disproportionately larger negative effect than if a single non-token character is presented poorly. Again, if the Ghostbusters movie featured 2 main male characters within the team, one being a doofus and the other a normal guy, then the reception would have been largely mitigated.

Anita made an interesting comment about how the limited choice of stereotypical clothing, derived from the Ms. Male trope, reduces the ‘continuum’ of options for how women may want to present themselves. For women, I will try to take my interpretation as a man and see if corollaries can be present for the other gender. I cannot speak for the historical trends of women’s fashion since the time of Ms. Pac Man, so the idea of the impact of what’s considered archetypical fashion by game developers (like bows, long hair, and makeup), and how that (or impressions of that) changed over the years, is purely anecdotal. For all I know, bows were in style in the 80s, but since then largely went away while still remaining a bit of ‘girl clothing’ in the minds of the population, as evident by Ms. Splosion Man in 2011. Likewise, makeup is not considered mandatory, but it remains as part of the ‘female kit’ so to speak. Hair, however, still remains dominantly long. So, stereotypes involving appearances like these do call to mind as being exclusive to women, but they’re not strictly adhered to (though women with shaved heads may turn some eyes). While Anita claims that these stereotypes limit the continuum of appearance options, I think the countering cultural push for variety over the past several decades, not to mention the greater attempts at diversifying women in media in recent years, has overcome any noteworthy effect of the Ms. Male trope. I mean, sure, the continuum is limited in the sense that shaved heads are nearly nonexistent among women, and considered odd, but I can’t really think of other examples. Heck, if anything, men are more limited: stockings, skirts (except kilts), makeup, earrings, dyed hair, long hair, and so many other accessories and appearance options are either out of the question or not looked favorably. Men really only have the option of having hair or shaving it. Based on that observation, while it is theoretically possible that art can influence boundaries in fashion, I think that other societal influences work much more strongly and faster, generating changes that soon make the standards set in older, more simplistic media quickly irrelevant. Outside of formal attire, women can wear basically anything that men can wear. Yes, women in plenty of games were displayed with a basic set of appearances, but now their real-life collection of options is bigger than ever and far surpass those of men. Sure, some girls may look at that imagery and question how it relates to them, but in practice those thoughts are irrelevant. Perhaps men are restricted by the appearance tropes in media too, only much more so, and in this case Anita's point would be that much stronger; but Anita contradicts this line of thought by saying that men have few male-defined accessories and that they’re not rigidly enforced. I guess it would be cool, if culture were not to have any influence, and that we would live in a time when anyone can wear anything, but I think that we, as creatures of habit, would continue to differentiate clothing by gender like as usual, maintaining typical roles until a sufficient number of outliers grow into prominence and then acceptance.

Another common complaint is that Anita never, or at least far too rarely, lists counterexamples or else dismisses them for having different standards. Well, here are those exceptions, and here’s the rationale for why they don’t share the inverse of the sexism that she ascribes to conventional applications of Ms. Male. Feel free to explain how these interpretations are incorrect or are missing key examples that counter her points:

Exceptions with color inversions are rare, such as Kirby, Bomberman, or Roy Koopa, but those are meant to reflect childlike aesthetics rather than to denote gender.

Exceptions with accessory inversions are rare, like with bows (Super Mario Bros 2) and high heels (unknown, Bare Knuckle III?) and lipstick (Super Punch-Out), but those are typically jokes.

Exceptions with the presence of male-defined accessories are not ubiquitous nor strongly enforced: Men also have accessories, like neckties and caps.

She then talks about Angry Birds:

To help illustrate one of the ways the ”male as default” phenomenon operates in gaming worlds let’s take a look at the mobile mega-hit Angry Birds.

Basically, she said that the birds displayed no specific traits that indicated either gender. But then an explicitly female bird was introduced and that warranted further design changes to make some of the earlier, gender-nonspecific birds overtly female. This could suggest that, when making designs, women have to be designed with a bit more intentionality and therefore must utilize particular signifiers—and that, since there are a limited number of signifiers, then women are stereotyped with those particular traits even further. I can sort of empathize with this too. What if I was playing a game, assuming that some of the characters were men, only to have one introduced with a beard, cap, or tie and that lead to retroactive gender assignments that change my impressions?

Anita introduces the Mass Effect series, in which the main character is playable as either a man or a woman, to say that Male Shepard was considered the ‘default in marketing.’ Some attempts that “feel” like afterthoughts or niche specialty marketing and not a substantial/equitable approach involve an alternate slip cover and web-only trailer. Essentially, what she is trying to say is that the Ms. Male, even as a major component of a blockbuster videogame with a huge commercial and advertising budget, is treated with far less applaud than warranted, with the female version not being portrayed as a selling point but rather as a subject that fans have to go a little out of their way to find. And marketing isn’t the only manner of distinction: the female version has a dedicated fanbase who frequently refers to her as “FemShep”, which, although meant as an affectionate nickname, does further highlight her designation as a Ms. Male Character. She is the one with the qualifier attached to her name: she is “Female Shepard” whereas the male version simply gets to be, “Shepard”.

Random thought: Would it have been considered appropriate to introduce a section on Laura Croft and “The male Tomb Raider” Nathan Drake from Uncharted? It’s probably not quite as related as the other examples provided in this video, but it would have been interesting to see how people have handled the introduction of a male character in a game genre popularized by a woman.

Overall, while I think I do see her points, this is a rather harmless trope, with consequences that barely exceed a level of, “Well, that’s a lazy, stereotypical, and altogether inaccurate or outdated representation that no-one should take seriously.” Like any such examples of poor artistic integrity, it deserves criticism, so that artists can learn from their mistakes and develop their creative skills, but it shouldn’t reach a level of outrage nor be used as an example that’s causing harm in how people see themselves. Perhaps Anita went a bit far in some cases to depict women as feeling like second-class citizens because Ms. Pac Man is basically just Pac Man with some accessories, but it did strike a conversation about how depictions in media can vary audience reception based on how many—or too few—characters are present to represent a large demographic. In the end, I enjoyed how such a short video has encouraged me to think outside of my comfort zone and how I was encouraged to try seeing things in someone else’s shoes.

Addendum

This is the list of ‘general consequences’ I wrote while listening to Anita's points so that I could generate an overall idea of her arguments. - It reinforces a “strict, binary form of gender expression”, which is “an entirely artificial and strict binary” into “two distinctly separate and opposing classes.” This specifically erases the continuum of gender presentations that fall outside this dichotomy. - Women are “marked” while men remain largely unmarked. This leaves women with fewer forms of expression while male characters (such as the Koopa brothers) are better able to express distinct characteristics like intelligence, playfulness, and arrogance. Whereas women are largely left defined as being “female.” - (or else be given a one-dimensional personality of shallow female stereotypes, e.g. vanity, brattiness, rage, and being spoiled. This is called Personality Female Syndrome. - The girls are always depicted in relation to their male counterpart, or as just something that came from another source. Ms. Pac Man is just Pac Man with a bow, etc. - They “typically aren’t given their own distinctive identities and are prevented from being fully realized characters who exist on their own terms. This has the, perhaps unintended, effect of devaluing these characters and often relegating them to a subordinate or secondary status inside their respective media franchises, even when they are, on rare occasions, given a starring role in a spin-off or sequel.” - This idea of being “cast” from an “original concept” reinforces a subordinate view of women, like with Adam and Eve. That is, men tend to be seen as “default” human beings.

Submitted June 26, 2019 at 02:11AM by Rincewind00 https://ift.tt/2FrW6eX