Let’s get a little controversial all up in here!
There was a big todo in the blog world this week about skimpy gear on female characters, and it’s kind of been making me cranky. I feel like the conversation has unfortunately fallen into a common rhetorical trap, and I dislike it when things that are variable and complicated are phrased in very cut-and-dry, “us vs. them” ways.
The crux of the matter, as outlined in this article about “slut plate” over at Apple Cider Mage, is that “[c]hoosing to wear something skimpy in real life or World of Warcraft should be because someone wants to, because it makes them happy, and should not indicate anything other about a person’s personality or sexuality other than what they wish it to indicate.” Hey, swell. I can totally get behind that, and agree that the phrase “slut plate” is dumb and should be discouraged.
As usual, though, the ensuing conversation conflates the choice with the action itself. Women should be able to dress their characters in anything they like without others assuming they are “sluts”, and I will happily defend that choice as a feminist act. However, this does not mean that dressing your characters in revealing clothing is in itself a feminist act. The issue becomes skewed away from the issue of choice and becomes a message of “celebrate in-your-face-sexiness or you hate women”. In fact, under this paradigm dressing modestly is seen as patriarchal, unfun, and something to be avoided. The choice has yet again been taken away.
The point is not the plate booty shorts. The point should be the CHOICE to wear them.
Every day we are shown women being sexualized in the real world. From the moment I leave my apartment in the morning there are girl butts on taxi ads selling beach vacations and botox injections. I am shown sexy ladies all day long in advertisements. There are ladies in skimpy clothing as NPCs in my game, on login screens, dancing on my mailboxes. By the end of the day, I want to play a game and not worry about it. I’m tired of having sexy sexuality blasted at me all day, co-opted or not, which means that in my group you, Black Mageweave Elf, can sit this one out.
(And, like, what is the external difference between a 15 year old boy playing a mailbox-dancing nelf in her underwear and a woman playing a mailbox-dancing nelf in her underwear? Because if you’re just walking by, there is no difference. Can someone tell me if I should be offended or not? I DON’T KNOW ANYMORE.)
My point is: dress your character in skimpy clothes if you want to. Seriously. I will dress my characters in modest clothes if I want to, and both options are equally valid. No one should make any assumptions about your sexuality or personality from how your elf is dressed, but I am perfectly within my rights to think your outfit is tacky and to select a group member who chose to wear pants.
My issue with fanservice armor (as I prefer to call it) has a few aspects.
1.) Often, in WoW, I had to wear it whether I wanted to or not. Heirlooms made this transparently obvious. The same chest piece was a shirt on my male toon and a halter top on my female toon. Want to make Black Mageweave look respectable? Put it on a guy. Just add weenie and it’s booty-shorts-be-gone. It’s only Victoria’s Secret when Victor’s not wearing it. Now, with the transmogs, one has more options, but still, armorsets don’t look the same on female toons, and finding an attractive pair of real pants isn’t easy for a WoW girl to do. In Rift, I had a wardrobe tab that meant I wasn’t at the visual mercy of fanservice armor designs, and in SWTOR, everyone pretty much wears a jumpsuit or a robe unless they go out of their way to dress otherwise. The argument that women can chose to be sexy in games is only really meaningful where actual choice exists.
2.) Fanservice armor begs the question–what fans are being served? We all know it’s the guys, right? And a specific, fairly broad subset of guys, if we want to be fair. But let’s pretend this is a different kind of service. If I go into a game store or an electronics store or a car dealership, and the salesperson routinely ignores female customers in favor of male customers, if I go into a store with a male friend and the clerk persistantly addresses my male companion even though *I* am the one who is trying to make a purchase, most people would recognize that’s not ok. But somehow, if I go into a game and they are only interested in serving their male fans, I’m supposed to just accept that as the way it is? Why is it that we acknowledge that flagrantly ignoring female customers is bad business (and plain RUDE) in a game store that sell me my games, but don’t acknowledge that it’s bad business (and plain RUDE) in the game studios that develop the games I buy at that game store.
Game store employees that treated female customers the way Blizz treats its female customers – alternately ignoring and ogling them – would be disciplined in any business worth supporting. If I wouldn’t shop for a game under those conditions, why would I play a game under those conditions? Which is why BioWare and Rift get my money now, and WoW doesn’t.
Thanks for the comments, Harm! I was really nervous about posting this. =\
“The argument that women can chose to be sexy in games is only really meaningful where actual choice exists.”
Ding ding ding. Great point.
“(And, like, what is the external difference between a 15 year old boy playing a mailbox-dancing nelf in her underwear and a woman playing a mailbox-dancing nelf in her underwear? Because if you’re just walking by, there is no difference. Can someone tell me if I should be offended or not? I DON’T KNOW ANYMORE.)”
This, I would argue, is one of the head-spinningly complicated feminist questions that are created by online interactions and online avatars. Similar, though not parallel, situations can be created in transgender real-world interactions (like, does a cisgender bi woman get to talk about the oppressive patriarchal gender constructs that a transwoman adopts by wearing high-heeled shoes that she feels are liberating her from her masculinist patriarchal oppressors? The head spins!)
The easier answers of “sexyfun feminism” – where women get to dress as they like, “free” from patriarchal constructs and wearing high heels (token example, obligatory) because they like it – fall flat on their face in this situation, as I think Harmlesse points out in her comment. But even in games where there -is- a choice, as there is theoretically a choice in the “real” world, I think you made a great point: it’s still all a part of a larger structure that objectifies women. You can only re-define an act when you really can control the meaning of it, and, from bad boob-windows to mailbox nelfs, it’s clear the meaning is still ‘out there’ in the culture for these acts.
“(like, does a cisgender bi woman get to talk about the oppressive patriarchal gender constructs that a transwoman adopts by wearing high-heeled shoes that she feels are liberating her from her masculinist patriarchal oppressors?)”
Well, you see, if.. but.. you see.. I.. so. So! That is an excellent head-spinning example!
“You can only re-define an act when you really can control the meaning of it”
Yes. Entirely. It reminds me a bit of when someone says, “Well I don’t SEE gender (or race or sexual orientation).” These attitudes would probably be fine in a post-patriarchy world where there is no larger structure that objectifies women, but until then you can’t really .. detach your actions.
Or, to go back to video game terms: TOO SOON EXECUTUS.
Given the crowd that you all game with, be grateful that no one has come up with man-thong armor.
I’m going to take my Y chromosome and hide from this conversation.
Sema used to take his pants off during raids, but it was kind of like when a 3 year old does it in front of company. I think a thong would have just encouraged him.
Empowerfuling bikini outfits, now in superhero style: http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-5-most-ridiculously-sexist-superhero-costumes/ . Although I disagree with #1 , of course. It’s on Cracked, so don’t read the words. It’s like the opposite of reading for the articles.
I’m very sorry if my post gave you the idea that I feel wearing skimpy clothes inherently is a feminist choice and not something to look at critically given that women often feel they HAVE to, but I don’t think destigmatizing the act of expressing sexuality is a bad thing. It is something we need to work on socially.
Dressing modestly is a choice and one that has been hotly debated within the community. Like all choices though, to be unaware of their critical meaning in a larger societal context is to turn away from again, much like choosing a traditional role in the home.
My question to you though is wondering if -your- dislike of immodest women, especially as a male (my apologies if I presume your gender wrong) isn’t divorced from the same problematic thinking of discomfort that women are being sexual. No one can stop how you think about it, but it is food for thought. Barring someone from a dungeon group due to their armor in solely a cosmetic fashion feels like that there’s something here that falls right back into the same unsettling rhetoric that women’s choices have to be dictated or policed by men in our world, lest they tempt or offend men. I just don’t see why feminists thinking modesty is patriarchal when it comes handed down by men in the world is silly or bad, but you bouncing someone out of a dungeon group for black mageweave is defensible by the same stroke.
Apple Cider´s last post: Let’s Get Rid of “Slut Plate” Forever
I just read your blog bio – sorry for the presumption on your gender. My deepest apologies.
Apple Cider´s last post: Let’s Get Rid of “Slut Plate” Forever
I am kind of amused that modesty is considered so unfeminine now that you automatically assumed I was a guy.
(No worries… I get that a lot.)
“Like all choices though, to be unaware of their critical meaning in a larger societal context is to turn away from again, much like choosing a traditional role in the home.”
Well, that’s exactly my point! Dressing your character in scantily clad armor is part of a larger societal context. As I wrote, the person running by doesn’t know if you are a guy who is getting off on his character or a woman who is feeling all body-confident. Looks the same to them. Heck, when I talked to my boyfriend about this topic, he was all, “Aw yiss, tell those ladies they can run around in game with no clothes at all if they want! I don’t mind!”. Your point is rather lost on him, and I suspect he’s representative of the average game-player.
I am peddled female sexuality (mostly coopted) all day long. Destigmatizing female sexuality is a fine goal, but does that mean I must constantly be exposed to it? It seems to be that part of feminism — a big part, in fact — is that I get to choose to not be a sexual being in my video games if I don’t want to be.
The fact is that how your character is dressed is going to be viewed through the lens of patriarchy like everything else, and I feel like … perhaps you haven’t considered that. To be fair, though, this is pretty feminism 201, which means that we’re on the same page for the 101 course.
I think, in this debate, Liore and Apple Cider are each attacking different parts of the same problem. My impression is that both of you believe that women should, in any given context, be free to express their sexuality, or to present a public image that is not sexual. Neither choice should lead to condemnation.
As we all know, either choice can and often does lead to condemnation in some form. Overt displays of sexuality are often stigmatized (e.g. the very existence of the term “slut plate”), as are attempts to resist sexualization (e.g. feminist complaints about anything sexist, including digital armour, are commonly mocked).
Feminists are somehow supposed to fight sexual exploitation while simultaneously fighting for the right to be a sexual creature without stigma or social judgement. We must fight both of these battles because of the historical construction of women as the Virgin/Mother/Wife on the one hand and the Whore on the other. For many years these were the two roles for women–each having their use to men, and to society–and they did not generally intersect.
Womanhood is defined–and policed–by these two concepts even in modern life, when the concepts are increasingly colliding and many women feel pressured to be both. You need to be hot–but don’t be a slut. You need to be pure and good–but don’t be a prude. Add in the desire of companies or the media to market things to women, and to use women to market things to men, and it gets even more complicated.
Is it any wonder we fall over ourselves trying to sort out which is the “real” feminist position in any given context? In my view, you’re both making the feminist argument. The problem is that the choices we make are restricted, and then reinterpreted and distorted, by social norms rooted in patriarchal tradition. You put on a short skirt because you’re a body positive feminist, and they see a slut or a woman brainwashed by media pressure to look sexy. You wear something without a hint of sexuality because you’re a feminist resisting co-opted hypersexualisation of the female form, and they see a prude or a woman brainwashed by media pressure to be chaste. It’s part of why patriarchy sucks so hard.
And of course, there’s the added difficulty of the MMO context, where you never know the intentions or politics or identity of anyone behind an avatar, and so every choice is even more likely to be distorted. Oh, and the entire world and all its clothing and the body shapes are all designed by people for whom the sexist trappings of the fantasty/sci-fi world are the unquestioned starting point. In that context, is it any surprise there’s no right answer?
I’m sorry, but I had to post this.
http://imgur.com/gallery/q8bMI
It’s also worth mentioning that a primary strategy for any oppressor is to get the oppressed to fight with each other rather than work together in common cause. In other words, the more time and energy we spend chasing each other around about modesty/sexual self-expression, the less time and energy we are likely to spend chasing Blizz around about the fact that pants magically turn into thigh-highs and panties when a female toon puts them on.
I don’t know if it makes a difference or not, but I have a more negative reaction to bikini armor in WoW than I do in Rift specifically because in WoW it’s a reminder of how little option I have to dress the way *I* want to dress. In Rift, I was less likely to begrudge some Mage a magical Vegas showgirl outfit in part because I was able to dress my cleric in a knee-length, neck-to-wrists, chainmail dress. There’s a male player in my SWTOR guild who has a female Sith Sorceror who is the embodiment of fanservice eye-candy (or was the last time I saw her). The only thing she lacks is jiggle-physics in her casting animations. My female Sith Sorceror, on the other hand is dressed in a more traditional, dignified set of robes. Again, I’m less likely to begrudge someone their choice when I’m genuinely allowed to have my own.