These stories conjure supernatural situations in which domestic violence perpetrated by men against women who’ve “lost control of themselves” not only appears justified but is actually presented as an altruistic act done “for the woman’s own good”.
Yeah, I can't imagine a lot of people following her reasoning here. The situations depicted in this video game are in no way equitable to domestic violence, they are for the most part either a) self-defense against beings that have the capacity and are actively trying to harm the main character (beings, note, that are often no longer actually the woman they were before) or b) euthanasia of a woman who is in a situation where she is suffering too much to want to continue to live, and actively and consciously expresses this. You can argue the moral standards of both situations, but neither situation really fits domestic violence, at least not the active-against-passive domestic violence she appears to be thinking of. If a woman goes crazy (for reasons unrelated to the man & their relationship), grabs a steak knife, and comes running, then I don't think it counts as domestic violence if he punches her out. It's violence in a domestic setting, but it is also self-defense in which the main character or "the male" is the passive one, not the female.
Given the reality of that larger cultural context, it should go without saying that it’s dangerously irresponsible to be creating games in which players are encouraged and even required to perform violence against women in order to “save them”.
I guess this is where I generally struggle with Sarkeesian. I admire her intentions (without trying to divine the motives behind it), but I don't think she's very good as a "youtube personality" either in entertaining or offer insights, and you do have to be able to do either one. Instead of analyzing, she keeps hitting these notes of "obviously" and "it goes without saying".
The claim was that Tropes vs Women would be an "academic" or at least analytical series. Now if I'm reviewing an academic series and the author keeps going "obviously" and "naturally", I frown and start looking for footnotes and elucidation. You just can't do that in academic setting, in fact that's one of the first pitfalls that got knocked out of me in university; just because something intuitively makes sense does not mean it is proven in any real sense. "It is a given" is not proof. That's the difference between academics and, well, just shooting the shit. Now if she just wants to be a youtube personality and analyse on that level that's fine, but if she wants to offer actual analysis you can't structure it like this. Just citing a bunch of examples and saying what they do over and over proves nothing except your own confirmation bias, no matter what point you make, and if you then want to pull it into a larger context you do actually have to prove your claim, not just go "it should go without saying".
And all this despite the fact that I don't actually disagree with her point. The active-to-passive role of men and women in these narratives is lazy or even appalling, and the structuring of these plots to utilize women as plot devices is cliche and uninteresting even before it is worrisome. Like Josh Sawyer said in Infy's link above, it as simple as a call to more actively think about plot structure and gender instead of just defaulting to "gender roles", which again isn't just worrisome from a societal viewpoint, it's also just plain bad writing. But if I wanted to convince someone of this point, I sure as heck wouldn't link em to Sarkeesian's video.
Oh well.
