Isn’t there a right to be ourselves?

“The most desirable thing in the world is freedom to be true to oneself, i.e., Honesty” – Susan Sontag (at 14 years old)

Following our two most recent classes,  this post  on the subject of the overt discrimination against women in games might be helpful in crystallizing some of our discussions. At the very least, it is cathartic (for me). The problem to be explored is:

1. There are a large number of hardcore women gamers.

2. Almost all women gamers who play games like Call of Duty or Battlefield (the biggest games of the FPS genre) play as “men”. That is they change their on-line identity to a male one.

3. They do this because to be identified as a woman in these on-line environments generally makes them subject to intolerable amounts of abuse. In essence if women want to play they  have little alternative but to pretend they are not women.

Having set out the problem, allow me to outline two fears around this post.

The first fear is of being trite. So many powerful, thoughtful and brave contributions exposing and illuminating what amounts to the immorality of the self-absorbed and the stuck have already been made.  My colleague at the Centre for Digital Media (and our guest two weeks ago) Dr. Kimberly Voll even organized the extremely successful “I Am a Gamer” game-jam (photo above) at which men and women worked night and day over a weekend to build games which had strong female protagonists. Anita Sarkeesian’s “Trope” series was not only a thoughtful contribution, but came at great personal cost in terms of the abuse she absorbed – all of which effectively proved her point in a way that civilized debate could not. Was it worth the abuse though? That question gets us closer to my take on all this.

Another fear is my own anger. As the second sentence in the paragraph immediately above reasonably illustrates, I am close to losing it on this subject. It is all too easy to call out the “idiots” who abuse on-line because of my complete certainty that that is exactly who they are. Equally there is little doubt in my mind that a responsibly administered battery of psychological testing would reveal much in common and of interest among them – and not much that is truly worthwhile. Better stop there lest all academic pretext goes out the window…

The problem is of course that anger generally helps little, and puts me in league with exactly those I am repulsed at being identified with. Clarity helps much more. The issues seem to involve the most basic of human rights. That is precisely what most engages my anger. We are, after all, talking about rights of equality and rights to not be personally abused. Rights which are necessary to a civil society. Specifically the ability to freely self identify as who we actually are. That is “to be true to oneself”, in the words of the young Susan Sontag.

In the seven years that I’ve been privileged to teach Video Game Law approximately 15 – 20% of the class have been women. Some, if not most, were avid gamers. Many were knowledgeable and  accomplished FPS’ers. Sadly it was only a few months ago that,  in answer to a question, one of these avid and committed gamers explained that she would never go online in an FPS as a woman because of the abuse she would receive. Instead she pretends to be a guy.

Directly stated, the lawyer in me recoils in horror at our seeming inability to allow individuals to represent as their actual identity. That seems so basic. There must  be a mechanism that allows people to be themselves. Surely? The very thought that people have to deny who they are to get to do something they want to do makes us feel collectively ill.  Doesn’t it? Shouldn’t it?

All over the world and throughout time, minorities have  altered their appearance in order to approach the same economic footing as the majority. Or far worse they pretend to be like the majority in an attempt to survive horrific ethnic, political and cultural “cleansing’s”. That something even remotely along those lines is happening right under our on-line noses should be beyond disturbing. What’s missing? The problem seems hardly ever to be directly called out. Moreover it seems even more important to me because it is very different from the debates on correlations/causality between virtual violence and real violence. The problem we are talking about is real abuse actually happening, not theoretical connections which may or may not be someday proven.

Our class discussions of the last two weeks leave the tentative conclusion that  provincial human rights complaints may be the most realistic recourse. Even then there are real complications. It is not helpful to repeat all that appeared in the class slides here. Were that to be done this post  would become insufferably long.  In summary though, clarity seems unreachable. Which leaves me with anger. Which is just not good enough…

jon