User blog:Serpentti/Sexism in Criminal Case

'''NOTE: Please be respectful. It's my blog and I didn't force you to read this article.'''

'''I don't really like this logic, but when you want to say some shit about women in general, think of your mother. How would you react if another man said this thing about her?     ''Of course, if you don't even respect your own mother, the chance that you'll respect me and other women are even smaller. But I tried.'   

Look at the background of this page. That's the Criminal Case team. And there's only one woman there, as you already know. The image is also one that you see very rarely. The people look different in the game itself, and it's most noticeable in Grace and Jones, I would say. Grace has been "sexed up", made more fitting to the mainstream standards of beauty. But she's a kick-ass character and would she really be less cool if she wasn't thin?

If you are a man, she was changed to be more pleasing to you. (Regardless of whether you are even attracted to women, the developers had you in mind)

And it's just a small example. While the game is more respectful of women than many other games are, I really don't think I should be grateful for the opportunity to play as a woman any more than men should be grateful to get to play as men.

However, the most obvious example of sexism are the rewards. They are heavily gendered, which is harmful because they reinforce the existing stereotypes, making the "box" narrower and narrower. The most blatant example is "Dead Man Running", where men get an American football uniform while women get a cheerleader outfit. Yes, the majority of the female players probably aren't American football players, but the majority aren't cheerleaders either. Women are basically shown their place in the society: watching men do the real thing, cheering for them, looking good for them (note that especially in the University area, the female clothes are consistently much more revealing than the male equivalents).

"But they didn't mean it this way!" you'll say. And I agree, the game is not intentionally sexist, and actually makes sure to be respectful of women in many ways. But the context matters. This is one of the userpics I use online. It's a close crop of a scratch I got from a cat. Yet it makes many people think of self-harm, and no matter how much I love this picture, it would be very disrespectful of me to ignore this reaction. The Internet is so full both of self-harm and seductive female nudity that we shouldn't pretend they aren't there.

Speaking of "seductive", this is the name of the default face for black women. No comments.

"You're making a big deal out of nothing," I expect many people to say or think. And this is exactly what has been said to women ever since the beginning of the computer games era (and since the beginning of time, really). But you may notice that Criminal Case disagrees with you, and thinks that it's important to have characters of various kinds and backgrounds, including women, LGBT, black, Indian and many others. If Criminal Case considered good representation something unimportant, you'd get a lot more flat, cliché characters with predictable looks, behaviour and lines of dialogue.

"Don't play this game then," you might also say. But I don't hate it - I love it, in fact. I just urge everyone, especially women, to recognize the sexism and the stereotypes. I'm not saying that enjoying this game makes you sexist - but if you tell me that the game is perfect and I'm just a stupid woman who doesn't understand, then yes, you are sexist. If the game meets your needs perfectly, I'm glad for you. But this is your privilege and you should be aware of it.

And yes, I know I'm just scratching the surface here. If I'm stating the obvious, I'm glad you think so.

I kindly ask you to reread the preface of the article before commenting.