Deep Down the rabbit hole of ingrained games industry sexism
I play videogames, and I want to read everything Brenna Hillier ever writes:
Developer: Holy shit. I see it too. Sir, sir – if we make games that don’t treat women like sub-human dust bunnies fit only to be rescued, kidnapped, lusted after or left out of the picture altogether, women might buy more of our games. Maybe – maybe it’s not that women aren’t interested in games, but that our games actively discourage women from enjoying them in preference to literally any other form of media!
Publisher: This is a revelation. Why have we never considered this before?
Developer: Well, sir, probably because we’re straw men caricatures representing not individual decision makers but an entire ingrained social system that harms men just as much as it harms women, which we’ve been trained our entire life never to see, and must work every day to counter with our every thought, word and action, in order to build a much better world for all men, women, and non-binary gender people.
Though I will note the introduction does Ms. Hillier a disservice. They write:
Deep Down apparently won’t contain any playable female characters. It’s 2014. This is video games. Brenna Hillier is, predictably, pretty fucking angry.
While she’s right to be angry, and is gloriously, hilariously so in the full article, the tone of the introduction hints a little at the trope of the “angry woman railing at the male patriarchy again.” When the cause is just, why shouldn’t we rail?
