Women and videogames: blog tasks

 Part 1: Background reading on Gamergate

Read this Guardian article on Gamergate 10 years on. Answer the following questions:

1) What was Gamergate? 

Gamergate was a toxic online harassment campaign starting in 2014, targeting women in the video game industry

2) What is the recent controversy surrounding narrative design studio Sweet Baby Inc? 

Believes that Sweet Baby Inc is secretly forcing game developers to change the bodies, ethnicities and sexualities of video game characters to conform to “woke” ideology.

3) What does the article conclude regarding diversity in videogames?

This is part of a broader far right panic about diversity and inclusion that has already resulted in proposed regressive anti-women and anti-woke legislation in the USA and elsewhere.

Part 2: Further Feminist Theory: Media Factsheet

Use our Media Factsheet archive on the M: drive Media Shared (M:\Resources\A Level\Media Factsheets) or here using your Greenford Google login. 

Find Media Factsheet #169 Further Feminist Theory, read the whole of the Factsheet and answer the following questions:

1) What definitions are offered by the factsheet for ‘feminism ‘and ‘patriarchy’?

Feminism is a movement which aims for equality for women – to be

treated as equal to men socially, economically, and politically.

Patriarchy male dominance in society

2) Why did bell hooks publish her 1984 book ‘Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center’?

She had identified a lack of diversity within the feminist movement,

and argued that these diverse voices had been marginalised, being

put outside the main body of feminism.

3) What aspects of feminism and oppression are the focus for a lot of bell hooks’s work?

hooks challenged feminists to consider gender’s relation to sex, race,

class and intersectionality.

4) What is intersectionality and what does hooks argue regarding this?

The term intersectionality is used to describe overlapping or intersecting

social identities and related systems of oppression, domination or

discrimination. hooks argues for gender, race, social class, ethnicity.

5) What did Liesbet van Zoonen conclude regarding the relationship between gender roles and the mass media?

Van Zoonen concludes that there is a strong relationship between gender and communication, but it is also the mass media that leads to much of the observable gender

identity structures in advertising, film and TV.

6) Liesbet van Zoonen sees gender as socially constructed. What does this mean and which other media theorist we have studied does this link to?

That gender isn't biological and is created within society linking to Judith Butler gender as a performance

7) How do feminists view women’s lifestyle magazines in different ways? Which view do you agree with?

Van Zoonen argues that women’s magazines mediate images that tell women “how to be a perfect mother, lover, wife, homemaker, glamorous accessory,

secretary – whatever suits the needs of the system”. Feminists of the 1970s saw the ‘media-created woman’ – the wife, mother, housekeeper,

sex object – as a person only trying to be beautiful for men. I agree with the first view as they may want to show the 'perfect' women in the magazine 

8) In looking at the history of the colours pink and blue, van Zoonen suggests ideas gender ideas can evolve over time. Which other media theorist we have studied argues things evolve over time and do you agree that gender roles are in a process of constant change? Can you suggest examples to support your view?

Gauntlett specifically focuses on how media representations of gender have changed, becoming more diverse and less stereotypical over time. Yes, gender roles are in a process of constant change. Van Zoonen and Gauntlett both highlight how what is considered "masculine" or "feminine" is not a fixed, biological reality but a performance influenced by the social and cultural environment

9) What are the five aspects van Zoonen suggests are significant in determining the influence of the media?

Van Zoonen argues that the influence of the media is dependent on:

• Whether the institution is commercial or public

• The platform upon which they operate (print versus digital media)

• Genre (drama versus news)

• Target audiences

• The place the media text holds within the audiences’ daily lives

10) What other media theorist can be linked to van Zoonen’s readings of the media?

Stuart Hall Reception theory, as audiences interpret these constructed norms

11) Van Zoonen discusses ‘transmission models of communication’. She suggests women are oppressed by the dominant culture and therefore take in representations that do not reflect their view of the world. What other theory and idea (that we have studied recently) can this be linked to?

This builds on bell hooks as she sees feminism as a struggle to end patriarchal oppression - it should be a serious political commitment rather than a fashionable lifestyle choice

12) Finally, van Zoonen has built on the work of bell hooks by exploring power and feminism. She suggests that power is not a binary male/female issue but reflects the “multiplicity of relations of subordination”. How does this link to bell hooks?

bell hooks suggests that race is so significant that the experiences of gender, class or sexuality-based discrimination cannot be fully understood without also considering race.

 For example, men generally have more power then women  but white, middle class western women generally have much more power than women from non-white backgrounds.