In Dialogue with the Gaming Community: FemC and Persona 3 Reload
I’m going to delay Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth part 2 for a few days because I am intrigued by the FemC discussion on Twitter. In my next entry: we will talk about fatalism in the Valkyrie Profile cosmos.
However, I am intrigued by the FemC discussion because there are a lot of passionate voices on Twitter coming from a variety of perspectives and my experience with ethics really hit home on this topic. To start, I will give my grounding so as to be transparent with where I am coming from in the conversation. Then I will give my thesis and spend some time reflecting on the current struggles. As a solo entrepreneur, I am writing this in the name of Phenomena Gaming, utilizing America’s reasoning that corporations are people and that corporations have more free speech than individuals without a corporation.
My grounding: I am a cishet, middle-class, white male. I have spent my last ten years facilitating discussions and leadership around a variety of justice issues and dialoguing with people from a variety of backgrounds. I studied philosophy and moral theology in undergraduate and graduate school so human behavior has been an interest of mine for a long time. This reflection will come from an academic background as an educational tool. There are weaknesses to this approach because my reflection is not coming from personal experience and representation. However, as someone who has the background to teach and not wanting to burden someone in an underrepresented population, I want to start this discussion here from my own reflection. I would welcome an opportunity for women who want to share their experiences about FemC and the discussion on gender as I’m writing this as a beginning of a reflection and limited at that.
FemC :) Personally, I think she is a great character
Thesis: Until it is normal for woman, non-binary, and transgender people to be protagonists in video games without comment, then we are not where we need to be as a community in terms of honoring all perspectives. The same holds true for all marginalized communities, whether that be because of race, religion, or sexual orientation, though this article is strictly talking about gender for sake of brevity.
Definition: Normal is being used as a flow here. I.e. something is so ordinary that it exists as it is without ridicule, it just is.
The key question is “can we get to a place as a community where diverse perspectives just are and how would we get there?”
Our Current Situation
As a gaming community, we have a real challenge when thinking about how we approach others who are concerned about negative responses to female protagonists in games. On every release of a game with a female protagonist, there is a crowd of voices who respond negatively and review bomb games who have female, non-binary, or transgender leads. This also coincides with review bombing which happens for non-cishet sexual orientations as well. While there may be a number of female protagonists in a variety of games, I cannot think of any who did not have some fanfare about being a female protagonist in a new franchise or for being sexualized in their art representation. Because there are frequent review bombings and negative remarks when anyone other than a cishet male is a lead protagonist, the current situation is not ideal. The latest example is the choice of Atlus to not include FemC in their remake of Persona 3, when she was available in the Persona 3 Portable game. (And we still get the godforsaken gourmet king social link…)
FemC with a naginata, taken from PS5
Why Representation Matters?
Representation is vital because each person has a unique identity and as people come to learn about themselves, they gain community identities to build ties of solidarity with others. People embrace a variety of identities and hold them close to their hearts. Everyone wants to see someone who is like them in a good and important role in their media of choice. Representation which just is and doesn’t get a firestorm of hate is vital for the mental health of people around the world so everyone can enjoy leaders who look and act like them. FemC being excluded from Persona 3 Reload at launch is not good because there are two options and FemC had some better social links than the original Persona 3. (Again, fuck the Gourmet King.) The quality of life improvements for Persona 3 Portable are also substantial compared to base Persona 3.
This is a gimmicky image of a Samurai to think about who Mr. Ono idolizes.
The Power of Gender-Critical Theory
How can it be normal for any gender to be in a video game as a protagonist and how to have minimal backlash against traditionally marginalized communities? I want to take some time to examine gender-critical perspectives and how they hold such power over people, examining a bit of my own background. This exploration is important because it is such a unique world.
1) Gender-critical theorists have very specific roles and very specific expectations for men and women. As long as people fit into neat boxes or can be socialized into neat boxes, it is a cohesive way of life for some. Given my rocky childhood, I wanted more order and stability and found it temporarily in fundamentalist Catholic worldviews. Back then, (about 20 years ago) I thought if my parents behaved in more traditional gender roles, maybe they wouldn’t have had to divorce. While I found out later, this was a wildly incorrect assumption, for people feeling instability and trauma, simple solutions are really appealing. I was a leader trying to implement more conservative practices during high school and college because I thought if everyone followed the rules, the world would be a better place. For people commenting on wanting more representation, there are many people who are frightened by change and see this line of thought as a threat. I know I did for my first three years of undergrad. The challenge in discussion is whether both people in dialogue are coming forward honest about their influences and their traumas which lead them to hold certain beliefs.
2) Gender-critical theorists believe they are following divine design and that too much innovation is sinful. Being creative inside a box is sometimes allowed but too much creativity and change is seen as being prideful. The basic premise is that if people believe God is all-good, then however the world is designed is perfect as it is. Male and female complement in gender-critical theories and those are defined to specific roles. All is one design and all should respect that design in gender-critical theory. This affects representation because it creates violent reactions when things outside of the approved divine design are represented. This is the key cause behind the outrage which foments when any woman, non-binary, or transgender protagonist is shown in a positive light, or outside of specific roles attributed to women. I had a period in life where I felt lost and felt ignored and this philosophy appealed to me, one because it privileged my experience and put me in power, and two, it gave me an outlet for all of the loneliness and hurt I felt. I also couldn’t think there was anything wrong with me because I was doing my daily prayers and weekly confession trying to follow the specific way. My worst incident was writing a note critical of LGBT ministry at my college campus ministry office for having a purple closet in our shared campus ministry space. Not a great moment, for sure.
3) Gender-critical theorists believe the world is broken and the problems in the world happen because we have embraced brokenness instead of correcting it. That is why “incels” and “gender-critical” thinkers are so harsh in their responses. The concern of representation is really a lack of discipline in “controlling urges and thoughts”. I am a very-disciplined person in terms of maintaining regular meditation and reflection rituals as well as having a high compass for what I expect of my own behavior. I always thought if I could lift this burden, then others should be able to as well. This is a key aspect of why so many gender-critical people turn out later to be homosexual, because they see a world embracing people instead of disciplining as they are.
In short, when one side feels that the other is poking a traumatized bear who wants “a simpler life”, there will inevitably be conflict. This conflict is a key conflict for our time. I want to move us toward the thesis by examining how I changed and what it might tell us about the dialogues we have currently.
These people all move the story forward in Persona 3 Portable and everyone in the group just contributes as they explore the dungeon.
Moving Toward the Thesis
Sometimes, people have to scream themselves exhausted in order to move to a point of reflection. That is probably the most simple way to explain how I started to change. Having good friends get tired of my ranting and raving about society is one way to see a need for change. However, this would not have been cemented until I had an experience where I got what I wanted and hated it. Meeting and working with a bunch of people deep into fundamentalist Catholicism was an awful experience for me. I got what I wanted spending a summary doing missionary work and my visceral negative reaction of the people around me is what truly made me realize something was wrong. It took me three years of research, reading, and silence to truly build anything resembling what I write now.
So key insights from my experience
1) create and help contribute to voids from gender-critical people to scream into. Muting is such a valuable tool where people cannot see that you are not participating in conversation. They can scream but you’re not listening. Blocking and responding leads to a martyrdom complex which no individual is going to overcome. I had to hit a rock bottom of loneliness and not having any family or friends to see how much pain I had caused. There are a couple of extra challenges now, including echo chambers being easier to build, and an increase in sociopathic behavior as a society. However, not engaging extremists directly is essential for actually building a good response by learning the structure of how gender-critical theory is empowered.
2) Indirect responses to gender-critical theorists can be really effective. If there is no incentive for being a gender-critical person, then it is a lot harder to be a gender-critical person. Direct responses cause a martyrdom complex, but building human rights and legal cases against organizations perpetuating harmful beliefs is a very easy indirect response not directly trying to attack any one person. In my case, I had to see these problematic legal structures and financial systems for myself. But there are ways to cut off funding for a variety of organizations, especially finding ways to try them outside of American courts.
Cutting off an influence or letting someone scream themselves silent will cause a need for a reckoning over time. It will be a rough journey but this is what happened to me in starting a reflection process. It’s not an easy road to build that path but it is the only way to create healthier patterns of behavior because direct intervention, especially online, rarely works. Indirect responses to disrupt the influencers also is not easy work, but is not hopeless, especially if communities can come together to solve problems.
Conclusion
I want a world where it is normal for everyone to see a good representation of themselves in video game protagonists. I have reflected on how gender-critical theorists gain power and how people are influenced by gender-critical theories. I also highlight some responses for how to build structure and influence to disrupt the key influencers behind gender-critical theory. While my responses seem subtle, enough subtle acts create a pit for people to fall into, rather than responding directly and hitting a brick wall. It also causes ideologies to be disrupted for a longer time to affect the sources rather than trying to convert individual people. To build a world where everyone can see a good representation of themselves without judgment does require an honest reckoning of worldviews which have caused harm on a systemic level and to do so without re-traumatizing people who have suffered. Research, background work, and systems analysis are vital for narrative change which leads to systems change. However, this work is only beginning and I am looking forward to further discussion on this piece.
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