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From the Kotaku story: "Video games can sometimes be accused of being behind the times in regards to social issues and minority representation. That women can't even fight in 2010 war games such as Bad Company 2 and MAG — even as real women reportedly serve admirably in the real military — would seem to be retrograde, but maybe the tech excuse is a good one." In the HBO miniseries Generation Kill, the protagonists' Recon Marine convoy is at one point hit by small arms fire from an adjacent road during the night while on the move. After realizing they are drawing friendly fire, one of the Marines yells with exasperation "Fuckin' pogues!" When embedded reporter Evan Wright's character queries the meaning of "pogue" one of the younger Marines responds "Persons other than grunts -- pussies." In the American military -- the military force of the current world superpower, our modern day Roman legions -- females are not permitted in frontline combat roles. The Canadian military (and others, such as Israel and other defense-oriented armies) do allow it, but these forces are a bit different in their operational persona. Canada is a small peace keeping force, and Israel, like the former Soviet Union, once needed all the personnel it could muster. The American Army is an expeditionary force -- an aggressive invasion force. It has been, especially the Marine Corps, from the start. And let's face it, even if the ladies would like to kill and be killed next to the boys, the current theatre of war is probably not the best place to start. From the Israeli government site: "Soon after the establishment of the IDF... the removal of all women from front-line positions was decreed. Decisive for this decision was the very real possibility of falling into enemy hands as prisoners of war. It was fair and equitable, it was argued, to demand from women equal sacrifice and risk; but the risk for women prisoners of rape and sexual molestation was infinitely greater than the same risk for men." In British IED specialist Chris Hunter's account of his two month service in Iraq, he recalls a story of British interference with local affairs. Soldiers on patrol came across a little girl, and perhaps stared at her too long. Her father ran into the street and dragged her away -- he then proceeded to beat her. The soldiers, thinking with Western morals, grabbed the man and beat him twice as hard. The next day they patrolled the area the man came out into the street with his daughter and slit her throat. It makes sense then that insurgents are not likely to surrender to female troops. As well, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman (although proven incorrect time and time again on other issues) offers some interesting thoughts on male pyschology in that the treatment of wounded women in a war zone might set men off-kilter. The paraphrasing via Wikipedia reads: "The reason for removing female soldiers from the front lines is no reflection on the performance of female soldiers, but that of the male infantrymen after witnessing a woman wounded. The IDF saw a complete loss of control over soldiers who apparently experienced an uncontrollable, protective, instinctual aggression." Training in The Boys Club to be a Killer When I was at film school we had a short fight class, with the guy who did the choreography for Highlander. This guy was Force Recon in Vietnam, and I remember one day he said to us that at the end of the day, even in modern warfare, it can come down to two men, knives and fists. During training they had what was called the "bear pit". This was about a platoon worth of soldiers shoved into a muddy pit and told to fight until one man "won". I forget whether he did well or not, but I do remember he recalled being knocked out cold during it. It would surprise me if men would be willing to beat up women during intense combat preparedness training. And it would surprise me if the American military were interested in watering down their training of professional killers to appease...anyone. In effect we sit back in our armchairs and gesture at the military institution "Why are women not treated equally, why are they not treated like men?" Simply, because they are not men. The rest of the world is not so liberal. War is not so liberal -- neither is the training. We do not see female Marines in Call of Duty because there are no female Marines. There is no reason to fret over the resources required for female soldier models, because none of the conflicts the Western videogame industry is modelling feature them. What is The Real Issue For Us? We do not glorify the female top gunner defending a water truck behind the lines -- we glorify the testosterone-driven adrenaline-pumped, sleep-deprived sweaty twenty year old male grunt lying in the dirt with his M16 as rifle rounds pop and zing overhead. But , more to my point here, there is the general thinking, I believe, that the game industry is sexist. Because the industry is predominantly male and because we're stereotypically "asocial misanthropes" who enjoy a dark basement and an FPS rather than a day at the golf course, it is assumed that a shortage of females in the industry and in the games it creates is solely due to deep-seated sexism funded by a history of supposed social problems and spite. At a local event here in Vancouver, a precursor to having our own branded GDC, the question was asked during a QA "Why so few females in videogames?" The official answer was rather lukewarm and empty, but someone speaking from the crowd offered that there are so few women in the industry because so few apply -- many with the skillsets; usually art-related, get higher paying jobs in film. The majority probably aren't interested, rather than the industry discriminating. Kotaku's Stephen Totilo posits "Do female characters need to be put in virtual combat? Or, more to the point, are they more important than crumbling walls?" I would say perhaps they should. Perhaps, aside from main characters (of which there are already some, in the soldier role), the grunts in an FPS should be female. But who are we kidding -- how weird would that seem? Like Totilo's assumed stance of towing the female line, it would be an awkward formality. As long as there are very few cases of females serving in frontline combat roles, female combatants will remain the stuff of Vietnam era sci-fi, Aliens, and Stalingrad films. Otherwise it is nothing but a cheap nod for the sake of being politically correct. It is the cornerstone of Buddhist policy that beneath it all we are just one thing: humans. Humans minds influenced by human bodies. But this is not true of the cultures we live in, and those cultures produce real effects that are not just modifiers of perception but of the circumstances we observe themselves. As equal as we would like to believe men and women are as human beings, they are not equal in their roles in the world. If those roles should be or can be changed or not is not an issue for me to speak to, but the depictions of them in entertainment should not be blamed on the depictors.
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Also, "but the depictions of them in entertainment should not be blamed on the depictors." If the people who create the depictions are not responsible for their work then who is? There is a difference between depicting reality and depicting stereotypes, perhaps not a clear distinction but enough of a distinction exists that we shouldn't absolve people of all responsibility.
Ultimately, one has to ask, does it make good business sense to marginalize potential customers in the name of realism?
I'm not sure quite how to react to this. There have been female soldiers who have made a name for themselves throughout history. There were female soldiers that saw combat in World War II. In modern combat, it is absurd to suggest that a woman can't be as good a sniper as a man, for example. Even in video game history, one of the earliest great sci-fi "soldiers" (Samus/Metroid) was a woman. There is nothing weird about a female soldier.
I can assure you that while the meat head male grunt is highly romanticized in the US, this view is not the definition of either historical accuracy or cultural norms elsewhere in the world. While the "boys club" style warfare games may be very successful because they are solid games that tap into some of the more primal instincts that drive us, they also alienate a huge number of people that would otherwise make up the game market.
If including women isn't realistic because you are looking exclusively at the boys only military conflicts, perhaps it is time to look elsewhere. There are plenty of options to choose from.
I am a Marine and yes, there are female Marines, Soldiers, Seamen (or Seawomen), Airmen (or Airwomen) and Coast Guards.
I actually think it's kinda weird there are NO females in current war FPS's, such as COD or BF. if anything it makes the game world less realistic.
But this leads us back to video games not being based on documentaries, but rather just entertainment. However, I do think that most COD games have some sort or realism to them, so that's why no females are in the soldier or marine parts. World War I and II did happen after all, so it is somewhat documented.
As for the Modern Warfare games, me being a Marine, I wouldn't want to see a female in these roles because I know it would feel less real. I play them to get a feel for battle again. Females should, however, play a bigger role in side characters and enemy characters. In Iraq and Afghanistan, you will see a lot more females in the towns and markets and occasionally, terrorists and extremists will force them to strap a bomb to themselves and explode it in the middle of a market area.
The USMC are not Army infantry, they are an expeditionary force that operates through the Navy. The focus of this article was on popular depiction, which is no doubt the modern US military. In the Marine Corps, women are not permitted to serve in frontline combat roles. As they, like any military force, require infrastructure and administration, yes, women are Marines. But, from what I know, and I think it is worthy of participation in this sort of discussion, the Humvees loaded with women are not headed for combat patrols in the city centres. They are maybe defending convoys carrying food or munitions, or other such tasks.
Women served in North Korea, but you don't see any pictures of women with BARs charging up hills -- because that's not what they did there. Unsurprisingly, games don't show many women doing this either.
The article Totillo linked claimed that commanders cut through bureaucracy by attaching women to combat missions, whilst not officially "deploying" them. So it is still a rarity.
Females (as well as pre-teen boys) were drafted by the USSR during WW2, this is true. They fought and died alongside men. Joan of Arc acted as a French military figurehead during the Hundred Years War. Women have fought -- can fight -- that's not something I was trying to refute. I think it's popular opinion now that most if not all of Lt. Col. David Grossman's assertions are pseudoscience.
What I'm saying is that there is not a 50/50 ratio of men to women in military action -- their partaking is a rarity worthy of note.
Therefore it is wrong to accuse videogames of some sort of sexist agenda whilst they are mostly accurate depictions (in terms of the sex of combatants) of real world combat situations.
Sci-fi is a different thing altogether, and is maybe ignored in Totillo's article -- so I focused on the modern military shooters of today. Of course, Unreal Tournament has female combatants as well as Mass Effect. Hell, women have always been in Dungeons and Dragons. Go roll yourself a female warrior -- but that's something that looks more out of place in a ditch full of Rangers under mortar fire beside a berm in Iraq. It just does. That's a fact. More Marines, more Army Rangers, etc etc, are men. You cannot pick out one women, sent under special orders and say "See! A woman is here, on the front lines! Why are there not lots of women in Modern Warfare 2?"
My own personal view also factored into this article -- and that is that men and women are different. It might shock liberal sensibilities, but we are two sexes of the same species. We have been subject to similar and dissimilar evolutionary pressures. War is not cool. War is not an awesome thing that people should vie to participate in.
It is a fact that men hunted while women gathered. In primitive human societies that still exist today, that is still the case -- in fact women are found to select mates that are better hunters. Civilizations have managed to shirk this -- have managed to move away from some of our evolutionary programming (by allowing women to join militaries, perhaps encouraging it as an act of empowerment and nationalism).
But there is still the issue of triple A videogames being part of mainstream media and serving the lowest common denominator. That doesn't mean stupid, exactly. That means popular opinion, for the most part -- perhaps based on stereotypes we have carried with us as a species for some time. A man with a shield and a spear = warrior. A woman with a shield and spear...that is counter to our mental picture of warrior.
When a woman acts like a man, is as ruthless and cunning as a man -- Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir -- we praise them "Hooray, women are also powerful!" It seems to me this is a terrible thing to praise.
And, alright, I have to respond to the first comment because I hear that a lot. Dragons are realistic in Dungeons and Dragons. A dragon would be unrealistic in a game set in Fallujah. A helicopter would be unrealistic in Dungeons and Dragons. Realism is maybe the wrong word -- accuracy is more correct. It is not accurate to show an infantry platoon full of women breaking down the doors of families in Iraq and spilling the contents of their dresser drawers. For, say, EAs next Medal of Honor game to display a woman as the titular character would be out of place and seen as trying to make a statement -- it would most certainly not be accurate to the world they are trying to depict.