So... he admits that he felt that elements of Bioshock Infinite were a poor fit with the overall game, yet he made the decision to stay silent about it? So basically, he's admitting that he thinks so little of the games he reviews that he won't bother criticizing them in the same manner critics regularly criticize other art forms. Seems to me he's pretty much admitted he's a poor reviewer. If he felt that the racism in Bioshock Infinite was disjointed, didn't add to the plot, and served mostly as a jarring distraction, he had an obligation to his readers to mention that in his review. Whatever reasons he had for omitting this from his criticism, his omission doesn't somehow serve as a bizarre argument against other reviewers who don't cower behind some silly idealistic view that reviews should be pristine and uncontroversial.
I think the general argument in this thread is more about whether said sexuality constitutes sexism (and why DC is being singled out) than whether someone should or shouldn't feel uncomfortable with it.
Wait, though. Why are those necessarily different things? Isn't it possible that a woman -- who has probably had her fair share of direct and personal experiences with sexism and therefore has a pretty good sense of what sexism feels like -- might feel uncomfortable precisely because of how much the game's depictions of women invoke those experiences for her? "Sexism" isn't some kind of binary value, just like authorial intent need not dictate audience experience. Obviously female nudity isn't inherently sexist -- no one has argued that it is, and I get indescribably tired of this straw (wo)man being flung around indiscriminately in these types of discussions. Sexism does not exist independent of context. If I apply for a job and am not hired because the director of HR thought I came across as shrill, that's not sexist *in a vacuum*. But that's just the thing -- life doesn't exist in a vacuum, and neither do games. Similarly, not all women's experience of sexism is the same. For the reviewer, the game connected with experiences of sexism SHE has encountered in her life. For other women, the correlation just isn't there. **No one is incorrect**. **No one's perspective here is "wrong"**.
What's so deeply troubling about the tone this discussion has taken is the umbrage at the very IDEA that any woman might have related the game's depiction of women to experiences of sexism that SHE HAS ACTUALLY HAD. Yes, how dare she have different life experiences than the majority of the game's audience. How dare she actually relate to a game as a human being and not as a mindless automaton who lives in a vacuum and has no real human experience. How dare she respect the game enough to treat it as a culturally-relevant work and therefore evaluate and critique it on the same terms she'd evaluate and critique any other piece of culture.
Here's the thing: she didn't say that it was impossible to enjoy the game without being a sexist pig (though admittedly some of the language in her review was off-putting). She didn't say that it was impossible to play the game and NOT connect it with past experiences of sexism. She most definitely didn't say that female nudity is inherently sexist. All she did was relay her experience. She shared that, to her, the game was alienating. And what does she get for sharing this? The same vitriol that most women with any visibility can look forward to any time they challenge the status quo.
This is actually a big issue both in the games industry and other places in life -- this resistance to women's experience. Practically every time a woman contributes her experience, if that experience points out any connection to sexism whatsoever, suddenly she's said something accusatory, or unfair, or mean, or PC, or any number of bizarre descriptors. NO. All she's done is communicated HER EXPERIENCE, and every time you try to silence her, YOU ARE PERPETUATING THE VERY SEXISM SHE WAS TALKING ABOUT. You're doing it by rejecting women's right to voice their experiences.
And no, quoting women who disagree with her doesn't mitigate this fact. All that does is send the message that women are allowed to have a voice if and only if they are saying things that "we" want them to say. This is every bit as marginalizing and dismissive as if you had literally said "hush now, men are talking."
I just feel that in seems that the line for what is acceptable seems way more further in other media, like shows and movies, in which progressively that line have been pushed forward by the years, decades ago you could barely show a frontal nude without raising a few eyebrows and now directors and writters have the freedom to do so.
While this is true, it has nothing to do with the matter at hand. Again, this isn't about whether or not it's "okay" to show scantily-clad women. It's taking a work in its entirety and noticing something that is frankly pretty damned noticeable, and commenting about it. If anything, it's the attacks on the review that fall into the general rubric of "games need to be a special category," because they implicitly suggest that games should get a special "get-out-of-sexism-free" card that other media don't (and if you aren't aware of criticisms of sexism in other media, you frankly aren't paying enough attention to validate even HAVING an opinion about these issues).
