This has been open in a tab in my browser for weeks. I think I found this through Gamasutra. I keep meaning to ask you about it.
The link is this: Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine – Most Suprisingly Feminist Game of the Year Contender. An excerpt:
[2nd Lieutenant Mira is] the one person keeping the army of men on this world besieged by an alien force functioning and fighting, and she isn’t oversexualized, treated as weak, nor needing a man, fuck no[,] good readers. Mira doesn’t have time for this motherfucking conventional treatment of motherfucking women in motherfucking videogames.
Compare with the discussions of feminism and female characters, say, in the commentary after The Escapist‘s review of the game. (Beware, yes, it is an Internet comment thread.) Or consider Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw’s commentary on Warhammer 40k in general, in which he writes:
At one point the boy’s club happens upon an outpost commander who has been talked up by other characters for a while and discovers that she’s an attractive young lady. “Oh god, you chunky fucks are going to be taken aback by this, aren’t you,” I predicted. And sure enough, they were, in the least emotional possible way.
If Yahtzee is right, that the Space Marines are taken aback by Lt. Mira, does that make the game (or the whole setting) sexist? Or is that part of the game’s feminism—presuming that the Space Marines are institutionally sexist as a result of their particular regimented and ritualized existence and then purposefully matching them with a not-genetically-engineered human character who is highly capable, tough, serious, and female. The Space Marines may have some lousy preconceptions and biases but does that mean Space Marine the game does?
I have barely scratched the surface of Space Marine, so far, so I don’t have a fully informed opinion on this yet. Do you?
They have a line like, “YOU’RE in charge?” I read it more as “You, a Lieutenant, are in charge?” than “You and your vagina are in charge?”
Then again, I read the feminism in Space Marine article before I played it, so I might have been biased. Certainly, her sex hasn’t come up outside of that one exchange (if it did come up there!), but Space Marine isn’t exactly long on characterization.
When I played it, I definitely read that scene as ‘you, a mere human and a Lieutenant at that…’ without a single trace of sexism. Imperial Guard are the red-shirts of the WH40K universe, considered cheap and disposable by many players. The space marines are genetically-modified and cybernetic-enhanced, trans-human killing machines.
Every other guardsman on the planet is thought dead and she was the highest ranking officer left alive in her unit. They were probably expecting some grizzled war-veteran with half his body replaced by weapons, but she is just a baseline human.
As to feminism; nobody mentions her gender, her armour is the exact same type as the male guardsmen (i.e. loose-fitting, covered in bulky plates and ammo-pouches, only her head uncovered) and she is clearly in charge because she’s one of the few to keep it together emotionally.
Thanks for weighing in, y’all. I’ve got to find the time to play this game so I can form my opinion, too! 🙂
I think that you need to take into consideration the universe that the game is based on.
Warhammer 40 (at least the parts that you get to play in table top and their background) is 98% male. Space Marine is the first time in my 40k experience that I see a female in the Imperial Guard at any rank.
It was a little disconcerting when I first saw it but then it kinda faded in the background not because it was a female officer but because Imperial Guard has always been an add-in to the marines when they work together…. They are dime a dozen as far as the marines are concerned.
Also notice the way in which the guards treat the marines and contrast that with the way the Lt. talks to them. There is deference but she was the one closest to treating the marines as equals which, clearly, they are not.