Having followed Assassin’s Creed for a while before it was released, I already caught a glimpse of the sexism that pervades the male-dominated gaming community. Jade Raymond is the producer of Assassin’s Creed, and she had given interviews promoting the game. Any preview video of Assassin’s Creed with Jade in it has always been met with comments of ‘OMG she is sooo hawt’ and ‘I wanna fuck her’. I had originally brushed it aside as another case of the ‘my penis iz talking, let me show you it’ syndrome, but then it got so out of control I can’t help but express rage at this point.

Recently there were rumors she was about to appear in Maxim magazine (which she flatly denied) and SomethingAwful.com linked a comic of her giving blowjobs to men to persuade them to buy Assassin’s Creed. The webmaster of Something Awful was given a C&D from Ubisoft. Comments of ’she’s a touchy bitch’ and blame the victim are abound.

Being steeped into this event, I’d like to offer a few observations on the general arguments made by (misogynist) men who think it isn’t that big a deal.

The most common argument made was Ubisoft was using Jade to sell their game, hence, ’sex sells’. No one has seen a producer get this much coverage, compared to other producers of other games. It’s Ubisoft’s fault to send a woman to promote a game publicly, and the comic (and comments) were just backlash ‘in response’. Dave, the very man who created said offensive comic, gives his extensive tl;dr thoughts of this argument, and so does Crawford, and Ken. It’s also interesting to note that the amount of misogynist comments made on any news post about Jade have been brushed aside by the arguers, and heap blame on Ubisoft. It’s not new to find people looking only for evidence to confirm their own biases and dismiss disconfirming evidence, but when something as obvious as sexist comments are ignored in favour of a company conspiracy, I can’t help but wonder if everyone’s missing the forest for the trees.

In short: The blame lies wholly on Ubisoft for exposing a woman to the public to sell their game. Because she’s hot and popular, the misogynist comments are therefore justified.

This argument is fundamentally wrong on two accounts:

1. It was the press coverage (i.e: Kotaku) that focused on how pretty Jade was than the game; not Ubisoft. Anything that was possibly sanctioned by Ubisoft never portrayed Jade in a sexual light. The few photos of her show her in a completely professional capacity. The Developer Diaries that promoted Assassin’s Creed never portrayed her in such a way. It was the press response that molded a spokesperson into a sex symbol. It was not Ubisoft’s fault; it’s the misogyny that pervades the journalistic (gaming) culture, and the subsequent comments that spawned from these newsposts.

2. Explicit misogyny is never justified. No more needs to be said.

With that out of the way, more inferences can be had about this argument. Firstly, this operates on the basic assumption that pretty women are forced to be exposed publicly, with or without their consent. The feedback the pretty woman receives is therefore justified, because ogling at beautiful women seems to be a norm for men. This then leads to the conclusion that since one does not like the feedback, one must stop being exposed to the public. This is where the blame for Ubisoft may come in - by stopping exposure, you stop the feedback.

The problem with this logic is that it begs back to the gender-role stereotype that women are not to be seen, especially beautiful women. The belief that it’s okay to say ‘God damn, I’d rape her in a second’ has become so internalized that misogynist men find there’s nothing wrong with their psychological make-up, instead, one has to blame other sources for implanting misogynist thoughts.

The second argument was that there was nothing offensive about the comic; in fact, it’s a political and well-thought out message about the sexual perversion that UBISOFT WHORED HER OUT TO OMG. Also, ‘people need to learn how to take a joke’ can also fall into this category of ‘not getting it’. Dave, as mentioned, loves his tl;dr, and Brad, in his infinite wisdom, doesn’t mind being called stupid, and neither does he mind photoshopped pictures of himself giving blowjobs to other men (but then refused to give his picture).

I doubt I can find anything of value to actually counter this argument, simply because it seems their our values greatly differ. It doesn’t take a Psychology major to know that personal values cannot be changed (unless you’re shown to have explicitly experienced some form of cognitive dissonance, which is not the case for the arguments made here; all of them think objectifying women is okay).

From a personal standpoint, I found nothing satirical about a comic that portrayed a professional woman in a demeaning way. There was nothing ironical nor mocking; it was explicitly sexist, which Dave readily admits to (and how it falls under his belief it is still ’satire’ is something beyond my grasp). I found nothing laughable about a comic whose only message was a sexist view of women.

The final most observed argument was ‘it’s the internet, stop getting your knickers in a twist and focus on something more productive’.

Apparently, the word cyber rape has been either ignored or not learned. Sexually demeaning photos is a form of cyber rape. If a woman didn’t ask for it, then don’t give it. The fact that it’s virtual is not any less important than the physical assault itself. Sadly, ‘violence’ has become a metaphor for ‘rape’ over these years (see the statistics on the amount of judicial punishment meted out to rapists who inflicted bodily harm to their victims against those who did not), and it is assumed that if there is no physical harm done to the female, it’s relatively acceptable. It is not. Whether it be severe psychological trauma or just minor annoyance, the fact remains that harm was done.

It’s not shocking to see the same old arguments made by both misogynists and feminists alike. I can’t say that I’m well versed in the area of misogyny myself, but all I am able to observe so far are extreme examples of it, with no ‘moderate ground’. This is also perhaps based on my feminist nature, since I have observed varying degrees of feminism (the oft-proclaimed question of ’should a man hold open the door for a woman?’ is often met with a variety of responses from feminists) and none yet from misogynists. Perhaps it is because all their arguments can be countered, and every single comment is inherently sexist in nature.

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ETA: Before I forget, my entire point was this: the attempt to justify the objectification of women (in this case, Jade) is misogynist. The arguments that I’ve seen from these very people seem to have ignored this very issue, instead focusing more on who is to blame for this fallout (not the misogynists). It seems that they indirectly admit the fallout is sexist in nature, but have attempted to justify their misogyny by shifting the blame to someone else, hence the title of this post.

More gloriously related posts:
Character Assassin’s Creed… More Misogyny in Gaming. (Roy is full of awesome, by the way. He put things into words more eloquently than I ever could).
The Trouble with Jade @ Feministe.
Jade Raymond is for Real @ GameGirlAdvance
Shrub.com.
Clearly, We Do Not Deserve Nice Things And/Or People.
A Brief Word About the Whole Jade Raymond Situation.

Originally published at Confutatis.org. You can comment here or there.