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See the original image at gamesradar.com —

Portal is a feminist masterpiece (great read!)

gamesradar.com — An exploration of "the most subversive game ever" from the point of view of feminist film theory and psychoanalysis.

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  • BlueSkyfish, on 12/08/2007, -39/+372I guess the author never heard of a little game called Metroid.
    • UnknownCzar, on 12/08/2007, -7/+20What makes you think that?
    • gh0st3000, on 12/08/2007, -4/+50It may not be that they've never heard of it, it's probably that Metroid doesn't work with what they're saying about feminism in games- It's another game where blowing stuff up and killing stuff is front and center, even if it does have platforming.
      • Godlike, on 12/08/2007, -16/+12Also the 'portal' itself is very feminine in nature, same idea as the cup, chalice, etc...
        • kss42, on 12/08/2007, -15/+4Thanks for that, we've all read The Da Vinci Code.
          • Godlike, on 12/08/2007, -4/+9Haven't seen it; I'm talking pagan/wiccan context. The ancient concepts...
          • LeeSoong, on 12/09/2007, -9/+6Amazing how those Natural religions respected, even worshiped nature and life - a very healthy lifestyle.

            Christianity's focus on blood lust and self loathing is what gives rise to the exploitation mindset of clear cutting planet destroyers.

            When the last tree falls, gasp for air,
            - and know that the humans' reign has come to an end.
    • goblindegook, on 12/08/2007, -9/+56FTA: "In the rare event that a female character is playable, she serves as an object of male fantasy and her interactions with the game world are still forced through the male-oriented lens described in the previous paragraph." Read: hot chicks wielding big guns don't necessarily make it feminist.
    • Matt2k, on 12/08/2007, -5/+23The author specifically mentions other games with female protagonists. They're essentially "men" in a woman's skin, using a gun to solve problems. Did you read the article?
      • BentSea, on 12/09/2007, -1/+6That's one of the stupid points of the article, there is no masculine or feminine solution to problems, puzzles are no more feminine than a gun really is masculine. Inside of a game every object is a tool to be used to achieve a goal. Samus is a brilliant female character for the same reason that Chell is.

        It's brilliant logic that Chell is not a sex object, and that you play as her, but this article goes into sick territory that lays pathways for horrible gender stereotyping that creates divisive reasoning between the sexes by drawing conclusions and making logical leaps that are beyond off base. Samus was just as cool, and just as not a sex object.
    • Jelfish, on 12/08/2007, -3/+16I thought of Metroid too when I first started reading it, but gh0st3000 is right. It's true that Samus takes on a traditionally male point of view with minimal fan service or objectification (particularly in the older games), but the point that this article makes is less for females having equal roles as men so much as creating a game that does not have the masculine condition of the direct pursuit of control and power, and the clear establishment of friend and foe necessary to achieve it. Metroid was rather extraordinary when it was first revealed that Samus was a female, but at the same time, her being female is inconsequential to the game architecture (nor should it be). The article is about the point of view and game play lacking the traditional masculine focus and appeasement rather than just the main character being a female.
      • Tahiri, on 12/09/2007, -1/+4"It's true that Samus takes on a traditionally male point of view with minimal fan service or objectification"

        No. The faster you beat the game the more clothes she takes off.
    • dolvlo, on 12/08/2007, -3/+13Did you even read the article?

      fake edit: beaten
    • TomP, on 12/08/2007, -0/+21GLaDOS is hot!
    • nanded, on 12/08/2007, -1/+21Leaving aside the discussion of whether Samus is a true feminist character, or simply a male protagonist masquerading as a woman, what's happened with the development of Samus is sad. It was interesting initially when you realized that Samus was a woman, but then by super metroid, they fan serviced her up to being a buxom blond. You could see that during the death clip when her suit exploded, and the zero suit didn't leave any doubt. She's fairly waifish and supermodel looking (not that I mind such things, but that's not the body of a bounty hunter). Meanwhile, the original Samus, while it's hard to comment on her 8-bit body type, was at very least a brunette/red-head. The fact that in her very next iteration she was gussied up/down to the most common denominator of "Hehe, she's blond and has a huge rack, I'd totally nail that", is somewhat sad. Not that I'm saying they aren't entitled to make her pretty and shiny, but they didn't even try to make her more realistic to her character.
      • extremestan, on 12/09/2007, -4/+4Actually, the Samus of Super Metroid was pretty buff. Clearly you never beat the game in under 3 hours. You should probably only talk about stuff you know about.
        • rootneg2, on 12/20/2007, -0/+2nonetheless, you have to admit that the path from good old 16-pixel samus to the fully 3d zero-suit samus (complete with bounce physics) has been nothing but sexualizing her feminine aspect
      • Syphon8, on 12/09/2007, -0/+4Red heads are hotter than blondes.
    • Locke2053, on 12/09/2007, -10/+55This article is a classic example of sophistry: Make up total BS, completely unsubstantiated by evidence or logic, and hid your lack of reason behind sophisticated vocabulary.

      There is nothing sexual about this game at all. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
      • jaynemother, on 12/09/2007, -5/+16Agreed
      • LeeSoong, on 12/09/2007, -2/+2Verily, Non Sequitur.
      • pyro789x, on 12/09/2007, -2/+18I actually found it funny as they were talking about the companion cube being considered a father figure, and destroying it representing a male's freedom, while I had actually played the game with the directors commentary and heard them explicitly state the exact reasons behind the box lore and its destruction, which had nothing to do with feminism.
        • joegibes, on 12/09/2007, -0/+6I loved my companion cube so much; Heck, I even noclipped real quick and stopped it from being incinerated.
        • gh0st3000, on 12/10/2007, -0/+1but to know that, they would have to actually play the game, not just look at a screenshot or two and hear a summary of it.
    • TantrooM, on 12/11/2007, -0/+1She never played perfect dark either, she wasn't all that hot in the first game.
    • rootneg2, on 12/20/2007, -1/+1I think that the Freudian gun/male portal/female paradigm is horrendously outdated, and so thus would agree from this perspective that Metroid is just as subversive/progressive.

      However, Samus is becoming increasingly sexualized in the same manner as the hyper-sexualized Lara Croft from tomb raider is ultimately a step backwards for gender equality (even if it initially seems progressive by casting a female lead). The original Metroid games were brilliant for their downplay of Samus's gender, and I would argue that they were just as (if not more) subversive than Portal. However, one only has to watch zero-suit Samus flit about in Smash Bro Dojo to realize that ultimately she does nothing more than reinforce the stereotypes of femininity.

      The article's strongest arguments are pointing out the facts that
      a) the character's gender is downplayed to the point of unimportance; it has no relevance to plot, aesthetics, or gameplay.
      b) the character's appearance is also downplayed, in that she is not held to unreasonable or unrealistic standards of beauty, and depicts an average female.

      Unfortunately, the rest of the article was less than impressive. I would however, like to see a and b implemented in more mainstream games.
  • stalefries, on 12/08/2007, -18/+102I'm a little dissapointed; it seems like the author got stuck with a deadline and cut it short. It was getting pretty good, too.
    • masamunecyrus, on 12/08/2007, -26/+30I sincerely hope no women actually listen to this article's load of bullocks.
    • pkonink, on 12/08/2007, -13/+6I dugg you up, because I felt it too. This could be a start to a really good thesis. That I want to read.
      • shinynew, on 12/09/2007, -4/+7It feels like an attempt at some 'smart feminism' written by someone who understands the concepts of neither.
        I feel like i am a worse person for reading this.
    • pAq6Swad, on 09/16/2008, -6/+3You shouldn't be. . .if this article isn't purposefully pedantic, I don't know what is. Any one of the long statements always reveals some banal idea. Tongue-in-cheek humor, I say.
    • nebunezzar, on 12/08/2007, -4/+29Besides all the feminist crap, it was quite a read. I hate how some people twist nothing into meaning something for their own agenda. I mean, I doubt the game designers though about giving birth when making the portals ovular.
      • thetinguy, on 12/09/2007, -3/+15LAWL

        "A psychoanalytic reading would likely conclude that the portal is an image of the female sex organs: oval and receptive, and also a metaphorical birth canal through which the protagonist is constantly being born into new trials."
      • opiniastrous, on 12/09/2007, -4/+18Agreed. Whilst feminists love to discuss the symbology of common objects to connect it to sexuality, they are really just making up explanations of meaning that is not there. Objects referred to as phallic symbols do not cause men to think "***** Yeah! *****!" either consciously or unconsciously. Rifles are not "phallic symbols of masculine agency, through which power is won and maintained", they are simply objects of power and neither their shape nor meaning is determined by the wish of men, but by the laws of physics. If the best designed guns looked like vaginas, we would create them, and men would still be the primary users. What's more, they would not be emasculated. Why? Because most men do not think in the way feminists do. Most men (and most women) prefer to see what is in front of them for what it is, and not what they can construe it to be.
        • BHSPitMonkey, on 12/09/2007, -3/+10Well, there's your problem right now; Women don't believe in physics.
        • rootneg2, on 12/20/2007, -0/+2i think you are confusing feminists with freudians
    • cliffzdude, on 12/08/2007, -3/+22The point the author was trying to make was lost in his love for sprinkling adjectives where ever he could. Poor writing, and the point is a bit obvious to anybody who's gamed before. My high school English teachers would have a tourettes seizure if they read this *****.
    • astraycat, on 12/09/2007, -1/+12The ending was terrible. The Weighted Companion Cube was never referred to as 'he'. It's always referred to as "The weighted companion cube" or "it", as in "In the even that the weighted companion cube does speak, please disregard its advice." Also, going into the back room there are pictures of women with the weighted companion cube put over the face.

      Also, you see your character right away when the first portal opens. I know the first thing I did was jump up and down a few times and wonder what the heck those things on her legs were.
      • Genma, on 12/09/2007, -2/+5true that last part was completely made up, as if they just needed something realistic at the end to make it sound credible. if their aim is appealing to the female gamers, it would probably work for any that haven't played it yet.
  • djh816, on 12/08/2007, -71/+144Is there a reason there is a picture of CoD4 instead of Portal?....maybe i'm missing something.
    • lotticasio, on 12/08/2007, -22/+4Games are violent and all titles look the same? Its an honest mistake!
      • TheWorm, on 12/09/2007, -1/+2Portal is not violent. It is a puzzle game.
    • nitroburn, on 12/08/2007, -2/+91Didn't read the article? The first page discusses First Person Shooters in general, and to illustrate, has a picture of an average FPS.
    • evi1, on 12/08/2007, -1/+21In the article they first discussed traditional First Person Shooters and I believe the COD4 screenshot was an example of this. You could also blame digg's image grabber for grabbing the only image on the linked page and not the Portal screenshots found later in the article on other pages.
    • itsatrapadbar, on 12/08/2007, -6/+31because COD4 kicks ass.
      • alby13, on 12/09/2007, -11/+3that must be it. j/k
        • jaynemother, on 12/09/2007, -0/+14This isn't Myspace. Don't ever do that again.
          • alby13, on 12/19/2007, -1/+1lol i'll do whatever i feel like! what are YOU going to do about it?
    • shcon, on 12/09/2007, -0/+1There are multiple pages.
    • moliver000, on 12/10/2007, -0/+0RTFA
  • Hoxie, on 12/08/2007, -22/+231It is an interesting article, especially the parts about tomb raider, and that female PCs are usually seen in the third person, thus forcing the player to stare at the body of the player.

    However, the part about the portals symbolizing the female organ us a load of DaVinci code *****. It is justified through emotional means rather than fact.

    Meanwhile, gabe newell is laughing his ass off about people philosophizing about this. It's just a game.
    • thcobbs, on 12/08/2007, -18/+10well, it kinda looks like a *****... if you stretched it a bit before you dove in.
      • Remmiz, on 12/08/2007, -0/+21And turned it orange/blue and added electrical current to the edge of it.
        • Optimaximal, on 12/08/2007, -0/+13And diving into one meant you emerged from another...
          • Frophauser, on 12/08/2007, -0/+9You mean that's never happened to you? :/
        • Ricky8765, on 12/08/2007, -1/+4Wait, you mean they're not supposed to have electrical current running along the edge?
        • taquitohater, on 12/08/2007, -1/+4Well unless you like robot hookers...
      • mst3kcrow, on 12/08/2007, -0/+31You could also justify it as being similar to goatse.
    • skanlessflipboy, on 12/08/2007, -5/+63just because the creator did not intend for the metaphor, it doesn't mean it isn't there. literary scholars discuss interpretations to author's work even when the author himself claims he or she did not intend for it to be that way.
      • robot1122, on 12/08/2007, -9/+21Things can mean anything when you look way, way in between the lines. Authors mean what they mean, and everything else is a product of too much free time and obsession. Portal is a game, it might as well symbolize the raping of time and space through these oval, vaginal, portals.
        • NSMike, on 12/08/2007, -3/+19It certainly could symbolize that.

          The idea that something can mean only one thing to everyone, however, is preposterous. Accepting the author's vision as the only possible meaning behind a text is limiting that text to those who can "relate" to it. But when you accept the range of signs available in a text and the different, accumulated meanings behind each sign, and what that signifies for you, an entire universe of interpretations are available. To say that the reasons you enjoy something are wrong is not only unfair, but also narrow-minded.
          • Dworgi, on 12/09/2007, -5/+3And all of this is why extensive analysis of a work beyond what its author intended is meaningless. What information of any value can you extract from trying to understand something that the author didn't even intend to say?

            I mean, sure, 1984 might have an anti-beer agenda, but for *****'s sake - YOU'RE MISSING THE POINT. The article starts out well, but then it degenerates into gobbledy-gook, with the author fabricating some facts and ignoring a wide range of contradicting ones in an effort to meet a word limit.
        • goblindegook, on 12/08/2007, -2/+11Authorial intent is often unknowable (even to the author, who cannot be sure of what he/she meant every step of the way) and, in the end, irrelevant. So "everything else" can be just as valid as the author's original interpretation, so long as you can back up your argument and not contradict anything in the work itself. If you want to see Portal as just a game, that's fine. And if you want to see it as a feminist critique of the FPS genre, well, that's also fine.
          • usbcd36, on 12/09/2007, -4/+2True, it is fine to develop your own personal interpretation of any creative work, but should authors remain silent while others put into their mouthes words with which they disagree?
      • MasterInsan0, on 12/08/2007, -12/+23"Literary scholars" are what ruin even the best books by over-analyzing everything. As Freud once said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
        • iofthestorm, on 12/08/2007, -0/+12Well, he said that when one of his students asked him whether the cigar in his mouth was a phallic symbol, or at least that's why my psych teacher said, and I think in that position there's not much else you can say.
        • NSMike, on 12/08/2007, -0/+16They don't "ruin" anything. You can take from it what you want to take from it.
        • Ricky8765, on 12/08/2007, -2/+7Taking anything and everything at face value makes like very boring and transparent
        • mike81890, on 12/08/2007, -3/+9Ricky8765,
          similarly, over-analyzing everything can make life uselessly convoluted and confusing.
        • directive0, on 12/08/2007, -1/+9Yeah whats wrong with these people THINKING about stuff? They should just shut up and accept the text at face value, lousy free thinkers.
          • Dworgi, on 12/09/2007, -3/+2People get PAID to think about books. There's tons of people just reading Kafka for the 900th time and writing a paper about some obscure aspect of his works, and what I'd like to know is what the ***** point is? The benefit to mankind is nil. No new, relevant knowledge is drawn from analyzing a book by a dead author again and again and again. I think people should be offended by a waste of resources of this magnitude.
          • directive0, on 12/09/2007, -1/+3Why don't you get offended for all of us, and we'll spend our times enjoying ourselves. K? Thx.
      • LilJimmyNordin, on 12/08/2007, -5/+23Which basically reduces such overanalysis as intellectual masturbation. It's only deciphering if you start with a cipher. Otherwise, it's a wank.
      • Karzyn, on 12/09/2007, -4/+5And that's why I don't understand English majors. You're right that it's common practice, but that doesn't make it any dumber.
      • opiniastrous, on 12/09/2007, -3/+1Which is why I went from being a top English student in my earlier school years to a troublemaker in English class (but no others). Not unexpectedly, I chose not to undertake an English major.

        Sometimes meaning that the author didn't intend does exist, but there's a line that 'literary scholars' often cross.
      • Johntp, on 12/09/2007, -4/+1... and I call that retarded
    • imnojezus, on 12/08/2007, -1/+30The author says that a psychoanalytical reading "would likely conclude" that the oval shape is yonic in nature, which is true. Doesn't mean the game's creators knowingly intended for you to walk through a bunch of vaginas all day.
      • TrevorBradley, on 12/08/2007, -2/+19I don't think COD4's creators knowingly intended for you to shoot many tiny high velocity penises out of your even larger portable metallic penis... but there you are...
    • gh0st3000, on 12/08/2007, -5/+29I think it's a bit of a stretch that an oblong circle makes it similar to the female sex organ. That part seemed like they were looking at the game with the specific feminist mindset and searching for anything that remotely fit.
      • NSMike, on 12/08/2007, -6/+6Yet it's not a stretch that because guns are oblong and rigid, and discharge a projectile that they represent the male genitalia? If you're looking at something through a specific lens, then it's not a stretch by any means.
        • adraft, on 12/09/2007, -3/+11It is a stretch though. Guns are long and rigid so they can shoot accurately, function over form. She sounded like she was saying video games invented guns and designed them to look like dicks.
        • bosephus, on 12/09/2007, -1/+2Male genitalia are also function over form. Either through evolution or whatever. And the article was written by a man, dude.
          • Dworgi, on 12/09/2007, -2/+5Irrelevant. He wanted to find a feminist agenda for whatever reason. And yes, penises are functional, but judging everything as phallic because they follow similar design patterns is adding intent where there is none.

            Ships work better if they're long and tapered, guns shoot straight, skyscrapers are stronger and have a smaller footprint. And guess what? None of it has anything to do with the male penis.
      • harpwn, on 12/08/2007, -0/+7"oblong circle" is an oval
    • AtomicTank, on 12/08/2007, -11/+7Yeah, the article was very well written and somewhat intriguing, but I really do hate it when people attempt to tear something apart to find meanings that don't exist. The people at Valve put together an amazing an innovative game, that's really all there is to it.
    • tektalk, on 12/09/2007, -3/+1Agreed, the person who wrote this is just overthinking the whole thing; sometimes a game is just a game. :P
  • XFi6, on 12/08/2007, -15/+8I'm still getting Portal anyways. :)
    • bob12321, on 12/08/2007, -0/+4You don't have it yet?
    • thetinguy, on 12/09/2007, -4/+1LAWL "A psychoanalytic reading would likely conclude that the portal is an image of the female sex organs: oval and receptive, and also a metaphorical birth canal through which the protagonist is constantly being born into new trials."
      • JudgeMonkey, on 12/09/2007, -0/+9Yea, how awesome is the game now, knowing that you carry a gun that fires vaginas onto walls. Also, this is like a reverse reply fail.
  • fhornplayer, on 12/08/2007, -26/+233"The turrets are easily deactivated by tipping them over, which is accomplished through the clever placement of portals. The power of the feminine overcomes aggression without the use of force."
    Because, you know, if your man is being aggressive, all you have to do is tip him over and he'll shut off. Since guys are machines and all. Right? Talk about reading too deep into something...
    • KniteWulf, on 12/08/2007, -5/+47If you tip a guy over and get on top of him, well...
      • Optimaximal, on 12/08/2007, -1/+54That's more likely to turn him on than off...
    • tuxidomasx, on 12/08/2007, -5/+79"The turrets are easily deactivated by tipping them over, which is accomplished through the clever placement of portals. The power of the feminine overcomes aggression without the use of force."

      to me, that sounds more like women can satisfy an aggressive man by offering him their hole(s)...
      • fhornplayer, on 12/08/2007, -1/+26I think that's actually the point the article makes. But that's basically saying that sex is just a thing to do to appease men, which is a rather non-feminist thing to say.
      • JapaneseEconomy, on 12/08/2007, -2/+9Actually sex and maximum procreation is the end goal of all men, violence and aggression are just a means to an end of achieving that goal. The more competing men you can eliminate the more it forces women to choose you as their only viable option for procreation. We are biologically programmed that way. That's why we take great pleasure in eliminating men we consider evil, yet feel the need to protect innocent women and children.
        • thetinguy, on 12/09/2007, -4/+4Wrong. If guys 200,000 years ago ran around ***** everything that moved, we would not have survived. It makes more sense to father only one or two children. That way the father's children wouldn't have to compete with his other children to survive. There are only a finite number of resources available to any group or family.
          • JapaneseEconomy, on 12/09/2007, -2/+2Right... then why was polygamy so common until the past 1000 years, where every successful male would have multiple legitimate wives. Even now days many powerful males will have multiple partners if given the opportunity.

            Genghis Khan is an example of the success proceating with as many woman as possible makes. Ancient Mongolian historical records say that Genghis Khan had impregnated thousands of women. Now with recent breakthroughs in DNA analysis they've discovered that ~16million people (8% of asians) are the descendants of Genghis Khan.

            Also if you look at animals the goal of every male is to have the largest harem possible or maintain alpha male status to procreate with as many women as possible.

            You want legit sources? GOOGLE: khan 16 million descendants
            i can't put direct links because digg truncates the link.
          • YojimboJango, on 12/09/2007, -3/+1Wrong. Men in power (aka with unlimited resources) did this. thetinguy's comment stands as accurate.
          • JapaneseEconomy, on 12/09/2007, -1/+1Well you see I didn't go into great detail but not every male has a biological tendency to be hostile towards EVERY OTHER MAN. Men that are genetically closely related will form alliances with each other to help each other prosper and in order to eliminate genetically distant competitors, be they for resources or mates or land. All of mankind through its entire history has been like that with tribes, kingdoms and nations of genetically closely related people teaming up to eliminate competitors.
            Where is the place with the most peaceful co-existence between its OWN citizens? Japan. They are closer genetically related than any other industrialized nation.
            Where are the places where people are most selfish and care the least for strangers? America the genetic diversity there is greater than any other nation.
            Where is the continent with the most genocide and constant warfare? Africa, it has the greatest genetic diversity of anywhere in the world.
          • kodax, on 12/09/2007, -0/+1Korea, not Japan, is the most genetically homogeneous nations.
        • shinynew, on 12/09/2007, -1/+8scientific ideas > language major ideas
      • DoodleMaster, on 12/09/2007, -0/+2don't anyone dare move that guys digg count up by 1 more! it's at the perfect spot for his comment!
    • EdgarVerona, on 12/08/2007, -4/+1True, but it was amusing nonetheless.
    • MatttK, on 12/08/2007, -1/+32I'm wonder if the author played through the whole game, though. Many of the turrets cannot be disabled simply by dropping them through a hole. Instead, you have to get them to either shoot each other or have heavy objects drop on them. Sounds pretty violent to me. The article makes good points but it seems a little bit like they're trying to force some of the pieces into the puzzle where they don't really fit.
      • jon30041, on 12/09/2007, -0/+6Violent, yes, but not directly from the character. Manipulation is the key.
        • superkendall, on 12/09/2007, -0/+5I was disabling plenty or turrets by just picking them up and dropping them. Seems plenty direct to me.
    • Johntp, on 12/09/2007, -2/+4Tip me over and I'll beat the ***** out of you, domestic violence or not.
  • kmc127, on 12/08/2007, -8/+152People will see what they want in everything they see....
    • multitude, on 12/08/2007, -11/+6What is your point? The issue is to make something useful out of an element of culture. Try it yourself.
      • gh0st3000, on 12/08/2007, -2/+10The point is, if you play Portal for the fun of it, you will have fun. If you go through the game searching for every little connotation that could be construed as feminism, you're going to go to lengths to find what you're looking for.
        • staplez, on 12/08/2007, -1/+8Hold on. You have to slow down. You're losing it. You have to take a breath. Listen to yourself. You're connecting a computer bug I had with a computer bug you might have had and some religious hogwash. You want to find the number 216 in the world, you will be able to find it everywhere. 216 steps from a mere street corner to your front door. 216 seconds you spend riding on the elevator. When your mind becomes obsessed with anything, you will filter everything else out and find that thing everywhere.
        • thetinguy, on 12/09/2007, -1/+2^^^staplez. Are you trying to sound stupid?
          • daverave999, on 12/09/2007, -0/+8It's a quote from the film Pi.
            If you look too hard for a pattern, you'll find it everywhere.
    • tedades, on 12/08/2007, -2/+15Did she even see the medium the game was on?
      Yeah, a DVD... with a bit hole in the middle...
    • bob12321, on 12/08/2007, -4/+1Thats the same logic as "AIDS kills people who have AIDS because they where stupid to get it in the first place."
      • jaynemother, on 12/09/2007, -0/+7In actuality, it's very dissimilar logic
  • naymlis, on 12/08/2007, -14/+9psychoanalytical is such a cool word
    • Smok3y, on 12/09/2007, -1/+2Especially when used in the same context as feminists.
  • baldgye, on 12/08/2007, -26/+77I'm all for equal rights, but i really don't agree with most of the things she put. I've not come across anyone who cares about the gender of the character they play as in an FPS or any other game. Her points may have been more applicable about 50years ago, but is pretty irrelevant now.

    Also I see a gun not as "a phallic symbol of masculine agency" but as a tool to kill someone else.
    • spoonallka, on 12/08/2007, -14/+34*I* care. Ever since I was a little kid it annoyed me that the best toys and games required me to play as a boy. I remember collecting lego "girl" hair and faces and keeping them in a separate box for easy finding. Otherwise it was too hard to find them... being that there were so many more male looking faces.
      • 42Vindictive, on 12/08/2007, -24/+19Hey, neat! You must be one of those women who has a computer beside their stove!
      • verkon, on 12/08/2007, -7/+1So, only male Lego can get cancer?
      • opiniastrous, on 12/09/2007, -1/+6I can understand how you would feel, but the fact of the matter is that at the moment, designers create most mass-produced products as the majority of end-users would want. Hence, toys that are going to be largely played with by boys will be largely oriented towards boys. Currently, the economy incentivises this behaviour because it pays to design for your typical end-user. It's not about sex, it's about incentive alignment. That is to say, sometimes it pays to neglect minority groups.

        In fact, before this stage designers could not, or were not bothered with, designing products as the majority of end-users would have liked ("You can have it in any colour as long as it's black"). Fortunately for you though, we are moving into a stage when we can create 'mass-produced individualised' products. iPods for instance, are available with a variety of colours, sizes and functions to suit a greater variety of user.
        • Dworgi, on 12/09/2007, -0/+3You forget that iPods have only recently attained the sort of market share that allows them to be individually designed. Remember the good-old first-generation iPod that came in any colour you wanted, as long as it was white? Apple did exactly the same thing - they aimed at the market of people who didn't want a boring black/grey gadget and in doing so neglected the rest of the market. But hey, no one's complaining about them.
        • rootneg2, on 12/20/2007, -0/+2Acutally, toys are largely oriented towards parental expectations and stereotypes, not the actual wishes and desires of the children themselves.

          Advertisers and marketers have to sell to the parents (who most likely already have preconcieved notions of what "should" be a girl's toy and what "should" be a boy's toy) rather than the children. It is the parents who have the wallet after all.
    • multitude, on 12/08/2007, -14/+27@baldgye, feminism isn't necessarily just about "equal rights" any more. It's more generally about finding a voice. The fact that you haven't come across anyone who cares about the gender of characters also doesn't take away from the authors' argument. In fact, it supports it, since your argument basically just recognizes the fact that we live in a gendered, unequal society, and that most people are apathetic about this fact. That makes it even more important to offer critiques like this one.

      Finally, calling the gun just a "tool to kill someone else" could fit right into the authors' point, if having tools "just to kill someone else" is considered a "male" thing to do, in the sense that males in our society are often associated with violent and destructive tendencies.

      So, your arguments don't really go anywhere.
      • Thing2, on 12/09/2007, -4/+7His arguments are simply that things like gender difference and phallic objects vs. non-phallic objects don't *EVER* cross his mind while playing games. Nor do they cross mine, it's not because I'm simply used to always seeing "male" things in games, it's simply that if you pick up a device that shoots projectiles it just so happens to be long'ish slender and phallic. And I guarantee the designers *NEVER* think about placing things in games based on gender and/or empowerment...it's just a game. This type of analysis is a little too far-fetched for me.....that is to say....someone is reaching.....really reaching.
      • Narpas, on 12/09/2007, -2/+4Agreed. The portals were shaped ovular so that a player could feel like they were getting a sensible design. If such portals were developed in real life, you would imagine that the ovular shape would be engineered to allow easy passage for a human. Likewise, guns and missiles are phallic shaped strictly for the benefits of aerodynamics. While there can be a connection from guns to killing to men ( which I resent - I'm harmless, and no one has the right to insinuate that I'm otherwise, but that's a different arguement), the connection from bullet's shaped and bullet's penetration to penis's shape and penetration fails, because there is no sensible reason to engineer them to do their job any differently.
    • DMBrown, on 12/08/2007, -7/+6my "phallic symbol of masculine agency" IS a tool to kill someone!

      My epeen's Huge right now....
    • sinfony, on 12/08/2007, -4/+12I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the author, one Joe McNeilly, is a guy. But then, you appear to have missed the point of everything else in the article, so I can't expect you to have noticed that, I suppose.
    • grumbel, on 12/08/2007, -1/+17In a FPS gender or anything often doesn't matter, because you don't even play a character, you often play an empty hull, especially in Valve games. There is also the problem with women often not being in the military, i.e. you won't find girls on the front lines in WWII, so games don't have them either.

      In other games however where you do play a real character and one that is actually a character and not just a person doing its soldier job, I'd say gender matters, its not the most important aspect of the character, but it does matter somewhat.
    • directive0, on 12/08/2007, -6/+3Nap time.

      Bury it.
    • Loonacy, on 12/09/2007, -1/+6I never understood the whole "Guns = Penises" thing. Sure, they both have a roughly phallic shape, but can you imagine holding a penis the same way you hold a gun? And then squeeze the trigger? Ouch.
      • bagboyrebel, on 12/09/2007, -0/+2PENISES HAVE A PHALLIC SHAPE?!!!!!! OH MY GOD!!!!!
    • MeatyVitamin, on 12/09/2007, -2/+10The globe is ball-shaped, and so are testicles!
      Therefore the world must be male biased, quick bitch some more!!!
      There are valid feminist points then theres just looking for attention...
      • stillboy, on 12/09/2007, -5/+2no. they are not 'ball' shaped. you should see a doctor.
        • MeatyVitamin, on 12/09/2007, -2/+3I'm freakin generalizing, get over it.
    • bosephus, on 12/09/2007, -1/+1The article says the author is a Joe McNeilly. Sounds like a male author, not a woman, as you're assuming.
    • Johntp, on 12/09/2007, -1/+1I always like playing as a man. Imagine playing Halo where Master Chief was a girl. I wouldn't buy the game.
  • Spinfusor, on 12/08/2007, -43/+219This is one of the most stupid, over-analyzing articles I have ever read.
    • RobotBuddha, on 12/08/2007, -4/+60It did give me some happy nostalgia for schools. I miss writing horrible ***** papers at 3am which coasted only on pandering to a particular person's prejudice to get a passing grade.
    • multitude, on 12/08/2007, -22/+5Why is it over-analyzed? I have a feeling that you didn't understand it.
      • Kitsun, on 12/09/2007, -3/+1Oh FFS
      • theshiz892, on 12/09/2007, -6/+2That is why its over-analyzed. Dumb idiots like you have to have everything explained to them. Nothing in that article was ever created for the intent that the author thought it was. It was all made up by her over selfish imagination. Men and women fight for their own rights and sorry ladies, but obviously somewhere along the line you lost, get over it and bend over.
        • StrangeFamous, on 12/09/2007, -2/+3The author is male. You are not funny, and from the sound of it, you're a frustrated little boy who hasn't grown up yet. Maybe in a few years you'll come to understand the idea of respect, and it'll help you find a nice woman (or man, if that's your prerogative) who will teach you how to not be a raging douchebag.
    • soot, on 12/08/2007, -3/+9I think that was the point.
    • Kalior, on 12/09/2007, -2/+6this is the kind of writing I would expect to see from a college freshman in a contemporary feminism seminar. It also reminds me of the kind of BS I would come up with out of nowhere to substantiate a silly, pointless writing exercise
  • HappyScrappy, on 12/08/2007, -11/+132Gets retarded real quick.

    It's a different kind of game, it's true. But by the time it gets to saying the companion cube represents the uselessness of men (all they are good for is being heavy enough to hold down buttons), it shows itself to be either a cleverly constructed gag or a stupidly slanted "analysis".
    • MacHarborGuy, on 12/08/2007, -3/+7Actually, the Companion Cube's description in this article reminds me of the Jetsons. Remember, George's job was to sit on his ass and push buttons, and then got angry and yelled at his wife when things didn't go his way.
    • multitude, on 12/08/2007, -10/+3You're not engaging with the argument by saying that it is a "gag" or "slanted analysis".
      • TeacherOfHeroes, on 12/09/2007, -1/+3Sometimes, all you can do is laugh in the face of absurdity
    • TrevorBradley, on 12/08/2007, -1/+3This article had me right up to the part about the weighted companion cube. Bullets being masculine penis archetypes and portals being a contrary feminine vaginal archetype? I'm down with that description.. it's good insight IMO. But the weighted companion cube is almost treated like a plush toy... Something inanimate that gives you comfort. I don't see that desire for comfort without attachment to be gender specific in nature.

      ** Makes note to look up feminist psychological interpretation of someone who keeps lots of stuffed animals on their bed.
      • YojimboJango, on 12/08/2007, -2/+11They're saying that the little endearing box with a pink heart on it is a symbol of masculinity? Yeah, I can totally see that. If you'll eat that bs here's some of mine.
        It says in the developer commentary that the cube was intended to be seen as a friend. It's decorated with a pink heart, a symbol of femininity, thus bringing it to the conclusion that it's a female companion. The box is shaped like a cube, all hard edges, however the edges have made an attempt at rounding their selves. This imagery when associated with the 'feminine friend' image brings to mind a typical bull dyke. Normally hard as steel and as tall as they are wide.
        The game then places you into a situation that will force you to choose between the morality and logic. Refusing to abandon your bull dyke friend and starving to death would be the morally correct thing to do, while the logical choice would be to set them on fire, sending them to a horrible death, and getting on with your life.
        At the ending of the game however you discover that no matter how many times you push a bull dyke to a horrible and fiery death, there will always be more of them showing up when you need them least.
        This has been a satirical post. I have nothing against normal feminists. I however strongly dislike morons that will take anything and view it as an attack or affirmation of feminism. It's a game. Get over yourselves.
    • thetinguy, on 12/09/2007, -1/+3BTW, the article was written by a man.
      • EvilGunOwner, on 12/09/2007, -5/+7"BTW, the article was written by a mangina."

        Fixed.
  • thebellmaster1x, on 12/08/2007, -8/+105Thought this was from The Onion.
    • LilJimmyNordin, on 12/08/2007, -2/+8It certainly brought tears to my eyes.
  • terminal157, on 12/08/2007, -33/+309Women should use portals to instantly deliver me sammiches from the kitchen.
    • Kniteman77, on 12/08/2007, -7/+24I literally laughed out loud.

      Then I had to go explain ty my roommates why I was laughing like a crazy person.
    • adraft, on 12/09/2007, -0/+5I laughed mainly because "sammiches" reminds me of the Hippo from Harvey Birdman.
    • Petrarch1603, on 12/09/2007, -0/+3don't forget the beer!
    • graeh, on 12/09/2007, -0/+2I too, lolled out loud.
  • TheMahdi, on 12/08/2007, -7/+30this article is hilarious, hopefully not unintentionally.
    • EzarKun, on 12/08/2007, -4/+3why do people write a negative after another negative?
      its like writing -(-1) and not simplifying it. its stupid
    • calvmari, on 12/09/2007, -0/+4It doesn't make much sense when you boil each word down to a symbol, but it does start to make sense when you consider the emotion the words are expressing. The sensation of hoping something happens might feel different than hoping something doesn't happen. That or it might be clumsy speech.
  • Fizban140, on 12/08/2007, -9/+45I couldn't take it seriously after reading the part about every other first person shooter forcing you into the perspective of a man, because men start wars and guns look like penises.
    • multitude, on 12/08/2007, -10/+13You missed the point. It's not that guns look like penises, but that guns, as a symbol of power, domination and destruction are representative of the traits that we have associated with being "male" in our culture.
      • Fizban140, on 12/08/2007, -5/+6No I got the point, I just thought it was a little ridiculous and the only person forcing that viewpoint is the viewer.
        • Mr.RX99, on 12/09/2007, -0/+2But where does the idea for said viewpoint come from in the first place? Society. Not saying you're wrong, just that there's more at work here.
    • sinfony, on 12/08/2007, -3/+6Even though that first statement is true and the second one is arguable?
      • Fizban140, on 12/08/2007, -1/+2It says more about our culture than anything else if someone decides that it has the be the viewpoint of a man, no one of forcing anything.
  • EvaMonkey01, on 12/08/2007, -8/+117You know Sigmund Freud, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
  • blanktarget, on 12/08/2007, -4/+39Honestly who cares if the main character is male or female? She must have just stepped out of a portal to the past to think that anyone cares about those things. Any guy who is so insecure that can't play a game without a male lead role obviously has other issues.
    • gh0st3000, on 12/08/2007, -5/+5Seriously, when I was playing Portal and saw Chell through the portal, I didn't freak out. It makes no difference to me what gender the character is, but this article paints the picture that because it happens to have a female at the protagonist (who never speaks, making you forget that you're even controlling a woman), it is an island of feminism in an ocean of male dominated FPS's with e-peen guns.
    • rootneg2, on 12/20/2007, -0/+2Why is it then that there are still so few female leads in games (that are *not* overtly sexualized like Lara Croft) ?

      It seems to me that for most gamers "playing your gender" is relatively unimportant. I think that it's time for game designers to listen to these gamers (or, rather, stop listening to the others in the minority) and give a more even distribution of gender among lead characters; especially leads like Chell, whose gender is downplayed. Although it may be (and usually is) unimportant to the individual, in the aggregate it can definitely have an effect on societal expectations and reinforced stereotypes.
  • Lane, on 12/08/2007, -7/+21Is this interpretation be valid? yes? is it intentional? No. For some reason I find this belittling to portal.
    • Smok3y, on 12/09/2007, -2/+2I agree. All I see in this article is someone forcibly tacking on meanings that are irrelevant to anything this game is about.
  • CALLitKARMA, on 12/08/2007, -15/+7Great. a game that promotes feminism. I need to brush the dust off of my pimp hand.
  • bpollay, on 12/08/2007, -10/+40The cake is a lie!
    • LilJimmyNordin, on 12/08/2007, -6/+12And now we can also say "The portal is a vagina!"
    • tyywebb, on 12/10/2007, -0/+2So is this article.
  • megabytehl, on 12/08/2007, -5/+43I dunno about this type of retrospective analysis. None of the development team thought like this, they thought they were reshaping the FPS archetype for sure, but the the gender shift seemed to be a last minute alteration. They had a male model created for the game, as evidenced by the trailers, up till the point of release it seemed that's what they would use. However the decision to use the female model should not indicate a "revolution for the perception of females in a male dominated medium", but a design choice by the developers to take their revolution a step further from the norm.
    • CapeKid, on 12/08/2007, -2/+18Plus, the weighted companion cube was given hearts not to represent male companionship, but because it was needed to solve further puzzles and the devs needed a way to get the player to bring it with them. They said that in the developer commentary.
      Also, the portals are shaped like portals. How else are they supposed to be shaped?
    • pkonink, on 12/08/2007, -4/+9Ultimately I would say I agree with you, however isn't it beautiful how coincidence intervened to create such a fantastic interpretation? I think the interpretation still holds even though it may have been consciously unintended by the developers. It might also have the effect of opening up more females to the fps genre in general.
      • Fizban140, on 12/08/2007, -2/+4I don't think it is coincidence at all, you see what you want to. If you think you have bad luck you will assume bad things are happening because of you.
      • megabytehl, on 12/08/2007, -3/+7Anything is open to interpretation. It just depends on your perspective. I can interpret mid-20th century expressionistic art as scribbles. While others prefer to see it as a glimpse into the sub-conscious of the artist. All in all, I'd rather judge these sort of ideas based on the intention of the artist before the work was created, not a retrospective "significance" analysis.
    • alby13, on 12/09/2007, -2/+2right. it's just the case of someone reading into it too much. but it was interesting nonetheless.
    • jabrthel, on 12/09/2007, -0/+8Also, very much like in literature, you can find ways to support any theory. For example, the author says...

      "She acquires a Portal Gun for use in these tests; interestingly, the gun's masculine symbolism is subverted by the fact that it shoots portals rather than bullets."

      Or you could take the very masculine view point that the phallic gun, by causing a rift in the wall, is a metaphor of the tearing of the hymen that often occurs in a virgin female when she first has sex with a man. You could even argue that since the walls made no inclination towards wanting to be opened, the act of opening a portal on a wall is a symbol for rape.
  • pkonink, on 12/08/2007, -41/+7I've literally dugg down almost every comment in this thread, lol. You guys are dumbasses. lol

    Education! FTW! lol
    • EvaMonkey01, on 12/08/2007, -4/+133 lol's in one comment?

      Dear god, throw in a ROFL or a LMAO or something.
      • pkonink, on 12/08/2007, -19/+3ROFLCOPTER D00der.




















        lol
        And people wonder why this country is a sinking ship.
        • terminal157, on 12/08/2007, -5/+2You are not nearly as smart as you think you are.
        • pkonink, on 12/08/2007, -6/+4It's not about thinking you are smart, it is about knowing how to spot a dumbass.
      • pkonink, on 12/08/2007, -13/+2Jesus, again with my snide commentary. I didn't have enough coffee today.
    • Jpotts12, on 12/09/2007, -1/+3You have failed. Violently.
    • pkonink, on 12/11/2007, -1/+2I did fail violently on this one, but let me explain after-the-fact:

      I couldn't resist the lawlz because I was literally laughing my ass off on most of the comments above mine as I typed it. What was so funny? I'm not sure funny is the right word, I think *absurd* is better. I was imagining the posters as disgruntled 15 year-old virgins one mouse-click away from some really tasty pr0n. And the funny part is that the commentary made that image so easy to conjure, because it all sounds like stuff under-educated 15 year-old boy-virgins would say.

      In short, I did it for the lolz.

      Also, most dugg-down comment ever for me. Hooray.
  • LastSight, on 12/08/2007, -12/+27soo.....100% bullsh*t?
  • Dreww40, on 12/08/2007, -8/+1TL;DR
  • bpollay, on 12/08/2007, -18/+15The cake is a lie!
  • macweirdo42, on 12/08/2007, -9/+37Frankly, I think it's just a breath of fresh air that for once, we've got a game with a female lead that isn't hyper sexualized. That in itself is quite an achievement. No fancy real-time boob-jiggling physics, no chain mail bikinis, just a damn good game. Can't we just leave it at that?
    • grumbel, on 12/08/2007, -8/+2I don't really see it as achievement, because the female lead really doesn't do much of anything. Just like Freeman its an empty shell and you could replace the player model with a dog and it wouldn't make all that much of a difference.
      • Fizban140, on 12/08/2007, -1/+7Not true really, the reason Gordon Freeman doesn't talk is because you are suppose to feel like you are playing that role, not just controlling a character in a game in between cut scenes.
      • Tahiri, on 12/09/2007, -0/+2Then he should've been androgynous
        • Dworgi, on 12/09/2007, -0/+1Impractical from a design perspective. You can't make compelling dialogue without using a first name sometimes. And the number of androgynous first names is a very short list - most of those are solved by the spelling anyway.
      • rootneg2, on 12/20/2007, -0/+1That is precisely why it IS so important.

        For the most part, the gender of the main character in games is unimportant, about as relavant as the character's race. Yet, these characters are still predominately white males; there is no *intrinsic* reason for them to be, it is simply a reflection/reinforcement of existing stereotypes and prejudices.

        This is simply balancing the imbalance.
    • Gutterpunk, on 12/09/2007, -0/+6As someone who finished Portal, and truly enjoyed the ending, and even did all the achievment and advanced map, I didn't even realize that the main character was a woman.
      Truly a feminist take on gaming! You don't actually see the woman until it's pointed out to you, which is the feminist credo as we all know.
    • Tahiri, on 12/09/2007, -0/+2You'd love Parasite Eve (1, not 2) Gurumin for PSP and Beyond Good and Evil (preferable for XBOX)
    • graeh, on 12/09/2007, -0/+2Agreed.
      Especially after playing FAKK2.
    • rootneg2, on 12/20/2007, -0/+1***** a-men.

      (no pun intended)
  • Godlesswanderer, on 12/08/2007, -3/+42What the hell did I just read?
    What ever happened to games just being very fun games?
  • Ventolin, on 12/08/2007, -6/+16And sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
    • loganarcher, on 12/09/2007, -3/+1If you've ever seen the documentary 'The Century of Self', you would realise the cigar is not just a cigar. Marketing agencies tried to find a way to get the female demographic to buy cigarettes and so they turned to psychology. By understanding the underlying psychology and subconscious reasoning of the masses they could figure out a way to tie in buying cigarettes with 'female empowerment'.
    • truegodofwar, on 12/09/2007, -0/+2and sometimes its a PENIS!!!
  • soot, on 12/08/2007, -1/+12Holy *****, this would make a perfect analysis paper for my mass media class.
    • harpwn, on 12/08/2007, -7/+3No, it really wouldn't. This analysis is terrible. If you gave me a week to play portal, and 30 minutes to write, I could make a better analysis than this crock of *****. Portal probably does have legit feminist elements, but whoever wrote this did such a bad job illustrating them. If you turned this into me, and I overlooked plagiarism, D+

      The writer even misses portals as vaginas.
      • thetinguy, on 12/09/2007, -0/+5What?
        "A psychoanalytic reading would likely conclude that the portal is an image of the female sex organs: oval and receptive, and also a metaphorical birth canal through which the protagonist is constantly being born into new trials."
      • Valyn, on 12/09/2007, -0/+1Seriously, that was the one thing i was expecting!
  • PEMDAS, on 12/08/2007, -7/+63Anyone who uses Freud's psychoanalytic theory must have forgotten to read the next paragraph, which basically says that it's all just a crock of *****, that he rarely, if ever, cured any of his patients, and that Freud was most likely just projecting his sexual fixations and frustrations onto others, and proclaiming the penis and vagina to be the basis for everything.

    So let me get what I just read straight: You're comparing a firearm, a machine designed specifically to maim or injure an enemy from long range, without having to engage them in close combat, to a penis.

    A penis is not a weapon. Nor is it ranged-- (go ahead and insert your banal penis comments, begging to differ in that you could hit someone with your massive club-like member, or that your penis has a secret ranged attack at the end of it's turn). The only reason you think of a gun as masculine is because the majority of the world's armies aren't made up of women. Is camouflage phallic? Is a canteen phallic? What about an aircraft carrier? No. Implement's of war. Stop writing stupid *****. "Guys only enjoy playing Portal because it's reminiscent of sexual intercourse, going in and out of holes time and time again, until completion."
    • Knucklecallus, on 12/08/2007, -6/+5My penis can shoot stuff really far...
      • LilJimmyNordin, on 12/08/2007, -1/+11And anyone that gets hit with it dies.
    • steevo, on 12/08/2007, -3/+6Awesome comment, totally agree
    • RobotBuddha, on 12/08/2007, -1/+6"So let me get what I just read straight: You're comparing a firearm, a machine designed specifically to maim or injure an enemy from long range, without having to engage them in close combat, to a penis."

      The author was the flying stone head from zardoz.
      • Godlesswanderer, on 12/08/2007, -1/+1I dunno, I can get some pretty decent range.
      • brkn, on 12/09/2007, -0/+1Ah, I was waiting to see how long it would be until someone brought up Zardoz. The penis is evil!
      • rootneg2, on 12/20/2007, -0/+1digg for Sean Connery's best movie ever.
    • TrevorBradley, on 12/08/2007, -2/+10I understand the connectivity of "long pointy thing" to "penis" to "weapon of destruction". Men have a penis, Men often wield the weapons, weapons are often shaped in long oblong shapes. A => B => C quickly becomes A => C

      Personally I think it's not Freudian psychology, but rather evolutionary theory. There's a reason that rockets, bullets, buildings and penises have that shape: It's the best, most efficient shape to get the job done. If some *other* shape were more effective for male genitalia, nature would have selected it. If some other shape were more effective for lauching mass into space, firing projectiles into other people, or housing large numbers of people into small spaces, engineers would design them differently. It's just a really good shape.

      It's not our fault that penises are frequently attached to horomone driven assholes. ;)
    • harpwn, on 12/08/2007, -10/+8You clearly have no knowlege of feminist theory at all. Nobody's talking about Freud's psychoanalysis here.

      Ever taken an english class? Was it taught by anyone halfway competent? Guns are the most obvious symbol there is for male domination and power. Read ANYTHING about feminist theory before you pretend to know what you're talking about, then get back to me.
      • GUTTS, on 12/09/2007, -1/+1"Read anything about feminist theory before you pretend to know what your're talking about, then get black to me."

        Let's see here, should I shoot you in the knee cap or just behead you? "Feminist theory" sounds subjective. Don't you think? Maybe I'll just do what you say and read it. And then pretend to pretend to know what I'm talking about.
      • rootneg2, on 12/20/2007, -0/+1guns, phallic symbolism, and freudian interpretation are fringe topics of feminism. Some of the more radical feminist movements see these as core issues but for the most part feminists are concerned solely with the politics, economics, and workplace interaction.

        I don't think the word "gun" even appears once in Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique"; and this is a cornerstone of feminist literature.
    • Ansible, on 12/08/2007, -0/+7"This is my rifle, this is my gun. This one's for fighting, this one's for fun." Any questions?
    • vervalsing, on 12/09/2007, -6/+1Guns=aggression, protecting "territory", defeating enemies
      Masculinity=aggression, protecting "territory", defeating enemies
      Penis=masculinity
      Therefore, guns can be used to represent masculinity, and the general symbol of masculinity, the penis. QED, *****.
  • evi1, on 12/08/2007, -5/+38Personally I felt the connections the author made between feminism and portal are a stretch at best, oval shape represents women, dropping a heavy object on a turret is somehow a womans non violent solution, etc. Furthermore I would question the authors fundamental ideas on what is considered feminine and what is masculine. To say that it is a male characteristic to resort to violence and the female characteristic is to solve problems in a non violent way is laughable. I have personally witnessed women become angry and violent far sooner than a man would in the same situation. Women have similar violent tendencies to men, however society propagates the misconception that they are peaceful beings and I feel peaceful actions being attributed to feminism is simply wrong.
    • fantasyflamz, on 12/08/2007, -1/+3I think the point was that people tend to associate agressive and violent tendencies with males, although it is not necessarily true it's a stereotype.
      • Osjpr, on 12/09/2007, -5/+2So what? There is a perfectly natural explanation for it and it's part of being male. I make no apology for my gender being violent and aggresive as that's ***** NATURE.
    • opnickc, on 12/08/2007, -2/+5"society propagates the misconception that they are peaceful beings"
      Well, I hate to call up statistics, but statistically speaking, men commit far, far, far more violent crimes than women.
      Now, why this is true is up for debate. Perhaps it's a self-fulfilling prophecy; women are called more peaceful, so they act more peacefully (and the converse, men are called violent so we behave violently). I really don't know, but to call it a complete misconception wouldn't do the real situation justice.
      • Dworgi, on 12/09/2007, -0/+7I think the trend has taken a strange twist nowadays. With females being considered equals, a new generation of empowered women have discovered violence as a means to assert their power over men. I've been hit by women far more times than men, and I've witnessed far more acts of violence by women than men.

        Catfights are not the stuff of legends and they're far more brutal than most fights between men. Female fighting is intended to cause pain and humiliation, whereas male fights have such a long history that there's a definite set of rules in place. Things like "not below the belt" and "don't hit someone while they're down" are the type of thing that were made to make fights a valid way to solve disputes while avoiding excess violence. It's about honour, not violence.
      • GUTTS, on 12/09/2007, -0/+4Don't know why you were buried. Your post made sense to me. Guess some people just don't like an opinion that doesn't agree. Anyway..I dugg your comment.
    • Inox555, on 12/08/2007, -2/+1Case in point regarding angry women and violence...
      http://digg.com/health/Angry_Thai_Women_Lead_the_W ...
      However, which wars can you name that were waged by women?
      • MedHead, on 12/09/2007, -1/+2Men usually were the ones in power in the past, so they would therefore be more likely to start a war.
      • GUTTS, on 12/09/2007, -1/+2Perhaps not waged by women for obvious reasons. But fought on behalf? Troy anyone? And if your a bible nut. Didn't Eve get this party started? I think women have alot to do with wars then we generally think.
        • Inox555, on 12/09/2007, -1/+1Seriously, Helen of Troy and Eve? How about some non-mythological examples?
    • Johntp, on 12/09/2007, -1/+1And when they get that way, only a knuckle sandwich can get them to shut the hell up.
  • xGeneric, on 12/08/2007, -7/+17The author makes some good points, but this is over analyzing to the extreme.

    Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
  • Ghoztt, on 12/08/2007, -9/+17The author of this article is reading WAAAY too much into this game. Drawing your own conclusions about the ***** sexuality of a portal gun just because the main character is a female is going a bit overboard.
    I would like to hear the author's OMG FEMINISM TRIUMPH article on Metroid, Tomb Raider and The Longest Journey... ...not.
    • Feep, on 12/08/2007, -5/+3Agreed. This paper was pedantic, but if you're gonna pick a game to espouse feminism, she needs to be rocking Longest Journey or Beyond Good and Evil, games that feature some of the strongest female leads in gaming history.
  • theotherdude, on 12/08/2007, -7/+71"Ultimately, Chell incinerates the Weighted Companion Cube, symbolizing a mental unburdening from the need for approval from a father figure."

    *cough*******cough*
  • ultraJesus, on 12/08/2007, -4/+18I think that they are looking for sunken treasure in a puddle, so to speak.
    • blaze4metal, on 12/10/2007, -3/+2Aren't they always? Constantly gender-baiting everything men enjoy in order to make them feel bad for doing guy things. Meanwhile, entire channels are devoted to feminist-porn like go-girl movies, abusive husbands, girls-in-boy-roles and other formulaic predictable crap.
  • onestarleft, on 12/08/2007, -10/+19I love the desperation for feminism content lately.

    Ran out of ideas again! Let's compare things to video games, that always gets people's attention...
    • LilJimmyNordin, on 12/08/2007, -3/+13Up next: The feminist symbolism of the long tetrimino's phallic penetration into the deep, moist well we create for it, and the subsequent oblivion of the connected lines formed by the tetris.
    • blaze4metal, on 12/10/2007, -3/+1Of course, the most important piece, the line, is the most penis-shaped piece. The game forces you to rely on this piece to score the highest points (when you create a tetris, you are actually putting a penis into a vagina). This is objectifying women in its most basic form!

      Damn, I could have been a wymyn's studies major and wrote BS like this for 100k/year.
  • RobotBuddha, on 12/08/2007, -7/+39"As such, she comes to represent man's attempt to construct an idealized mother figure through the cold logic of science."

    It's not a feminist paper until the author begins spitting on science or technology. Yah, damn cold logic of science. What with the feeding of starving children, the healing of the sick and dying, or allowing infertile women to become mothers. And of course it's not like there's ever been a female scientist, now that'd just be silly. It's all just men stumbling about, never realizing that crystals and hugs are the ultimate treatment for bacterial infections or genetic diseases.
    • krisscofield, on 12/08/2007, -2/+14"It's all just men stumbling about, never realizing that crystals and hugs are the ultimate treatment for bacterial infections or genetic diseases."

      That earned a rather loud LOL.
    • yaksha2, on 12/09/2007, -0/+5Any theory-based feminist arguing that science is "cold" over criticizing the terms "pure" or "objective" is misguided and lazy. Granting emotional adjectives to the practice of science distances the scientist or researcher from actual data collecting and experimentation, which is what some technoscience feminists choose to criticize.

      See Dorothy Robert's "Killing the Black Body" for a good example of critical analysis about scientific practice. It's not a good vs. evil debate, but a dialog about the who's, what's, and why's of science.
    • rootneg2, on 12/20/2007, -0/+2"It's not a feminist paper until the author begins spitting on science or technology. "

      so I suppose that feminist social studies that *use* statistics and the "cold logic of science" just aren't feminist are they? The doll studies that demonstrated preconcieved notions of gender in toddlers, the "pink/blue hat" study that demonstrated the divergence of behavior towards a percieved male newborn and a percieved female newborn, statistical analysis of the "leaky PhD pipeline" phenomenon in academia, the "name" studies that demonstrated the mere gendering of a name has a profound effect on the possibility of publication, etc.

      Feminism is a large field, and as with any other, science can and is applied regularly. Of course there are always the nutjobs and zealots like Inga Muscio and Valerie Solanus; but these come along with *any* movement. I do have a feeling that the author does tend towards the nutjob side, however. (especially with all the freudian crap...)

      But please, do not associate feminism with anti-science; as there is no association to be made.
  • AnthoMacP, on 12/08/2007, -10/+14I loved this article purely as a good read and an interesting take on this game which i'm sure the male developers of the original freeware game had not intended but what scares me is if the author is genuinely serious. I've always found that those critiquing literature, films, or in this case, video games, often read into things that were definitely not intentional. If the author truly believes that say the portal shape was meant to represent the female sex organs than the author's a little off their rocker (portal shape was probably shaped that way since it would in theory be the most efficient shape for a human to pass through).
    Another point is that sure, men make games where the women are stereotypically attractive when they're the main character, but this is also true in games where the males are uber masculine and the stereotypical portrayal of what a woman wants in a man. Valve broke that convention with Dr.Freeman making him a regular, sortof geeky character, and they did so again by making the female character in Portal an average looking female. It had nothing to do with empowering women, just breaking stereotypes.
    I also don't see the portal gun itself as a stereotypical female weapon. I see it as another unique tool like the gravity gun (which can also be used in a passive manner). If this was real game play and not just a sort of minigame/test game for the gun, you could just as easily use the portal gun to say open a hole under a guy on a bridge and have him fall to his death. There is no killing involved because it's a puzzle game (like segments of halflife when using the gravity gun to cross obstacles).
    I really think that if the author was serious, she's reading way too much into this and being selective about her information.
    • RobotBuddha, on 12/08/2007, -3/+7If serious, it actually reminds me a lot of this autistic kid I knew. He was 'positive' that a lot of video games were intentionally designed to drive people insane. His proof, the main character in shining force 1 can be changed into a chicken. The kid hated chickens, and was really freaked out by them. So, of course, he was unable to understand the subjectivity of emotion and couldn't understand that different people reacted to things in different ways. End theory, there was a collective intentionally driving children insane.
  • JFallon126, on 12/08/2007, -4/+19Interesting that someone decided to look at the game a little differently and incorporate some theory. However, I find both fields of theory (feminist and psychoanalysis) to be quite suspect and arbitrary. Really...a hole represents the female creation process? If you want to go down that way then remember that you are entering (read: penetrating) each hole; that's as dominating/masculine/phallic you can get in that realm of interpretation. Oops...

    But of course since I'm a man I'm only criticizing this interpretation because it threatens my sexual hegemony over the womanz blah blah blah, etc.
    • harpwn, on 12/08/2007, -4/+3Feminism doesn't mean anti-man, Catharine MacKinnon didn't write this article.

      BTW, i'm also a man, nice use of "hegemony"
      • rootneg2, on 12/20/2007, -0/+2Catherine MacKinnon gives feminists a bad name... most do not agree with her.
    • thailand1972, on 12/09/2007, -3/+4It's either a piss-take or it's serious. Any other subject and I know it's a spoof. When it comes to feminism though, you do get some real idiots spouting off their Women's Studies myths. ACTUAL facts are irrelevant - it's all about vague interpretations which are then disingenuously pronounced as fact. It's ALWAYS the same theme - women are always morally superior to men in every way, but poor women are oppressed by the beastly and morally inferior men. It's the same old riff again and again. The overuse of the word "psycho-analysis" desperately tries to give this rant some credence. And it is a rant - a passive-aggressive one - against men.
    • Lavarock, on 12/09/2007, -2/+4I think that the holes represent the ANUS, and as a woman you are to be treated like *****, constantly SHAT OUT GIANT ANUSES. The game is really OPPRESSING WOMEN OH GOD
  • maX0, on 12/08/2007, -5/+9This is what happens when you over analyze, oh and you also have a really slanted bias. Buried
  • epj3, on 12/08/2007, -1/+13And in the end, it was probably a man that built the test center and invented the oven that didn't bake the cake.

    If I remember correctly, the female computer lied to me about the cake.
  • Papajohn56, on 12/08/2007, -2/+37THE PORTAL REPRESENTS A VAGINA

    i thought that needed restating
    • MogusMaximus, on 12/08/2007, -0/+7If so, I just got laid about 200 times in the last hour.
      • thetinguy, on 12/09/2007, -2/+1"A psychoanalytic reading would likely conclude that the portal is an image of the female sex organs: oval and receptive, and also a metaphorical birth canal through which the protagonist is constantly being born into new trials."
        • MogusMaximus, on 12/09/2007, -1/+5Could you translate? I'm sorry, I don't speak feminist.
    • goldfenix, on 12/09/2007, -0/+4I can't wait till the author finds out about Prey's vagina-walls. Or perhaps the Halo 3 anus-doors. Or the UT2004 Goatse entrance.

      Not making any of that up.
    • Urzeitlich, on 12/09/2007, -0/+2Hot.
  • spiritditch, on 12/08/2007, -1/+7I never got through the first level. I build my first portal then went in it and out of it, in and out. Forever.
  • ShogunWarPig, on 12/08/2007, -1/+9Who would of guessed the creators thought they were just making a game.
  • xpose, on 12/08/2007, -10/+7This article was absolutely horrible.
  • empath, on 12/08/2007, -4/+15I wrote something similar several weeks ago on metafilter.
    http://www.metafilter.com/66268/This-was-a-triumph ...

    Portal is the Citizen Kane of the art form.

    It's also a good test-case for the process by which human beings learn new concepts. No one, after all, has ever seen or used a portal before.

    The game teaches you how to 'think with portals' by a slow process of introducing new metaphors by which you can understand it.

    The first introduction to the device is when they release you from your 'cage'. A portal opens up -- you're introduced to the first metaphor -- 'the portal is a door'.

    You walk through, and you're immediately confronted with a second metaphor 'the portal is a mirror' because you see yourself. Your avatar is a female -- why? If a gun is a projection of male sexual identity, what is a weapon that makes doors and passageways? Every character in the game is 'female'. There is a reason for that.

    Over time, you're introduced to the portal as camera, as a trampoline, as a weapon, etc. You're never explicitly 'told' these things, but you are shown them. Whatever the portal actually does is impossible, so you're forced to think of it as a collection of different functions. Perhaps by the end of the game, you are indeed 'thinking in portals', though. Surely the people who do speed runs are.

    There's also some interesting stuff going on with semiotics. You're never explicityly told what the symbols that surround you are. For example, the labels on the floor that show 1, 2 or 3 circles. At first, I thought it meant 'this is where you need to jump down'. Eventually, I figured out that it meant, this is what you do first, second and third. The same goes with the warning symbols on the walls. They're entirely learned through context.

    The level with the companion cube will likely be written about by academics for a long-long time. How the simple edition of a heart to an inanimate character brings it to life. And how the 'congratulations' you get for being the fastest person to incinerate the cube brings a feeling of guilt, not reward. The agency of the player in games, gives them a different emotional palate to work with from any other artform -- you have feelings of guilt, achievement, etc, which are nearly impossible to invoke through drama and literature.

    And speaking of agency, the fact that the game limits you to portals as a 'weapon' means that almost all the activity you engage in is passive. Your portal 'allows' things, it does not do things. You open a portal and a gun falls on another gun. You didn't attack it, you made them attack each other. At the end of the game, you use portals to make GladOs attack herself, which is ultimately a reflection of her own self-destructive borderline personality.

    I could go on about little things.. the single red phone off the hook at the end of the game which tells so much story without words, how skillfully they subvert the expectations of the puzzle game genre as it gradually shifts to a narrative-based game, etc...

    In terms of depth, completeness of vision, artistry and pure fun, I don't think any video game has come close as Portal has to being absolutely perfect.

    ---
    a bit later in the same thread, I wrote:
    In all seriousness, why not cake? Why do you play video games? In most narrative games, there's some promise of a reward at the end, a cut scene, an explanation, a climactic battle... But it's always a bit of a let-down, isn't it? "I played this game for 40 hours for THAT?" It's the play that's the thing, not the reward.

    I assume they chose cake specifically, because it's a stereotypically 'female' object, it's something that is typically made by women, and something that women are more likely to lust for than men... (again, stereotypically, not necessarily realistically)..

    If we were playing the game for cake, we're told halfway through that there is no cake, that it's a lie-- so why, then do we continue? In did, why do any of us continue. Many of us don't believe in an afterlife and an ultimate reward, and yet we continue living, continue working-- because the game, life, is worth playing simply for the play alone.

    And maybe there is cake at the end, after all. We won't know for sure till we get there.
    • mashw, on 12/08/2007, -0/+3"In did"?
    • ecape7, on 12/08/2007, -0/+4good write up it is always good to see what others make of games because after all games are a form of art
    • soneill1986, on 12/09/2007, -1/+0I read an interview with the creators of portal. They chose cake like this...

      They wanted something people could identify with as being good. After a few minutes of silence someone just said, "Everyone likes cake". Thus they chose cake, not because it was a symbol for a female.
    • blogstar, on 01/23/2008, -0/+1@soneill- That's actually what Empath says FIRST, if you read the whole thread.
  • callistostg, on 12/08/2007, -10/+29Maybe it's just me, but I thought the 2girls1cup paper that was posted a couple days ago offered a more intellectually stimulating discourse on modern feminist critique.
    • RobotBuddha, on 12/08/2007, -2/+12Agreed, which is funny given that the 2girls1cup was satire. I also loved the warning on this one about how "intellectual" the upcoming argument was going to be. It's one of the things I hate about people who write these kinds of things. They basically just confuse the term "intellectual" for "***** about something for a while using big words". "heady intellectual discourse", as the author puts it, needs logic, falsification, actual evidence.
  • Raiu, on 12/08/2007, -13/+38So basically....this game is pro-feminist because she's ugly?

    Gotcha.
    • gh0st3000, on 12/08/2007, -2/+9It doesn't have any men with their evil penises in it.
      • harpwn, on 12/08/2007, -1/+5Feminist doesn't mean anti-man, Catharine MacKinnon didn't write this article.

        2nd time I've posted this, will repeat as necessary.
    • TwineHornet, on 12/08/2007, -3/+11She's not ugly, she's just not overly sexualized. She's "normal", a regular person with a female gender. A lot of feminists want to push for women being able to exist as people and not sexual objects.
      • directive0, on 12/08/2007, -1/+4And judging from the response this little article got, they're a long way off.
        • TwineHornet, on 12/10/2007, -0/+1Yeah...honestly, I'd be curious to see what the creators thought about this article. I do think that a lot of things were looked into a bit too much, but I am shocked at all the bad comments the article got against feminism rather than the game review/article itself. Kind of scary. Sometimes I feel one with diggers' opinions, but on this subject I feel like there is definitely still a long way to go when it comes to men vs women subjects.
      • Jpesci, on 12/09/2007, -1/+1Preposterous!
      • thailand1972, on 12/09/2007, -3/+2It's funny because attractive women in the main don't seem to have a problem with being seen as "objects" (I think they simply think others find them attractive, which is just human nature). It's only the ugly women who have a problem with this. The attractive woman, in my opinion, has a great advantage over any average person (be they man or woman) because her attractiveness is seen as an asset, something valuable - a thing that is "better" than average looks, and so she can harness this value in all kinds of ways - favours at work, marrying a rich guy, even selling her looks as a model. This creates envy in some people, particularly feminists. They shame men for finding such women attractive in order to create a more level playing field. It doesn't work though, because trying to socially engineer human nature is like trying to stop the sun rising everyday.
        • TwineHornet, on 12/09/2007, -3/+2A lot of feminists are also the sexually abused attractive women who didn't go the route of the stripper or porn actress. Life is definitely easier for pretty women, but not all of them like all the creepy, unwanted attention from men. A lot of the feminists I know are actually extremely attractive, with giant boobs, and they're pretty hypocritical sometimes because they do use their wiles in life, but they're also disturbed by how people can't treat them equally because they're distracted by their beauty. Kind of funny. I don't like the feminist movement, but I definitely empathize with a lot of the women who don't like how men can't treat them like regular people.
          • Dworgi, on 12/09/2007, -3/+1What I hate (and yes, I use the hate in its original meaning) about the feminist movement is the assumption that the same standards don't apply to men. Very attractive men get the same amount of attention from women - the only difference is that men generally don't hold them up as role models the way women do with attractive women. Hell, just look at the cover of any women's magazine - the pictures are virtually identical to men's magazines.
          • thailand1972, on 12/09/2007, -2/+1LOL@ "A lot of the feminists I know are actually extremely attractive, with giant boobs" - come on, I know this is ***** because "giant boobs" is such a corny, cliched view of attractiveness. I think you're taking the piss here, or are a bit desperate to shoe-horn in some lies to make a point. Anyway, you say you don't like the feminist movement, yet don't like how men treat attractive women as "regular people" (i.e. they treat them ABOVE regular people, as special people, with privilege). Get over it. It's human nature. It can wrankle and annoy some people, and I understand that. But it's human nature. Ain't gonna change. And I don't see too much wrong with it because nature dictates beautiful people are carriers of quality DNA, as hard as that fact seems to be in the politically correct times we live in. So when I hear feminists talk of men "objectifying" wo