Videogames: Further Feminist Theory

 1) What definitions are offered by the factsheet for ‘feminism ‘and ‘patriarchy’?

Feminism is a movement which aims for equality for women – to be treated as equal to men socially, economically, and politically. It is a movement that is focused not on ‘hating’ men, or suggesting that women are superior.  patriarchy (male dominance in society). Feminists see the patriarchy as a limitation to women receiving the same treatment and benefits as their male counterparts.

2) Why did bell hooks publish her 1984 book ‘Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center’?

In 1984, hooks published Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. She had identified a lack of diversity within the feminist movement, and argued that these diverse voices had been marginalised, being put outside the main body of feminism. 

3) What aspects of feminism and oppression are the focus for a lot of bell hooks’s work?

hooks argues that feminism’s goal to make all women equal to men is flawed; not all men are equal to men as a result of oppression, sexuality, ethnicity. hooks used her work to offer a more inclusive feminists theory that advocated for women within a sisterhood to acknowledging and accepting their differences.

4) What is intersectionality and what does hooks argue regarding this?

The term intersectionality is used to describe overlapping or intersecting social identities and related systems of oppression, domination or discrimination. Its meaning is that multiple identities intersect to create a whole that is different from separate component identities. These individual identities can include gender, race, social class, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, religion, age, mental disability, physical disability, mental illness, physical illness. These various aspects of identity are not mutually exclusive, instead they are working together to construct a new identity

bell hooks argues that experiences of class, gender, sexuality etc cannot be completely understood if the influences of racialisation are not considered. hooks argues that understanding intersectionality is vital to gaining political and social equality and improving our democratic system. hook describes intersectionality as something which can create and maintain systems of oppression and class domination. “Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression”

5) What did Liesbet van Zoonen conclude regarding the relationship between gender roles and the mass media?

Her work puts her as a key figure in third wave feminism. Van Zoonen concludes that there is a strong relationship between gender (stereotypes, pornography and ideology) and communication, but it is also the mass media that leads to much of the observable gender identity structures in advertising, film and TV.

6) Liesbet van Zoonen sees gender as socially constructed. What does this mean and which other media theorist we have studied does this link to?

Van Zoonen has a postmodernist understanding of science as something which is socially constructed and grounded in the social experiences of its practitioners. Scientific feminist research always includes 3 perspectives: the individual, the social and the cultural influences in order to understand the different meanings of media content. For van Zoonen, culture is seen as “ways of life” or, as she quotes theorist John Corner, “the conditions and the forms in which meaning and value are structured and articulated within a society” (Corner, 1991). Feminist media studies focus on how gender is communicated within the media. For van Zoonen “gender is a, if not the, crucial component of culture”, in particular when investigating the production of mass mediated meanings.

7) How do feminists view women’s lifestyle magazines in different ways? Which view do you agree with?

For many years, feminists have criticised women’s magazines as commercial sites of exaggerated femininity which serve to pull women into a consumer culture on the promise that the products they buy will alleviate their own bodily insecurities and low self-esteem. But it is difficult, when applying a feminist perspective, to reconcile the pleasure women get from consuming women’s magazines, and the political correctness surrounding hegemonic constructions of gender identities. Van Zoonen argues that women’s magazines mediate images that tell women “how to be a perfect mother, lover, wife, homemaker, glamorous accessory, secretary – whatever suits the needs of the system”. Feminists of the 1970s saw the ‘media-created woman’ – the wife, mother, housekeeper, sex object – as a person only trying to be beautiful for men.

8) In looking at the history of the colours pink and blue, van Zoonen suggests ideas gender ideas can evolve over time. Which other media theorist we have studied argues this and do you agree that gender roles are in a process of constant change? Can you suggest examples to support your view?

Van Zoonen argues that this counterproductive progress is as a result of flaws in liberal, radical and socialist feminist media analysis; the flaws concern the conceptualisation of gender as “a dichotomous category with a homogenous and universal meaning, and the promise of mass media being instrumental to the control needs of respectively, society, patriarchy and capitalism”. Or in other words, other feminist media analyses have viewed gender as binary, with one single meaning. Van Zoonen’s critique is similar to Butler’s.

9) What are the five aspects van Zoonen suggests are significant in determining the influence of the media?

• Whether the institution is commercial or public
• The platform upon which they operate (print versus digital media)
• Genre (drama versus news
• Target audiences
• The place the media text holds within the audiences’ daily lives

10) What other media theorist can be linked to van Zoonen’s readings of the media?

Van Zoonen builds on Stuart Hall’s negotiated readings, arguing that the negotiated readings and subsequent focus on the way meanings are encoded and decoded “implies acknowledgement of gender construction as a social process in which women and men actively engage.” 

11) Van Zoonen discusses ‘transmission models of communication’. She suggests women are oppressed by the dominant culture and therefore take in representations that do not reflect their view of the world. What other theory and idea (that we have studied recently) can this be linked to?

Transmission models of communication position women as oppressed by the dominant culture expressed in media messages. Women, then, are apparently being flooded with images that do not reflect their own selves. As such, the interaction between men and women becomes a oneway process. However, van Zoonen also notes that media is used to assert one’s identity, and as such women should establish and express an appropriate feminine identity for each social situation. Women can use media to “try out different feminine subject positions”. This can be linked to Paul Gilroy "Double Consciousness".

12) Finally, van Zoonen has built on the work of bell hooks by exploring power and feminism. She suggests that power is not a binary male/female issue but reflects the “multiplicity of relations of subordination”. How does this link to bell hooks views on feminism and intersectionality?

She notes, however, that society is not created by order and binary divisions of the oppressed, and those who would oppress. Van Zoonen cites the experience of black feminists, such as bell hooks, where the individual can be both the subordinate in relation (woman vs. man) and dominant in another (white woman vs. black woman). So, van Zoonen argues that the focus should be not who is ‘in power’ and who is not, but to “theorise the multiplicity of relations of subordination” (Mouffe, 1992) and to consider how these relations of subordination for individual and collections, such as gender and ethnicity, are being established. Van Zoonen understands that gender is a particular discourse, “a set of overlapping and often contradictory cultural descriptions and prescriptions referring to sexual difference which arises from and regulates particular economic, social, political, technological and other non-discursive contexts”.