Before my feminist awakening, I wasn\u2019t aware of the scale of the sexist clich\u00e9s on my game screen.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n As a teenager, Chlo\u00e9 spent hours on quite mainstream video games such as Duke Nukem<\/em>. A series of shooting games played \u2018in the first person\u2019 (Editor\u2019s note: when the player sees the action through the eyes of the protagonist). Duke Nukem, the main character, is a muscular figure known for his arrogant attitude, his sarcastic humour, his passion for firearms and his liking for women. The game has sparked numerous debates on the representation of genders and stereotypes in the video game industry. Because it is hardly worth underlining that he ticks all of the clich\u00e9 boxes related to masculinity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Before my feminist awakening, I wasn\u2019t aware of the scale of the sexist clich\u00e9s on my game screen,\u2019 Chlo\u00e9 Desmoineaux explains. \u2018I worked my controller to play video games created by an industry where the abuses of minoritised people are legion. On that subject, I remember a discussion with someone I met during a round table, the only woman working in a video game production company. Her male colleagues spent hours modelling characters\u2019 breasts and making more than misogynistic comments about the protagonists they imagined.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n As is also the case in cinema, the male gaze (a visual and narrative perspective in the media constructed on the basis of the heterosexual male point of view) is a core issue in the video game environment. Without generalising, the feminist gamer remains outraged by the vast amounts of money being invested in big blockbusters. Formulaic packages intended specifically for male players. \u2018The industry claims that it is ready to address the issue, but when you see the games which continue to be released today, you would have to say that any rethinking of gender and minorities remains superficial.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n Without having taken a dedicated video game training course, but by dint of changing her outlook on these issues, Chlo\u00e9 is progressively gearing her video game consumption towards alternative and independent productions. She is simultaneously discovering all of the narrative and political potential of certain game scenarios. In particular those conceived by Pippin Barr, a video game designer and associate professor in the Department of Design and Computation Arts, at Concordia University, Canada, or the creations developed by the Italian company, Molleindustria<\/a>, which offers polemical, critical, even waspish video games, often under Creative Commons licence. \u2018Talking about their releases, Every day the same dream<\/a> is worth mentioning. A video game which explores our alienation at work, social conformity, the loss of meaning and the search for freedom.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If, as is the case for us, cyberfeminism is not clearly defined in your vocabulary, we will provide you with a little context. The term \u2018cyberfeminism\u2019 was used for the first time by an Australian female artists collective called VNS Matrix. In 1991, its founders published A Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century<\/a>. The manifesto attracted a lot of attention, not for its prompting of direct action, but because with its outrageous and symbolically charged language it affirmed the existence, the position, the anger and the power of women in technology-related industries. And all of that, need we be reminded, when the internet was still in its infancy. Like a virus infecting theory, art and the academic world, cyberfeminism took on an international dimension, despite being heavily Western-centred, and also became an integral part of the work of Donna Haraway. An American philosopher and primatologist who has since the 1970s been battling against the hegemony of the male vision of nature and science. Now, let\u2019s get back to Chlo\u00e9 Desmoineaux.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/kingkong-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/VNS-Matrix-A-Cyberfeminist-Manifesto-for-the-21st-Century.jpeg\")
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What are we playing at?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n