ABSTRACT
Pornography and videogames have much in common: both are typically visual in some sense; they involve sizable markets and have gone from fringe activities to industrially produced and mass consumed ventures; they are considered as entertainment by some, but as morally insidious by others; and the content of both is frequently said to be somehow morally problematic, for instance, by containing violent scenarios that are also sexist and/or racist. From a feminist perspective, both are frequently claimed to objectify women and to glorify sexualized violence against women. Such arguments against pornography are by now well rehearsed and well known (Papadaki, 2015). As the popularity of videogames has increased, feminist gamers have begun making similar arguments: women in videogames are largely absent as active characters, and when they do appear they are highly sexualized extras to the gameplay. 1 Anita Sarkeesian is probably the most famous feminist gamer who has critiqued a number of highly popular videogames as sexually objectifying women. She defines such objectification as
the practice of treating or representing a human being as a thing or mere instrument to be used for another’s sexual purposes. Sexually objectified women are valued primarily for their bodies, or body parts, which are presented as existing for the pleasure and gratification of others.
(www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZPSrwedvsg, 5:07) This understanding draws heavily on Martha Nussbaum’s well-known view. For Nussbaum, objectification involves treating a person as an object, and such treatment involves seven possible features:instrumentality: treating a person as a tool for the objectifier’s purposes;
denial of autonomy: treating a person as lacking in autonomy and self-determination;
inertness: treating a person as lacking in agency;
fungibility: treating a person as interchangeable with other objects;
213 violability: treating a person as lacking in boundary-integrity;
ownership: treating a person as something that can be bought or sold;
denial of subjectivity: treating a person as something whose experiences and feelings need not be taken into account.
(Nussbaum, 1995: 257) Nussbaum’s understanding of objectification has been widely used in feminist critiques of (at least some forms of) pornography. According to Sarkeesian, many of these features can be found in popular videogame franchises such as the Grand Theft Auto series, which makes such games problematic from a feminist perspective. Videogames and pornography seemingly share the feature of involving sexually objectifying depictions of women.