The Factual Feminist? A Factcheck
Recently, Christina Hoff Sommers, noted feminist and former philosophy professor, published a video on video gaming and the recent brush-up of sexism in video games. If you haven’t seen it, please view it here before reading forward:
Before we start, we have to look into Ms. Sommers as an academic and a thinker. Sommers is a contributor at many websites and publications including the conservative American Enterprise Institute, TIME, The Atlantic, the liberal HuffingtonPost, and many others.
Assertion: Christina Sommers is a conservative masquerading as a feminist. (Source of claim: Polygon’s Colin Campbell [http://t.co/dCDhnWQh6c] , Some Feminists on Twitter)
From Wikipedia(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christina_Hoff_Sommers):
Sommers earned her BA at New York University in 1971 and graduated Phi Beta Kappa. She earned a PhD in philosophy from Brandeis University in 1979.
A former philosophy professor in Ethics at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, Sommers is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. She is also a member of the Board of Advisors of the nonpartisan Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. She has spoken and participated in debates at over one hundred college campuses and served on the national advisory board of the Independent Women’s Forum.
Some contributions she’s made to popular media include:
AEI: http://www.aei.org/scholar/christina-hoff-sommers/
TIME: http://ideas.time.com/contributor/christina-hoff-sommers/
HuffingtonPost: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christina-hoff-sommers/wage-gap_b_2073804.html
The Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/05/the-war-against-boys/304659/
Slate: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/intelligence_squared/2011/09/oh_come_on_men_arent_finished.html
So to reduce her to a conservative website is completely unreasonable. She contributes articles in multiple publications from multiple political leanings—AEI is conservative, HuffingtonPost is liberal, TIME is center-left, The Atlantic is liberal, Slate is liberal. If anything, Sommers could be termed as a centrist from this very small sample of contributions.
As for Sommers’s identified beliefs? She states that she is an equity feminist. In her book Who Stole Feminism? Sommers states that equity feminists, often associated with First Wave feminism, are concerned with equality of gender and inhabited roles. Whereas gender feminists, Sommers maintains, are more concerned with deconstructing and eliminating gender roles as innately harmful. (From her text Who Stole Feminism?)
Sommers also has self-identified as a “Former Sixties flower-child/socialist. Now registered Democrat with libertarian leanings” (https://twitter.com/CHSommers/status/512223300828012545)
In keeping with identity politics that is built upon self-determination as a value, there is no reason to doubt Sommers’s assertion as to who she is, what she believes, or if she actually exists. (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-politics/, http://www.unpo.org/article/4957).
Of note, however, is that this tactic was used against those who adopted the #notyourshield tag by saying that those who use the tag do not exist or are too stupid to know they’re being duped.
Conclusion: Christina Sommers is a Democrat and does not identify that she is a conservative person. (Source: Sommers, contributing websites).
So, as we’ve seen that Sommers cannot be dismissed as a conservative-leaning fake feminist, we’re left with her actual points in her video. So, within the 6:34 of playtime, let’s try to pick out her main points.
- Anyone who plays, however occasionally, video games is counted as a gamer according to the ESA 2014 release.
- There is a large gender gap between “hardcore” gamers and more casual players of video games.
- There are some who assert video games can cause sexism or sexist attitudes.
- Research indicates that video games cannot directly correlate to long-term behavior.
- Millennial generation is far less prone to prejudices including racism, sexism, and homophobia.
And I’ve seen one refutation of her work on a research-oriented basis:
Assertion 1: Anyone who plays, however occasionally, video games is counted as a gamer according to the ESA 2014 release.
The Entertainment Software Association released their 2014 essential facts about the computer and video game industry report which you can see here: http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/esa_ef_2014.pdf
A quick profile of the information included:
- 59% of Americans play games with 2 gamers in each household.
- 68% play on a console, 53% play on a smartphone, 41% play on a wireless device
- 48% are female, 52% are male, the average age of a gamer is 31.
In small print on the first page, the ESA states that Ipsos MediaCT did the research from 2,200 “representative households.” Heads of households and the most frequent gamers within each household were surveyed.
I attempted to find any sort of information on surveys sent, response rates, and methods from Ipsos MediaCT. I could not find them anywhere. I attempted to find a copy of the survey they used, but I cannot find it.
As a result, we do not know information on if they identify as “gamer.” From the text given, and my personal experience in research methodologies, it is likely that they asked if the person played video games, their demographic information, what the important facets of a game are, what types of games they play, and with whom they played. It’s likely that they sent out around or over 5,000 surveys as surveys have notoriously bad response rates unless incentivized with money.
We must assume that Ipsos MediaCT thus counts anyone who plays a game as a gamer. Their research does not give us any other picture than a monolithic gamer category. This is neither good nor bad. It’s just the way it is.
Conclusion: Sommers is most likely correct in that Ipsos MediaCT counts anyone who plays a video game as a gamer without any parsing on frequency, desired game, gender breakdown of games, etc. As a result, the ESA counts anyone who plays a game for any amount of time as a gamer and reports them as a monolithic group.
Edit: Keep in mind that we’re discussing two ideas here. There is “gamer” as a consumption activity (playing of games for any amount of time) and “gamer” as an adopted personal identity in part or whole (of which I believe Sommers is discussing). This could constitute a genuine disconnect between the ESA’s accounting of “gamer” and Sommers’s discussion as an ascribed/adopted identity after engaging the community (http://aphilosopherstake.com/2012/09/26/personal-identity-who-are-you-what-am-i/)
I don’t know about you, but I certainly don’t feel like getting into the philosophical nature of identity, behaviors as identities, and the right of those to define identities. Let’s just table with deference to self-determination and the right of people to decide their own identities (http://www.unpo.org/article/4957) while respecting that the industry also has a right to terminology.
Assertion: There is a large gender gap between “hardcore” gamers and more casual players of video games.
Casual/social game play on mobile devices and online has increased significantly over the past year. Among most frequent gamers, social games are not the most popular genre, increasing in popularity by 55% from 2012 to 2013
Of games played most often 30% of online games are social/casual; 46% of mobile games are casual/social. So who is playing these games?
http://www.datagenetics.com/blog/december12010/
According to Datagenics, 78% of Facebook casual game players are female. Other statistics are:
- Bejeweled Blitz: 78% female
- Farmville: 66% female
- Yoville: 74% female
- Treasure Isle: 78% female
- Restaurant City: 68% female
- Country Story: 80% female
- Happy Pets: 81% female
Compare that to information presented on Call of Duty 4? 92% of players there are male.
And the casual/social market at large? http://casualconnect.org/research-reports/ Specifically: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3698805/Reports/2012_CGA_SocialSector.pdf
- Social network games are typically females at the age of 40 or above.
- Console games are typically male and at the age of 37 or above.
Mobile gaming market? https://s3.amazonaws.com/CGA_Report/CGA_Market_Report_Fall2013.pdf
48% female, 52% male in the US with most being between 20–35 and playing on a smartphone. The US is the driving market for the iPhone and iPad with Google Play’s representation coming from Japan and Korea.
Core: Gaming is an important part of my life and I spend a large amount of my spare time gaming. I enjoy immersive action-packed games the most, and I like to compete with other gamers”
Mid-Core: I play games regularly, favoring immersive games. I do not spend great lenths of time gaming and don’t spend a large amount of money on it. However if I would have more spare time I would probably spend more time and possibly money on games.
Casual: Although I enjoy games, my time spent or interest in them is limited. I mainly play games to pass the time and don’t invest a lot of money in them.
In the US, 46% of players said they were casual, 30% said they were Mid-core, and 22% said they were core.
So what does this mean? The ESA’s data do not parse casual/mid/core players like the CGA does. As a result, there’s no way we can see who identifies themselves gamer. We can only see who plays games, and as the CGA has established with their work, the ESA’s data likely represents a larger population of casual gamers who tend to be women.
A report from 2009 done by Nielsen shows the split well: http://www.nielsen.com/content/dam/corporate/us/en/newswire/uploads/2009/09/GamerReport.pdf
Of those who term themselves casual or light players, women tend to compose a larger population. For those who identify as heavier gamers, shooters and RPGs are quite present. These players? Male.
Women, on average, play nearly every casual game for longer than men.
Nielsen again publishes: http://www.nielsen.com/content/dam/nielsen/en_us/documents/pdf/White%20Papers%20and%20Reports%20II/The%20State%20of%20the%20Video%20Gamer%20-%204th%20Quarter%202008.pdf
In which I direct attention to pages 7 and 8. Page 7 tells us that females 25+ are more plentiful in PC gaming and play larger amounts of time than males. Now look at page 8. Women are more likely to play Solitaire, FreeCell, Hearts, and Minesweeper. While the men also play these games, it should be noted that they play World of Warcraft and Half-Life 2 more frequently. Then turning to page 9. WoW players are more consistent in playing than other players provided.
Nielsen again: http://www.iab.net/media/file/Nielsen_Cross_Platform_Report_Q1_2012.pdf
In homes with a 7th generation console, women will spend less than 30 minutes on the console. Men will spend nearly an hour.
Info Solutions group: http://www.infosolutionsgroup.com/2010_PopCap_Social_Gaming_Research_Results.pdf
Women tend to be older and female in both the UK and the US with most playing other casual/social games with only 30–33% playing “hardcore games.” Most will play multiple times in week for 1–5 hours or less per week with each session lasting less than an hour typically with a vast majority of the games being played on Facebook.
And the study cited by Sommers: http://www.heri.ucla.edu/monographs/TheAmericanFreshman2013-Expanded.pdf
- 20% say they play games 1–2 hours a week.
- 19% say they play games 3–5 hours.
- 12% say they play 6–10 hours.
This means that over half of male respondents say they play over an hour a week. In all, 81% of male respondents say they play games.
This means that over half of incoming female respondents have never played video games by their own report and 36% play games at all.
It should be noted that the CIRP study here put their survey in the study so we can see exactly how they asked their questions.
Time and time again research shows the same thing:
- Women tend to associate themselves as more casual/social light gamers with an emphasis on Facebook-like social games with a dislike of action-oriented games and shorter sessions of play on mobile devices.
- Men tend to associate themselves as more mid or core gamers with an emphasis on console games with a like of action-oriented games and longer sessions of play on consoles.
Conclusion: Sommers is correct unequivocally. There is a gendered difference between how, what, when, and why men and women play video games.
And as an opinion, the ESA needs to be more transparent in how they do their research. They make a pretty booklet with great talking points, but as someone who loves research, they need to get their stuff together.
I will combine the next two as I believe they go hand-in-hand.
Assertions:There are some who assert video games can cause sexism or sexist attitudes.
Research indicates that video games cannot directly correlate to long-term behavior.
To discuss this, we need an education moment. The root of these claims is in social learning theory. Social learning theory, in short, dictates that we learn through observing behaviors as shown by models, internalizing them through memory and retention, and then displaying them through imitation until a desired outcome results (http://www.simplypsychology.org/bandura.html).
This is taken even further by Craig Anderson who put forth the General Affective Aggression Model. According to Anderson, the chief proponent of GAAM, the model bases itself on social learning theory and other models (http://public.psych.iastate.edu/caa/abstracts/2000-2004/00LA.pdf). This model states that single-episode play/aggression comes from personality variables such as aggression mixed with video game play to change mood, heart rate arousal, cognitions, and result in violent behavior. The model further states that multiple episodes result from repeated violent gameplay causing single episode aggression.
In short, the more often you see violence or experience violence, the more likely you are to repeat violence as it has “seeped” into you resulting in an aggressive behavioral choice. The evidence for this model is exclusively found in research by Anderson and cohorts including Lindsey, Bushman, and others.
However, research done by Chris Ferguson time and time again refutes this claim:
Paradigm change in aggression research: The time has come to retire the General Aggression Model: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1359178912000195
Violent Video Games and Aggression: Causal Relationship or Byproduct of Family Violence and Intrinsic Violence Motivation?: http://cjb.sagepub.com/content/35/3/311.short
Evidence for publication bias in video game violence effects literature: A meta-analytic review: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1359178907000055
Twenty-Five Years of Research on Violence in Digital Games and Aggression: http://www.psycontent.com/content/uuxqp51g11023837/
The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly: A Meta-analytic Review of Positive and Negative Effects of Violent Video Games: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11126-007-9056-9
Simply put, there is no strong indication that media outright causes human behavior such as aggression. There is research that media can help change a narrative, a memory, or ccompel someone to buy something. However, there’s no clear evidence that media in any form can cause you to do a certain thing, have a certain belief, or hold a certain opinion.
Personal, often psychological, factors are much more prevalent in any amount of change in any arena. Research on therapy has shown that the largest factor to behavioral or attitudinal change is what is known as “client and extratherapeutic factors” (http://counsellingresource.com/lib/research-library/book-reviews/research-and-critiques/what-works/)
This means that change cannot and will not result, either when experiencing mental illness or not, without you wanting that change to happen.
Even one of the most classically-identified elements of cultural transmission of sexism, Barbie, has mixed research outcomes that show individual factors may be equally or more important than the display of sexism itself:
http://www.public.asu.edu/~kleong/adolescents%20barbie.pdf
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/mar/7/women-work-barbie-says-no-mrs-potato-head-yes/
http://www.livescience.com/510-voice-reason-research-debunks-barbie-ideal.html
Simply put, you cannot assume that someone who plays with Barbie will be affected by Barbie for multiple reasons including researcher bias, problems with small and unrepresentative samples, and the overstatement of the effects of cultural imagery on behavior.
Finally, to discuss a retort here: The third person effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-person_effect).
This hypothesis, meaning it’s a proposed explanation of behavior, puts forth that we as media consumers tend to believe that we are not as effected by media as we are. We, through a cognitive bias of superiority, assume that we cannot be affected. The formation of this theory comes from sociology and is an explanation for the effects of propaganda in Iwo Jima in World War II.
This applies only when I am estimating the effect that media will have on another person. This does not apply when discussing the researched effects of media on people. As a result, the third-person effect does not apply here.
And no, it does not mean “the less likely you think you’ll be affected, the more likely you are to be affected.”
Conclusion: Sommers is correct. There is no research that conclusively determines that media can directly cause aggressive behavior. The research on this has been going on for over two decades with no clear result. Therefore, it’s also reasonable to conclude that there’s no evidence that media can cause -ism or -ist behaviors, thoughts, or beliefs. One would have to be readily willing to accept these before they magically happen.
Assertion: Millennial generation is far less prone to prejudices including racism, sexism, and homophobia.
This claim is meant to outright refute that gamers, that is people who are of the average age of 30 (as identified by multiple studies linked above) are responsible for -ist attitudes in gaming.
First, we need to correct something in that the average gamer is a teenage male. Well, look above. Multiple researchers have come to the same conclusion that the average gamer is in their 30s. This means that the average gamer was born anywhere from 1984 to 1974.
The millennial generation is operationalized (http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/advertising/story/2012-05-03/naming-the-next-generation/54737518/1) as those being born between the early 1980s to the 2000s. The generation prior, of which some of the gamers in the 30s may be, are known as Generation X.
Attitudes of Millennials are pretty well-researched including:
http://www.randstadusa.com/about/news/talking-about-my-generation-new-study-finds-millennial-and-mature-workers-attitudes-align/
They value hard work, are optimistic, and value flexibility and leadership.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124052182
They are Democratic, liberal, and very tolerant of LGBT people and people from multiple ethnic backgrounds. They’re diverse, and they identify with their grandparents more than their parents.
They’re less religious, not joiners, and they tend to support peace over war. They have every reason to be pessimistic about their prospects due to over a decade of recession, but they are optimistic about the future. They respect those who have authority, but they reject authority as a premise of respect.
http://finance.youngmoney.com/careers/boomers-to-millennials-generational-attitudes/
They are open to change, have tattoos, and rules matter more than counterculture in a world structured by school.
Here is an overview* of some of the interesting differences between Baby Boomers (born 1946 to 1964), Generation X (born 1964 to 1981) and Millennials (born 1981 to 2001).
Level of trust toward authority
Boomers are confident of self, not authority.
Gen Xers have a low level of trust toward authority.
Millennials have a high level of trust toward authority. Yet they are less trustworthy of individual people. Perhaps it’s from being born into an age of terrorism or maybe it’s their overprotective parents or the danger-obsessed media.
What do they view as the ultimate reward?
Boomers want a prestigious title and the corner office.
Gen Xers want the freedom not to have to do something.
Millennials prefer meaningful work.
How were their parents with them?
Boomers had parents who were controlling.
Gen Xers parents were distant.
And Millennials? Their parents were intruding. Or, as my Millennial-age intern tells me, they have “helicopter parents” — they’re always hovering.
What are their views toward having children?
Boomers are controlled, their children were planned.
Gen Xer’s are doubtful about the possibility of becoming parents.
Millennials are definite about parenthood. In fact, they view marriage and parenthood as more important than careers and success.
And overall family life?
Boomers were indulged as children.
Gen Xers were alienated as children.
Millennials were protected as children.
Views toward education?
Boomers want freedom of expression.
Gen Xers are pragmatic.
Millennials need the structure of accountability.
Political orientation
Thankfully, boomers want to attack oppression. Without those views we might not have had civil rights or protested Vietnam.
Gen Xers are apathetic and more worried about the individual.
And the Millennials, the facebookers and Tweeters? It should be no surprise that they crave community.
Last but not least, the views on the big question.
Boomers want to know, “What does it mean?”
Gen Xers need to know, “Does it work?”
Millennials are curious to know, “How do we build it?”
Conclusion: Sommers is correct. Millennials, of which I am one, are less prone to -isms and -ist beliefs. They are more open to diversity because they are more diverse, they want community, and they believe in building community with structure, rules, and accountability.
On every single claim, Sommers is correct or potentially correct as derived from secondary sources outside of Sommers. Now, let’s deal with a refutation of her work:
Talking to gamers is not appropriate research.
Those who make this claim are in need of a quick primer. In her examination of gamer and gamer culture, Sommers utilized a form of research that is likely an anathema to most who claim sociological or communications backgrounds.
She was engaging in ethnography: http://hbr.org/2009/03/ethnographic-research-a-key-to-strategy/ar/1 , http://methodsofdiscovery.net/?q=node/19
Ethnography is the study and research of people and cultures through data collection. One of the chief forms of data collection in ethnography is the interview. However, to do any sort of formal or informal communication, you must approach the culture or people with respect as an outsider.
Only after the culture or people trust you can you begin data collection. This is what Sommers did. She entered into the discussion, observed how we functioned, and then entered to discuss with us as a group to find our perspective on things.
She did ethnographic research, and ethnographic research is a valid form of research. If you have a problem with utilizing ethnographic research, I suggest you march to the nearest Anthropology department and tell them what you think about ethnography.
Next time, consider utilizing Sommers’s methods when speaking about a culture or a people. You may find that you have more success when you approach a people with respect and a willingness to learn instead of entering the group with labels, jargon, insults, and degradation.
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