Play like a Feminist
Front cover of Shira Chess’ book, Play like a Feminist
Play like a Feminist
Shira Chess
The MIT Press, 2020
ISBN: 9780262044387
This latest addition to the Playful Thinking series from MIT press is a lively political polemic and a useful survey of a wealth of feminist research on games. Chess writes for distinct but varied audiences with the explicit aim of inducting feminists into scholarship on games and games scholars into feminist thought, as well as for a more general audience of gamers interesting in familiarising themselves with these debates. The writing is accessible throughout and important questions are examined from different perspectives as Chess develops her political agenda. Chess advocates for gaming, and for the playing of video games, in particular, as a productive feminist activity. She also explores what feminist play might look like across different media, including in analog games and in activism and protest. This is a welcome intervention in the field of game studies, considering games not only as mediating political and social issues, but as a means to engage directly with those issues. There is a tendency, at least in popular conceptions of feminism, to align feminist thought with critique. As Chess notes, feminist critiques of existing games, gamer cultures and the games industry are important, but she wants to move from critique to praxis, specifically positioning play as feminist praxis.
The definition of feminism deployed in the book is broad, inclusive and informed by recent debates and thinkers, such as Sara Ahmed and Kimberlé Crenshaw. This inclusivity is great, but there is a looseness to the theorisation throughout that risks undermining some of the book’s more radical aims. While Chess is wary of a so-called popular feminism that might reify existing power structures, and keen to embrace intersectionality, for example, the lack of a rigorously theorised feminist ground for her manifesto means it often becomes lost in the mire of what Susan Hekman calls a ‘feminist stalemate on identity and identity politics’ (2000: 291). The assumption throughout Play like a Feminist is that the feminist can occupy the position of the agentic, speaking subject able to participate in politics through play. Historically, as Hekman notes, that position has been occupied by the white, male, property-owning autonomous subject. Displacing this subject with another identity ‘conforms to the liberal/modernist tradition that makes a particular identity a necessary requirement of political participation. It thus perpetuates rather than transcends that politics’ (Hekman 2000: 303). This is a problem for feminist thought and manifests for game studies scholars in particular ways.
A striking example in Play like a Feminist is Chess’s elucidation of the debate about the lack of opportunities to play and of general leisure time for women, particularly those in socio-economic positions that require long hours of work in and out of the home. Chess also tackles the impoverished value of play in mainstream feminist thought, suggesting feminists need to ‘pwn leisure better’, though not on the backs of others (60). Yet, after acknowledging that there are socio-economic and cultural barriers to many women accessing and enjoying play, and the need for feminist players, gamers and game designers to examine their place in a complex socio-cultural hierarchy that affords some playtime at the expense of others, Chess’s manifesto stalls. Her practical suggestions pertain to the individual subject whose political participation is not under question. Indeed, this subject is encouraged to get over personal hang-ups and experiment with play that might make them feel uncomfortable in order to better ‘pwn leisure’ (61). Chess’s important exhortations to embrace meaningful play and think about the sustainability and equality of play, then, stops short of really interrogating the systems that allows participation for some at the expense of others. The assumption that one can encourage women to play (better and more) through the design of inclusive games or the creation of better gaming communities glosses over issues of economic inequality and other material barriers. Chess identifies such barriers, noting that ‘leisure is only available to those who can afford it’ for example (55), but her appeal to digital and design technologies as tools to combat access and economic inequalities that affect women and people of colour’s access to leisure seems to ignore the social construction of any such technologies to serve the status quo.
That game studies scholars, game designers and those interested in play as a cultural mode need to engage with feminism is a point well made by Chess. The second part of the argument, which insists on the necessity of feminists to pay attention to video games, is more fraught. She suggests that play and laughter are key for feminists to do a better job at getting noticed, being heard and evoking global change, but it is far from obvious that being heard is the most urgent issue. Given the political crises gripping western nations at present and the intensification of processes whereby material resources are funnelled from the poorest to the richest in the face of massive protest movements, the problem is not the way feminists are making their arguments but the violent systems of oppression and mechanisms of disenfranchisement that simply ignore the arguments. That games have a role to play here is an interesting proposition, but the games industry in its current form is a poor vehicle for driving change. Chess, then, rightly, examines the necessity of ‘destroying the gaming industry as it is currently known’ but her propositions are not radical enough because they rely on a capitalist market-based model, that looks to innovate the industry with an influx of new types of consumer (86-7). As Chess notes, there has been great progress made already with the diversification of games and a recognition of the diverse nature of gamers, but this has done little to displace the dominance of certain types of games, and associated commercial and advertising practices that perpetuate toxic masculinity. As such, I am more inclined to agree with Chess’s erstwhile contributor, Adrienne Shaw, who ‘thinks we need to dismantle late capitalism broadly, and that the problems within video games are just one small part of the fucking shitstorm of global politics, an unregulated tech sector, environmental devastation’ and so on (86, note b). It is to Chess’s credit, of course, that she gives these dissenting voices space in her argument, even if her own conclusions are somewhat less radical.
In summary, Play like a Feminist is a useful and thought-provoking discussion of the tensions, problems and potentials for feminism in game studies and, likewise, for feminists looking to embrace and understand play in practical ways. Chess analyses a wide range of examples, which includes much-discussed indie video games as well as less well understood forms of play such as LARP and ARGs. There is a robust discussion of the language of game cultures throughout, and the way in which this language circumscribes play. Chess offers some inventive ways to work with this language, including an astute articulation of what it might mean to play like a feminist, as opposed ‘like a girl’ (39). Play like a Feminist, then, is effective in its challenge to the sub-cultural elitism that persists within gaming cultures and offers some helpful, if ultimately under-theorised, suggestions as to how to continue the work of community-building, diversification and inclusivity of games and game studies.
References
Ahmed, S. Living a Feminist Life. Duke University Press, 2017.
Crenshaw, K. Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum. 1989: Article 8. Available at: https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol1989/iss1/8
Hekman S. Beyond identity: Feminism, identity and identity politics. Feminist Theory. 2000: 1(3):289-308. doi:10.1177/14647000022229245