Ernest Alba's Blog

Chivalry - DOA

One of the most offensive expressions of contempt for women's equality is the dead art of chivalry. And good riddance, too. Some people, men and women, continue to accept and promote chivalry, of which the most common expression is opening doors for women. Contrary to the seemingly benign and charitable character of the expression, one that has been engrained in many people's minds to the point where they hardly think about it anymore, the roots and hidden motives of opening doors stand contrary to a sense of fundamental equality and respect.

Yes, you could open a door for a woman and help her get through the door (as if she needed any help doing it, anyway), but you're crippling her in a much more fundamental way. You are giving her reason to expect this sort of helpful treatment from men wherever she goes. However, the same men that open the door for her would just as quickly shut the door if she was walking in as their boss. That is because the underlying sentiment behind opening doors for women is the expectation that men are more powerful, more capable of doing things than women are.

Am I saying stop opening doors for women? No! I'm saying open more doors for women than just the ones in buildings. Open the doors of the top positions in your company to women. Open the doors of your exclusive, all-male societies to women. Open doors for men as well. Not the exclusive doors to your companies and country club societies, they've already gotten through those doors. Open the doors to buildings: eliminate the gendered aspect of the gesture and leave only the charity. That is, be kind to men and women equally. And if you feel uncomfortable opening doors for men...well, get over yourself. Open doors for everyone - or stop opening doors for people altogether.

Resident Evil 5

The summer is winding down and I'm ready to get back into the swing of things. Let's get started:

The gaming blogosphere is aflame with controversy over the new Resident Evil 5 (RE5) trailer. The trailer depicts Chris Reddingfield, a military man and one of the heroes of the RE franchise, in a small village somewhere in Africa. The most controversial parts are some short clips of him shooting at an angry mob composed of African men, women, and children. Anyone who knows anything about the franchise will immediately see familiar elements of the RE story, i.e. Umbrella, an American pharmaceutical has allowed a virus to infect the villagers turning them all into flesh-eating zombies and Chris's job is to defeat the mastermind, but for someone who isn't familiar with the franchise, those people in the video look an awful lot like regular human beings. Thus, the extent to which someone takes offense depends a great deal on the context in which they view the trailer. Gamers look at the trailer and see victims of an evil corporation being stripped of their humanity and turned into mindless, soulless killing machines that stand in the way of the hero. Non-gamers see an American brutally gunning down African villagers.

This difference between gamers and non-gamers raises another question: Will gamers be affected by the violence towards Africans in the game? Will their perceptions of Africans (as if you can lump "Africans" into one category in more than a geographical sense) be changed for the worse? It is useful to look back at Resident Evil 4 (RE4), which involved a similar scenario. A European village was forcefully infected with a virus that turned them into zombies. In the course of a game, one would get the opportunity to shoot and kill hundreds of Spanish villagers. As someone who played RE 4 and thought it to be one of the best games I've ever played, I can say that I came away from the game without any overt negative feelings towards Europeaners. Still, going to a remote village in Eastern Europe might give me pause now when before it wouldn't. I would not be surprised if the same held true for RE5 and remote African villages. Because despite the fact that we realize that we in a fictional world (however realistic it may be), the violent element remains. Throughout the game we are shooting at Africans. The fact that they are zombies infected with a virus may not be sufficient to prevent players from associating negative feelings with Africans.