Xenogears & Sexism

[Forsaken Lover]

A semi-common criticism/complaint I've seen of the game. During a "Let's Play" of XG on another website that lasted for several thousand posts and had a lot of discussion, a few of Elly's lines were singled out with a "....." reaction.

Namely:
ELLY:
I'm not a holy woman of any sort. I'm just a regular woman. I get angry... I cry... I laugh... Although at times I can resent others, I also know how to love others... Loving whole masses of people at times... and loving just one person the rest of the time... I am in supreme bliss when I am embraced by the man that I love. Giving what I have to him, and receiving what he gives to me, we become one flesh... That is the moment when I am most at peace. It is my prerogative as a woman to simply want to save the man that I love!

There's also the fact "the Antitype" was created specifically for The Contact. She is destined to always be the lover of The Contact and while she has other purposes, her main one is to be that love interest. Also to die...a lot.

I also had this given as a reply elsewhere:

Xenogears is not just standard 90s sexism. If it was, I might be able to stomach it more than I do. Not only are the characters and plot points bad, bu the very core of the story is rooted in misogynistic themes. Breaking it down:

-Enneagram typing. Nearly every woman (and certainly all the significant ones) in Xenogears fall under the Type 2 class-- which is commonly referred to as the most stereotypically feminine of the lot. It's focused on nurturing and caring for others, and often softspoken behaviour, and motherly tendencies. Elly, Margie-- even Miang. The less important girls may escape this fate, but anyone with fair amount of dialogue? Nope. This fact is made even worse by Takahashi's "ideal woman" comments.

-The Miang Factor. Probably most disgusting thing of the lot? To render every single biological female a liability-in-waiting can only be described as disgusting. The undertones and implications of it create a world where women are inherently disabled, worthy of suspicion, and perhaps worst of all, constantly living with the chance of having their will and dignity stripped away for someone else's purpose. It might be a little better if Miang had been the "Big Bad" in the end-- but since she's really just a puppet, it retains its gross quality. Even worse-- the lines spoken to Fei about "saving all the women!" Yes. Let's have a man come to the rescue of every women in the world.................

-Elly as a whole. It's a sign when even Soraya Saga expressed distaste for Elly and the way she was treated. Elly's entire character exists, as you began to say, for the purpose of Fei's. She's a Type 2, and save for some of the bits in Solaris, all of her character development revolves around him. She's essentially a "manic pixie dream girl" trope in action, worsened by the constant damsel-in-distress moments that plague the gamer right from the beginning. There was no reason for any of that-- Elly is a soldier. She should be able to take care of herself, yet not ONCE is she ever displayed in a capable and self-sufficient light.

-Old Elements vs. New Elements. The old Elements (an all-male team) are shown as capable, serious, threatening, and generally badass. The new Elements (an all female-team) are cheap comic relief, having no real personalities to speak of, save for fawning over a man. (Ramsus.) They aren't treated with even an ounce of respect-- even in-game, the heroes always react to them with a "oh, you silly girls again" attitude. Here was a chance to have a n all-female group of threatening antagonists, matching the old Elements in every way, but a visible choice was made to make them a joke-- a group that should be "put in their place" and laughed at continuously.

-I just need an entirely separate bullet point for that scene where Fei insists that Elly stay behind. The whole thing is vomit-inducing for obvious reasons, and it's capped off by this lovely piece of dialogue:

[spoiler]Margie: But... Men are selfish... When something big happens, they say... 'It's too dangerous... You can't come!' They treat women like we are weaklings. Although it is true can't help Bart and friends much anymore...

Elly:That's not true. Everyone, wants someone special waiting for them. Someone who will protect a place they can return to. If you don't have that peace of mind, then you would not be able to get anything done... Men try to fight it out as much as they can and then some... They're cute when they do that, aren't they?

Margie: Yeah, you're right...

Elly:Anyway, we have things we have to do too, now. And, while we do them, let's pray that everyone comes back safely.

Just in case the rest of the scene didn't drive the "stay in the kitchen"-esque point home.... they had to do that as well.

-Women in Xenogears never have a plotline for themselves. Elly obviously revolves around Fei, as does Emeralda. Even Maria!!! The girl has barely any character, and zero personality, because her part in the plot is not about her own struggles and development, but rather about her father's. She not even piloting her own robot. Her father's spirit does that. [strike]frequently joke about how Mai got more development in 30 minutes of Xenosaga than Maria did in the entirety of Xenogears. It's true, aHAHAHAHAHHAHA.[/strike] Long story short-- any woman's plotline exists not for her own development, but for a man's.

-sigh- I can go on all day about this.

And even IF it was just "typically sexist"-- that's nothing to brush off. No piece of media should be sexist. There's no excuse. Even if its a product of its time-- that does not exclude it from criticism and analysis. It should be examined just as closely as any more modern example.

Thoughts? I'm interested to hear alternative takes on this from fellow XG fans and I know EOFF has several of them.

[Wolf Kanno]

Wow, this persona has some serious anger issues about this subject.

While I do feel they make some valid points, others I feel are just them grasping for signs of sexism, reminding me of a black comedian joking about how his grandpa saw racism in everything including super market beans. I also love how they briefly mention that the game does make exceptions to the rules but utterly ignores them because it doesn't redeem (i.e. support my argument) the way the character is treated.

I'll go point by point here like they did:

Ennegram - This one is a bit ridiculous because it seems to me the author of this post missed the point of who these characters were meant to be. Elly was created to be a mother figure for Abel, Miang was created to be a mother figure for the new humanity Deus would need to revive, and Margie has been raised to be a Holy Mother figure for her religious flock. It makes sense that they would be Type 2, they might as well had whined about how all the "leader" type characters were Type 8 (the stereotypical leader Type) for all the good this argument gives. Let's notice that the rest of the female cast that are not meant to be "mother figures" are not Type 2's which this person mentions and then ignores because it doesn't support the argument they are making. Honestly, the ennegram is just for fun and doesn't really have that much bearing on who the characters are since you would need to hunt down Perfect Works to even know this info.

Miand and the Urobolous - I don't see anything sexist about this, I thought it was a cool idea and explained how Miang could exist without reincarnation like the others. Once again, I feel the author is trying to make this sound more sexist than it was intended to be.

Elly - Alright, finally some valid points. Elly is not the ideal vision of feminist strength but I genuinely find what some people consider to be the ideal vision of feminist strength to be equally sexist as well but maybe that is just me. Elly was created to be a "mother figure" by a child no less but I'm not even going to try to use that as an excuse. Elly's arc is really about both her coming to terms that she is not meant to be a soldier, the fact she is female is irrelevant and the story never uses it as the excuse, instead Elly is deeply traumatized by the time she used her power and murdered some people. Elly just is not a violent person but she's stuck in a society that glorifies the military and comes from a military family so she simply chose the military life. Now I agree that Elly has a really bad case of slipping back and forth between being a competent soldier and a damsel in distress but I would point out that Elly does have her moments in the sun where she saves the day. When Fei it taken out by the Elements, it's Elly that saves him and keeps him from being killed, it's Elly who stops Id after his rampage in Solaris, it's Elly that unites the survivors of Krelian's Wels plan and allows them to find a safe haven. She has her moments and while I agree they are not as flashy and don't completely redeem her high amount of "damsel in distress" moments, she gives as much as she takes. Could she have been made less stereotypical feminine and more independent? Hell yes, but I feel her character works for what the story needs and what she represents. The fact these two points are not in-line with progressive ideals is unfortunate. Largley, I would gree that Elly does have too many "know your place woman" moments but I also feel she has several moments where she shines and stands tall.

Elements - Talk about getting this wrong... The Old Elements were not an all male team. Miang is a former Element, and Jesiah was in the same capacity to the Old Elements as Ramsus is to the New Elements. The Elements are also treated mostly as a legitimate threat for most of the story, far more than Ramsus himself. Yes, they fight for a "man" but the context isn't because "women need a man" Ramsus saved these girls who were being used and would have been disposed of because Ramsus has a soft spot for underdogs like himself. They know that and while Dominia may have more carnal feelings for her Commander the relationship is largely kept professional. Dominia herself is actually a pretty strong female figure and Kelvana is no slouch either. Seraphita and Tolone are more comical but that's because they are actually emulating a popular comic duo from Japan. The fact they are are female has nothing to do with this choice. The other issue here I would point out is that it's not the fact three of the Old Elements have testicles that make them impressive, it's the fact they all have experience. Frankly the most inept member of the group is actually one of the guys and the female member is actually the game's primary villain so they are simply screwing with facts to make their argument here.

The other female cast members - Actually Seibzen isn't endowed with her Father's will, its actually her mother's but I can understand how people miss this because that's a Perfect Works thing. She also doesn't pilot her own robot because A) it's part of the story that ties up the whole Wels angle. B) Seibzen is obviously a shout out to classic Giant Robot shows like Gigantor and Giant Robo where the Robots simply take orders from their child masters as opposed to being directly piloted so their whole statement is less about sexism and simply this person showing their utter ignorance. Maria also does get character development though I agree not as much as she deserves. Her story is also less about sexism and more about a child wanting their parent. Mai in Xenosaga is a foot note and mostly a shout out to Maria anyway.

The whole "women exist for the men" is also wrong. Time and again it keeps cycling in the story. Krelian, Sophia, and Lacan are all intwined, while it's true that they only move to action because of her death, the bulk of her personal character development is a reaction to these two pushing her. Krelian pushes her to stay to her duty as a religious leader, but Lacan tempts her into forsaking her duty and to live as a normal woman without the pressure of others weighing down on her. It may seem sexist initially but if you reversed the roles of the characters, you wouldn't think anything of it. The problem is that in our society of extremes, we've convinced ourselves that anytime a woman longs to be with a man, it is automatically deemed sexist because the girl has to have more ambition and motivation than that to be considered "progressive" and "right".

Likewise, we don't even bother with the double standards that are going on here, I mean the whole of Fei's character Arc is based on the gender bias that men have to be good protectors and providers to have self-worth as a man. I mean Elly's existence in the story is to drive home the fact that Fei has been inadequate in his capacity to be a man to her feminine charm and no one is saying nothing because sexism sometimes falls into this silly notion that "males stereotypes" are always ideal and can thus be ignored. Fun thing that I noticed when thinking about this topic. With the exception of suicide, all of the women in the story are murdered by men and in every case it is treated as a terrible thing because this deals with gender roles on two fronts: Women are weaker than men and need to be protected, Men who use their strength to harm women and forsake their duty to protect are no better than monsters. Fei killing his mother is treated as a tragedy and haunts Fei creating his psychological issues, but no one bats an eye about Maria killing her father. In both cases, it's not really the childs faults but its okay to kill men cause we're disposable and prone to violence anyway, but women are sacred.

Yes, Xenogears is sexist, but you would be hard pressed to find an RPG from that time period that isn't. Hell, it's not like today's RPGs are any better.

[Vyk]

Thank you again, Wolf. That was a pretty phenomenal dissection. It's been an exceptionally long time since I played this game, but not a whole lot came off any more sexist to me than any other JRPG I've ever played, and I think I would have caught on if it were grossly more sexist than everything else. So I was starting to feel bad if it were true and I'd missed all that in one of my favorite games. This discussion just makes me want to play through it again all the more. And maybe read perfect works with it for once

[Forsaken Lover]

Echoing Vyk's words here. Well done, Wolf! I'm a Xeno fan but not very good at this sort of thing. I was starting to feel uncomfortable like I was too ignorant to see all these warning signs. Your posts makes a lot of sense and I especially agree with the point about male stereotypes. There are definitely plenty of those in the game but of course they aren't brought up as much because men crying about sexism are often laughed at.

Again, thanks a lot dude.

[Mirage]

Often? I think the world you're looking for is "always".

[Fynn]

It was the nineties, this is Japan, of course gender roles will be reinforced. I want to join the crowd and thank you, Wolf, for pointing out how exactly this is wrong. I'm really getting sick and tired of these social justice warriors on the net, despite identifying as a feminist myself. But what was I expecting? The same people say 'Frozen' was sexist. Frozen.