Why Men Shouldn't Be Offended By Women-Only Groups

Last night, I donated a dollar (or a mere 65p in UK currency) to Code Liberation, a foundation that offers free game development workshops for women. I learned about Code Liberation (I'll just say Code Lib) through a 24-hour Twitch stream set up by Extra Credits. In the chat room of this Twitch stream, I noticed a comment made by one viewer about why he wasn't donating to Code Lib. I couldn't recall the comment word-for-word, but he thought the idea of a women-only group was sexist.

He took pride in treating men and women as equals, which I certainly won't fault him for, and claimed that groups who exclude members based on sex will only reinforce the sexist cultural landscape that these groups are supposedly trying to combat. This blew up into a huge chat room debate about women feeling unwelcome in the games industry (don't get me started on THAT hashtag) and where groups like Code Lib fit into the equation. Essentially, the two sides of the argument were "Code Lib is helping female developers to not feel excluded from the games industry" vs. "Female developers can enter the games industry as men do, through college, and college would not exclude them, so a women-only game development group is irrelevant. It only serves to insult men, many of which aren't causing a problem."

I felt like both sides of this argument were missing a huge point about Code Lib, about why it exists, why it's worth donating money to and why men shouldn't be offended by it's women-only policy. I do not speak for Code Lib of course, this is merely my observation, but if you ask me why these sorts of women-only groups need to exist, I'll say this:

Men can (and SHOULD) endeavour to have as broad an understanding of women as possible, and many men indeed do, but the fact is that men will NEVER have as complete an understanding of women as women do. This is a natural, unavoidable consequence of men... you know... not being women. There are, believe it or not, elements of a woman's life that only a woman can reliably provide insight into. I wonder how many men would say that women can provide more reliable insight into male life than men?

There's nothing wrong with men having this limit to their understanding as long as it doesn't affect the lives of women, or other men's perception of women, in a negative way. Unfortunately, it does, far too frequently. In the worst cases, there is a complete lack of understanding altogether, with men collectively viewing women in scornful, sexist, misogynistic and dehumanizing ways (THAT hashtag springs to mind again).

However limited a man's understanding of women is, it's important to note that his creative output, if he works in a creative field, may reflect that limited understanding. If he's an artist, he could render a costume for a female character that deliberately shows off most of her skin in order to make her look "like a chick" (A League of Legends artist used this excuse). If he's a writer, he could write female characters who fail to pass the Bechdel Test (meaning they don't talk about anything other than men throughout the story). If he's a rapper, ...well, you get the idea. Whether it's intentional or accidental, damaging or harmless, men's incomplete outlook on women can easily become imprinted onto their creative work.

This wouldn't be an issue if there wasn't much attention being paid to their work. But there must be a LOT of attention being paid if the fastest selling product of all time (not just game, not just general work of creativity, but PRODUCT) is Grand Theft Auto V, a game written and designed by a four-man team, a game not exactly renowned for it's portrayal of women.

If GTA V could be such a commercial success without it's developers needing to demonstrate a broad or respectful understanding of females, why would other male developers feel it necessary to improve THEIR understanding of females? Going on sales figures, I'd say the only necessity for them is that they make more games like GTA V, games that can fly off the shelves and dominate the charts, games that men with a similarly lacking perspective of women can devour, games that I imagine are popular with advocates of THAT hashtag.

I'm tired of these kinds of games and I'm not alone.

No-one is more qualified to make games that are free from men's flawed ideas about women than women themselves, and such games would benefit from being developed in an environment where those male ideas do not exist and have no power. Women-only groups ARE that environment. The games made by members of these groups will be like nothing we've ever seen before. Their ideas will be unique and unspoilt. They will improve the creative landscape of games immeasurably. As a man wholeheartedly sick of the GTA's, Call of Duty's and Bayonetta's of the world, I am excited to see what kind of work the women of Code Liberation turn out.

Why shouldn't men be offended by women-only groups? Because these groups aren't about reinforcing gender exclusivity and they're about more than just making women feel included. They are havens of untapped new ideas, places where content can be crafted without the mistakes of a male-dominated creative landscape being repeated. They are worth supporting if we want to see artistic mediums taken to interesting new frontiers.

...Or at least that's my understanding of it. Women, tell me how I'm doing.