1. Why should we only pay special attention to our significant others on a certain day?
2. The holiday is just part of a consumerist scheme to support the “industrial complex”

Blah blah blah.  Whatever.  It’s all true, of course, but I wasn’t going to post anything about it until I came across this promotional offer from XBox Live.  It offers some free Microsoft Points if only you’ll watch one of the offered movies with your loved one on Valentine’s Day.  Sounds like a good deal, except for the wording of the advertisement.

It annoyed me right away on a subliminal level, although it took me a bit of time to rationalize why exactly I took issue with it.  At first it was the dichotomy between those who have “someones” and those who do not.  I must either a sentimental sap who likes frilly pink hearts simply for having a girlfriend, or I’m some chest-pounding “manly-man” type who “don’t need no stinkin’ girlfriend! Guys rule!”  Is that it?

I couldn’t possibly be a guy who is between relationships, or a guy who for the sake of career, livelihood, or personal choice, just doesn’t have a significant other?  I couldn’t be a girl who is single for any of the same reasons?  Or a girl who doesn’t like frilly pink hearts?  I couldn’t be a gay man or woman in a relationship where such cave-painted gender roles aren’t so clearly established?  I couldn’t be a person of any gender and sexual orientation who appreciates a romance movie, even watched in solitude?  Maybe I’m some basement-dweller with the social skills of an empty pizza box and movies are my escape from harsh reality, in which case, thanks for reminding me of that.

Then there’s the matter of which movies are offered to either side.  If I’m the romantic type, I must want to watch some trite garbage like The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past or the insufferably pointless and overrated Paranormal Activity.  But if I’m not – if I’m the skull-crunching manly-man type, or the lonely lurker type – then I must want something involving drunken stupidity like The Hangover, the pulp sensationalism of Inglorious Basterds, gangsters in Public Enemies, explosions like G.I. Joe, or a healthy dose of racism like we find in The Goods - you know, because the target market probably isn’t Asian or anyone else who might be offended by Asian stereotypes.

Because all real chest-pounding manly men enjoy that kind of stuff.

As a guy in a successful heterosexual relationship, his ad was tailor made for me, right?  Except that I hate most romance movies no matter who I’m watching them with, because of their hackneyed storylines and characters who are either unrealistically beautiful or exaggeratedly hideous only to – by way of magic or hard work – become unrealistically beautiful.  Except that I don’t buy into the idea that ideals like love or tenderness or sensitivity or – you know, generally not being some chest pounding machismo asshole – are mutually exclusive from my identity as a man.

Maybe I’m making a mountain out of a mole hill, but the shit just annoyed me.  Maybe me and my girlfriend, instead of exchanging frilly pink hearts, like to share a cocktail inside of a flaming skull right before we headbutt each other.  With love.   You don’t know.  It’s just more evidence of how the consumer culture is so oblivious or indifferent to the many different types of ways that people can choose to interact with one another – and not just on Valentine’s Day.

Not-See

–noun.
a person able to ignore or deny certain realities, such as racism, sexism, classism, sexualism, ableism, or religious prejudice by virtue of the privilege associated with membership within a dominant group.

Origin: Unknown Date, Americanism

Word Origin & History
A play on words, the pronunciation of “Not-See” invokes the word “Nazi”. The crimes of the former are passive instead of active – those who would turn a blind eye to injustice rather than perpetrating it themselves. The ideologies of both, however, are predicated upon a certain egocentrism, social privilege, and stark self-versus-other mentality.

Not-Sees are people who witness racism or other prejudices and either are unaware of it, or even when made aware of it, deny it – even going to great lengths to explain it away or dismiss the grievances of those affected by that prejudice. Not-Sees love to use the term “race-card”.

Look into any discussion in an online forum about, say, whitewashing – or racebending – as it pertains to the upcoming Last Airbender film:

Here’s a clue – people invest millions of dollars into films because they want to make more millions of dollars, not because they want to help insecure people feel better about themselves. If some of the title roles are played by “white” actors, it’s not racism, it’s marketing.¹

Or blackface in The Secret of Kells:

You’re all babies, this is an animated movie, not KKK propaganda. Get over yourselves, either watch it or don’t, but don’t pollute a thread with this bullshit. Racism is bad ra ra we all get it move along please.²

And the PSP game Loco Roco:

…I’ve been playing the demo of this game for sometime now, and these thoughts never crossed my mind, and you know what, I’m sure the kids who will play this game will never see it as well. I’m 23 years old, and after you pointing out all this bollocks I still don’t see it, I see it as a fun, creative game…³

Not-Sees are those who accuse people of color of being “hyper-sensitive” for daring to notice what are for POCs obvious instances of racism. Not-Sees are people who would deny the legacy of slavery in the United States, and tell African-Americans – disproportionately poor and still denied access to quality education, housing, and employment – that they need to “get over it”. The Not-Sees themselves have, after all.

Not-Sees are people who see nothing wrong with Emily Blunt posing with crutches, or think that Abercrombie and Fitch are justified within their business ethos to reject a model with a prosthetic arm. They are people who think that gay marriage isn’t an important issue, because after all they are not gay, so why should they care? These are the same Not-Sees who would dismiss a transgendered person’s struggle with identity as mere “confusion”, or some sort of intended sexual deviancy.

Not-Sees are people who dismiss the outrage of feminists around the sustained gender inequalities such as wages, the sexual double standard, or the inordinate pressure placed on women to conform to the beauty standard, and to be judged by their physical appearances first, if not exclusively.

Ironically, Not-Sees can even be feminists themselves, Western or white who ignore the particular experiences of women of color, presupposing that the problems women face are universal or at least the same as their own; who would ignore Islamic women’s own voices while railing against the practice of covering.

It would be a wonderful world if there were no pressures on Muslim women at all to don the hijab. Frankly, if every Muslim woman in the world threw off her hijab, refused to be “modest”, and became a rad-fem activist, it’d suit me perfectly.⁴

Not-Sees are willing participants in a culture of willful, sustained, institutionalized obliviousness – people who out of laziness or for the sake of their own peace of mind ignore, shy away from, or attempt to delegitimize issues that do not affect them directly.

However, considering that poster’s comment, much of what I’ve written below may be plainly misinterpreted, at least with respect to the developer’s intentions.  While I could assume that Bioware intended the game to be open to multiple interpretations, I must also consider the words of Dragon Age lead writer David Gaider, who in response to the lack of darker people in the game world had the following to say:

While there are “dark skinned” people in Rivain, I have no interest in making Ferelden more diverse for the sake of political correctness.

I considered deleting this entire post, but perhaps it is worth leaving here to demonstrate what would be praise-worthy in terms of inclusion in video games, were any developer so inclined to walk that path.

Back in February, in the article Black, White, and Jade: Race in Video Games, and earlier in Ethnic Depictions in Video Games, I talked about a need for video games to become more inclusive with their characters, to depict the same diversity we see in the real world in these imaginary ones. Plainly, this translates to having more non-white characters in video games, particularly as the main characters.  And furthermore to have those characters exist outside of stereotypes.  With the exception of games built from pre-existing properties featuring characters of color – for example, Shadowman – there are very few games with non-white human protagonists.

In Black, White, and Jade, I mention that it is not merely about skin color or other physical features, but also about culture, and about experience. Regarding so-called “black” characters, I said:

What would be required for a character to be considered “black”? Appearance could be one qualifier … dubious due to … the extreme diversity to be found within such a vague and subjective category.

The “black experience” could be another qualifier, as in a situation where a character is forced to face certain indignities [as a result of her ethnicity].

As it turned out, I wouldn’t have to wait too long, and I may even have been overdue in giving proper credit. Bioware, a Canadian company that has risen to high acclaim in recent years for producing consecutive triple-A quality games, also deserves credit for being a trailblazer when it comes to inclusion. Back in 2005, Bioware released a game called Jade Empire, one that took place in a fictional world, but that borrowed extensively – and authentically – from Chinese culture, history, and mythology.  Unlike other Asian-inspired properties that feature white protagonists – the list here is endless, from Kung-Fu with David Carradine to M. Night Shymalan’s whitewashing of Avatar: The Last Airbender – Jade Empire featured an entire cast of Asianesque characters – “esque” only for the fact that the game does not take place on Earth.  It was evident in every detail of the game that Bioware had done their research.

2007 saw the release of Mass Effect, a space opera featuring an ethnically ambiguous main character – Commander Shepherd – who players had the option of customizing to resemble a variety of different ethnicities, and to be male or female.  The majority of the crew were aliens, with special mention to Tali’Zorah nar Rayya (pictured right), whose name, appearance (clearly inspired by Muslim hijab), and accent invoked the Middle East.

Mass Effect challenged norms of sex and sexuality as well, with the possibility for a “lesbian” sexual encounter, and a race of aliens – Asari – who invoked human femininity, but in actuality had no separate sexes or genders.  I quoted lesbian because the aforementioned encounter could happen between a female Commander Shepherd and Liara (pictured left) – an Asari who could be called “feminine”, but who explained that she was not female.  In this, the Asari might also be the closest we’ve come – or will come for a long time – to transgendered characters.

Finally, in 2009, Bioware released Dragon Age: Origins, a high fantasy game in a world populated by the usual suspects – humans, elves, and dwarves.  At a glance, DA:O would appear to be a step backwards for the company in terms of inclusion, because there is nary a dark-skinned or almond-eyed character to be found in the world.  Every character – with perhaps the exception of a random NPC or two – had European features.  It could possibly be argued that one character, Sten (pictured right), for his cornrows hairstyle, was intended to invoke an African-American, but that would be a stretch, due to his otherwise European features.

There was also the character creation system, which again – like Mass Effect – allowed players to create a character inspired by a variety of ethnicities (my character is pictured left).  The only trouble here is that regardless of the look of the character, the families of the character remain constant – and they invariably have a European countenance.  Different world, different rules of genes and inheritance – I was willing to accept some creative liberties, although they could’ve taken a hint from Fallout 3, which demonstrated well how a character’s family can be changed to match the player’s ethnicity choices during character creation.

Thankfully, Bioware did not even attempt – or need – to rely on the weak “hair connection” of Sten, nor the minor concessions of the character creation system.  They also didn’t simply rest on the laurels of creating two inclusive games for the mainstream years prior.  Above I talked about how a character’s ethnic inspiration could come through in ways other than appearance – namely by invoking real human experiences.  This is exactly what Bioware did in Dragon Age: Origins – and much like we saw with Jade Empire, there was clearly a fair amount of research done, or information drawn from a diverse or well-informed design team.

Without flinching from the possibility of controversy, Bioware boldly modeled the Elves of Dragon Age after the American “black experience” – the very thing I suggested back in February.  The Elves, thousands of years before the events of the game, possessed a rich and vibrant culture until they were conquered and enslaved by a human empire.  Fast forward to the present and slavery has ostensibly come to an end – although still practiced in some pockets of the world – but most Elves, living in cities, are confined, by a legacy of oppression, to what are called “alienages” or slums.  Their social status as second-class citizens follows even those that leave the alienages, as happens if you play an Elven main character, with humans marveling at an elf that actually made something of him or herself.

There are other elves, too, not confined to the city slums, who live nomadic lives and remain extremely wary of humans.  They also look down on their city brethren, referring to them as “flat-ears”, and thinking them weak for not casting off the yoke of human oppression.  The parallels between the elven experience and the black experience is not at all superficial, with the game asking some tough philosophical and moral questions around these issues of race and racism.

For example, during a dialogue between my city-elf main character and one of the nomadic elves, she asked me whether or not I thought that humans were generally sorry for their history of enslaving the elves – a question that invokes the idea of “white guilt”.  The potential answers to these questions were even more telling of the care that Bioware put into building this narrative.  I had the option of saying “It depends, all humans are different.” – the enlightened response, for sure – or “I don’t think most of them (humans) think about it.” – invoking the all too common attitude of Americans today of dismissing slavery and its legacy to history, as something not necessary to consider in present day.

The moral question comes when you encounter an elf who long ago was wronged by humans – they killed his son and raped his daughter, who upon realizing she was pregnant, committed suicide.  This fellow – through means I’ll leave for you to discover – continues to punish the humans for what they did way back in the past.  As an intervening party, you need to decide whether or not he is justified in his actions, or whether it is time for him to let go of his hatred.  In this we see the other side of the black experience – how should African-Americans respond to today’s Euro-Americans – with hatred or resentment for crimes of the past, or with the possibility of forgiveness?  This is a question left for every African-American to answer, not just once, but sometimes on a daily basis – and in Dragon Age, the player is left with a number of different ways to address the vengeful elf.

The Elven analogy is only one of many ways that Dragon Age demonstrates inclusion, albeit probably the richest example.  There are also the Dwarves, who use a caste system clearly inspired by India – including the so-called “Castleless”, corresponding to India’s “untouchables”.  There are also possibilities for gay and lesbian sexual encounters, depending upon the gender of your main character and the choices you make in relationships with your teammates.  This marks the first time ever in a video game that we see an illustrated sexual encounter between two male characters, as two women had at least been done before in Mass Effect and in Fear Effect: Retro Helix back in 2000.

Hana and Rain from Fear Effect: Retro Helix

Going further than that, the male companion in question – Zevran (pictured right) – was not a stereotype of the gay male, but a very complex character with a rather Ancient Greek sensibilities about sexuality – partnering with whoever he finds beautiful, regardless of gender.  And unlike many depictions of “gay” male characters in media, Zevran was not defined by his sexuality, but more by his life as an assassin.

In spite of the near unanimously Euro-inspired cast of characters, Dragon Age:Origins demonstrates inclusion of diverse experiences in ways that no game has ever done before.  Bioware has again established themselves as a trailblazer in an industry that so far has shied away from challenging the status quo or tackling tough issues.

One can only hope that in addition to blazing a trail, Bioware has also set a trend, with other developers soon to be nipping at their heels in trying to be more inclusive.

Civil Unions For Everyone
http://godheval.net/civil-unions-for-everyone/

However, I think there is something important to consider here. Many of us “straights” take marriage for granted. Some – if not most – social liberals do not put much importance into “traditional values” such as marriage, meaning that we suppose, by virtue of our own wills, we can enter into a commitment without the church or the law dictating the rules of that agreement. We would cite the ridiculously high divorce rate as proof that marriage is a no more reliable form of commitment than a stated vow.

In fact, not too long ago, I trivialized the issue of gays’ right to marry, not because I would deny them anything, but because I also trivialized marriage.  I also dismissed the issue under the pretext that there were “more important” things to talk about.  But in truth, it is not my place to say what should and shouldn’t be important to other people, especially when I do not even have the ability to relate to their experiences.  It was not until very recently that I recognized my privilege as a straight person to even be able to take marriage for granted.

What we must remember in dismissing or downplaying the significance of marriage is that we – as straight people – will presumably always have the option of marrying or not. We can turn our noses up at the institution now, only to change our minds as we get older and – perhaps inevitably – become more conservative in our thinking.

Same-sex couples do not have this luxury. So I think, while we should continue making arguments for universal civil unions as the truly legally-recognizable social contract between partners, we should maintain some sensitivity to the privileges we have as straight people, and not begrudge anyone the desire to form that contract in the way of their choosing – be it “marriage” in some official ceremony, or civil union before a judge.

Those who advocate for gay marriage – and this includes many straight people – simply want same-sex couples to have the same social and economic benefits afforded opposite-sex couples. To name a few things, they want gay couples to be able to share benefits, and to be able to adopt children. The adoption right seems to me to be even more important to gay couples than to straight couples, given that gay couples cannot conceive children on their own. So there is little wonder that they would argue passionately for that right.

On the other hand, those who are against gay marriage have nothing to gain where gay marriage is prohibited. They might argue that they have something to lose – citing perhaps some deterioration of family values – but this view is contingent on prejudice and a sheer misunderstanding of the family dynamic in gay relationships. That is to say, they wrongfully assume that being gay is some immoral choice, rather than merely one very natural possibility for human relationships. For them, marriage represents something more ideological than practical; they speak of the “sanctity” of marriage – its purported “meaning” – rather than the practically of marriage, as in all of its legal implications.

So going back to judging an agenda by the motivations behind it, we have one agenda that wishes to allow people freedoms that only affect the people themselves, making their lives easier and/or richer. The opposing agenda aims to cause actual harm to the same group of people for no conceivable benefit. To any justice-minded person, there can be no question of which side they must take. And no, I am not just saying that to infer that only those who support gay marriage are justice-minded, but for those who don’t and are, there must be some crisis of consciousness.

Anyway, with all that said, and my position on the matter clearly established, I would like to contribute a new thought to the debate. Perhaps the struggle for gay rights is misdirected in fighting for marriage. So-called “civil unions” may actually be a better alternative, if only the rights granted under such unions were equal to those granted by marriage. Since gay couples are fighting for more practical gains, perhaps they should concede to the zealots and the bigots their ideologically “sacred” institution.

That is not my new thought, however. I recognize that even were civil unions and marriages to be the same in practical terms, the ideological separation would still strongly represent the “us versus them” mentality at the center of the debate which must be eliminated. So my new thought is that civil unions should be an alternative to marriage for all people, regardless of their sexual orientation. Because marriage is one of those weird gray areas where the separation of church and state is not so clear, for those of us who are avowedly non-religious, a civil union may be a more desirable representation of our bond with a significant other.

One idea would be to expand the definition of civil unions to subsume all marriages. In this way, the so-called “sanctity” of marriage could be “preserved” and at the same time remove “sanctity” as cause for the denial of the rights of same-sex couples.

It is mostly a given that anti-gay marriage ideologues act out of some desire to punish same-sex couples for what is perceived to be an immoral choice, in spite of their framing it within the idea of protecting marriage as an institution. Were they to fight against this new definition of civil unions, they would expose their motivation as being one of blatant prejudice and antagonism. Such overt discrimination is not only intolerable but also prohibited by law, not to mention that it undermines the “good will” clauses written into every major religion.

Granting civil unions to everyone would restore the Constitutional mandate of church and state separation. It would also give opposite-sex couples a personal stake in the rights bestowed through those unions and allow people of every stripe to act with solidarity for the cause of justice.

As for those who want to maintain marriage as only between a man and a woman – they could keep it, along with what it says about their character. Meanwhile, those of us who care about human rights, justice, and forming strong relationships – more than preserving the stagnancy of some ancient institution – we would be able to choose something better.