So I was stealthing through a raider hideout in Fallout 4 . From a well-concealed hiding place, I headshot one raider, who died instantly. Of course, that put other nearby enemies on alert, and from the next room over, I heard one yell, “I’ll find you, bitch!” How did he know my gender when there was no way he’d seen me and no way anybody could have told him about me? It was like magic misogyny!
That situation made me chuckle, but it also reminded me of something that’s been bugging me in games lately. It seems like more and more often, video game enemies call female characters “bitch” when they want to taunt them. I’m not saying the folks at Bethesda are bad people for making this choice – Bethesda is generally quite good at female representation in its games, and the company tried to be equal with its insults as it programmed raiders to call male characters “bastard.” It’s just a trend I’ve seen, one that was particularly noted in Batman: Arkham City when the bad guys kept popping out the B-word every second they were within earshot of Catwoman.
There are two big reasons why developers have bad guys call female characters “bitch.” The first is that, of course, bad guys are bad and say terrible things. The second is that bad guy insults are frequently used as incentive to remind the player that they should feel satisfied for taking out these mean, awful people. Those are both perfectly understandable design decisions, but as a female player, I cringe when I hear “bitch” in a way that I don’t when I hear a general insult. It takes me out of the game, to unpleasant memories from real life, where “bitch” is used as a weapon by the kinds of men who don’t think women deserve to be in public spaces or to voice their opinions.
Using realism as an excuse for having bad guys say “bitch” isn’t good enough. Video game bad guys are never going to sound like real bad guys, because that would make the ESRB rate a game U for Unsuitable for Public Consumption. Video game enemies don’t generally use racial or homophobic slurs, and that’s a good thing. I think most of us can understand that it would be considered pretty reprehensible to program a game’s enemies to use the n-word at a player character who happens be dark-skinned. Games tone down realism in the name of fun and inclusiveness all the time, and this particular gender-based slur tends to be the only identity-based insult that companies feel comfortable using. Why?
“Bitch” just isn’t a proper equivalent to “bastard” these days. Bastard used to be a major insult, when being an illegitimate child was a whole thing . It’s not anymore, and nowadays “bastard” is basically used as the equivalent of “asshole” or “jerkface.” Bitch, on the other hand, is a word steeped in hatred and threats of violence, especially in modern internet culture where a bunch of losers think that sending rape and death threats to women who happen to have opinions about video games is appropriate behavior. Just about every woman who games has been called a bitch at some point by actual fellow human beings, often in very scary or threatening ways. It might be a silly, fun term for the Kardashians, but it’s not in the gaming community.
Because of that reality, I’d like to see developers think twice before using “bitch” as an insult in games, even when it comes from the mouths of really bad people. It would show respect for their ever-growing female player base. Go ahead, bad guys, call me F**kface McGillicuddy or any number of non-gender-specific insults. I will laugh as I snipe you from my hidey-hole. Just don’t call me bitch. Save that for Dogmeat, who is totally not male. Check the model and tell me I’m wrong.