On Male As Default And What Ms. Male Characters Are And Aren’t

Whether willfully or sincerely, a lot of people who have been tweeting the image I discussed in my last post

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…continue to essentially say, “But you said a female Link would be cool, and Link as a woman would by definition be a Ms. Male Character! That’s hypocritical! What the fuck do you want?” 

And for any who are genuinely unsure about this, I want to try to offer some clarification, if I can. 

It’s quite simple. A female Link–that is, an incarnation of the Hero of Time, the link between players and the game world, who simply was a woman–would not be a Ms. Male Character because the character would actually be Link. 

This would make sense, because Link is not one character but many characters, and would be cool, because Link is such an iconic character, and part of what is terrific about Link within the context of the Zelda games is that he functions as a blank slate character, one for players to seamlessly project themselves onto. We rarely have iconic female characters that function as blank slates for players of all genders to project themselves onto.

From Jess Joho’s article about Linkle

As series producer Eiji Aonuma explains to Kotaku, “the main character [of Zelda] isn’t actually Link—it’s the player.” The silent protagonist is meant to serve as an empty stand-in for the player to project himself onto. Link is the link—get it?—between the presumably male player and his virtual world.

Meanwhile, Linkle is the definition of a Ms. Male Character because everything about her–her name, her appearance–is designed to position her as very clearly, very explicitly Not-Link, and this reinforces the notion of male as default which is so prevalent in our society. 

As Anita Sarkeesian says at one point in the Feminist Frequency video on the Ms. Male Character…

“In a male-identified society like ours, men are associated and become synonymous with human beings in general. In other words, male tends to be seen as the default for the entire species.”

This is why, for instance…

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…the character on the right, who has no signifiers of any kind, is read as male, while the character on the left needs the gender signifiers to differentiate her from the “default” and make it clear that she is female. 

After the Ms. Male Character video came out, to further illustrate the way that male as default is ingrained in our culture, someone made this image, trying to convey what it might be like if we lived in an alternate universe in which female was seen as the default, the “standard” gender, and men had to be defined in opposition to that default.

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As Sarkeesian wrote in the Tumblr post accompanying this image:

Because we live in a strongly male-identified society, the idea of Pac-Woman as the “unmarked” default and Mr. Pac-Woman as the deviation “marked” with masculinizing gender signifiers feels strange and downright absurd, while Pac-Man and the deviation Ms. Pac-Man seem completely normal in our current cultural context.

In a female as default society, as I explored in another recent post, this collection of pixels might be interpreted as female.

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(Though this should go without saying, female-as-default is not a goal of feminism; rather, we’re working toward a culture in which genders are viewed more equitably, and female is not seen as an alternate, a deviation from the standard norm of male.)

The issue of male as default also gives rise to (and is in turn reinforced by) the prevalence of the Smurfette Principle, which the video discusses in detail. The Smurfette Principle, which is on display in so many TV shows and games, is the tendency for only one member of a group to be female while all the others are male; often, in situations like this, the men all have distinct personality traits, while the one female member’s personality is essentially “being the girl of the group.” Gender as personality trait. 

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So, let’s take an example of a character who is not inherently a Ms. Male Character: Commander Shepard.

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Within the context of the Mass Effect games themselves, Shepard (as a woman) is not a Ms. Male Character because she does not exist solely in relation to Shepard (as a man). When you play as her, she simply is Shepard. However, because the marketing materials so overwhelmingly presented male Shepard as the “standard,” “default” Shepard, Shepard (as a woman) is in some ways perceived as an alternate, a deviation from the norm. The prevalence of the notion of male-as-default is also why fans of Shepard as a woman (including myself) often refer to her as FemShep. Male Shepard gets to be just Shepard (yes, I know some people jokingly refer to him as BroShep) while female Shepard is in some ways othered by her gender. However, as I said, taken within the context of the games themselves, Shepard is not a Ms. Male Character. 

Similarly, if, say, in the next proper Zelda game, Link, the Hero of Time, were simply incarnated as female (as some of us hoped might be the case upon seeing the next Link for the first time)…

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…and Link were still the same typically blank-slate character that players are expected to project themselves onto and inhabit, this would not be a Ms. Male Character. Again, Jess Joho:

Here’s the bottom line that Nintendo refuses to see: when people ask “why can’t Link be a girl,” they’re not asking for the option to maybe play as a girl who looks like Link in a game with a Zelda-related title. They’re not asking for girls to be kept to the side, marginalized to a lesser product and project (anyone remember the Nintendo Girls Club?) Instead, they’re asking why—amidst an otherwise very female-centric mythology about three goddesses and a badass princess—must the “Hero” character always be a boy? Why is it okay to ask female players to identify with Link despite their gender differences, but at the same time have it be inconceivable to ask male players to do the same?

(emphasis mine)

If in the next Zelda, Link were Link, and a woman, this would not be FemLink in opposition to BroLink. It would just be Link, oh BTW she’s female this time, NBD. Rather than reinforcing the notion of male as default, this would be actively challenging it.

Linkle, however, does the opposite. By being so clearly, so emphatically identified through her name and her female signifiers as Not-Link, she only works to reaffirm the notion of male as default, the notion that male is standard and that maleness is essential to the identity of this set of legendary heroes.

And if you think that all the hubbub about Linkle seems grossly out of proportion to Linkle, well, I can understand that. As Sarkeesian herself says in the Ms. Male Character video, “Taken on their own, each individual example…may seem relatively benign or trivial.” But the larger pattern throughout media as a whole is significant (as the video clearly demonstrates) and does reinforce perceptions about gender in our culture. 

Some people like to respond to critiques like this by saying “Nintendo can do whatever they want! You don’t get to dictate what they do with their characters!” And, yeah, of course! Nintendo can do whatever they want, and I can express my opinions about those creative decisions. My opinion is that, considering that Link is one of the most iconic heroes in gaming history, and since there’s no reason why Link can’t be female, it would be really exciting and really meaningful if Link (not Linkle or some other character expressly designated as Not-Link) were a woman at some point, and players of all genders got to project themselves onto that legendary hero.