“lmao this crowd (gestures to suffragettes) would eat me alive rofl”
“you wanna head out there, ruuuun (waves hands around sarcastically) with the men?”
“you coming with me then, woman/princess???” (to sadie adler)
——-
im not saying that arthur morgan was portrayed as outright violent towards women, or that he didn’t have genuine moments where he respected women characters, or that he didn’t help some women fight against misogynistic hatred and oppression.
but his words cut deep enough. he’s not progressive at all by our standards. back during the victorian cowboy era, yeah, he’d probably count as respectful towards women.
but in the context of 2018, arthur morgan’s language towards women aren’t acceptable. his gruff and grumpy attitude quickly turns into cheap shots paid towards women sex workers, women activists, and sadie’s frustration.
its casual misogyny. he was literally harassing the women at the saloon. not extensively, sure, but it was harassment nevertheless. and when sadie starts clashing with his fellow gang members, yeah he takes the time to help her, but not without hemming and hawwing.
arthur’s grumpiness doesn’t have to be misogyistic. for example, sadie’s grocery-shopping quest starts off with arthur calling her ‘princess’ and mocking her past life of not being a household maid 24/7. but when the two leave town and go back to camp, his dialogue is just as sarcastic and dry, but without the sexism; he pokes fun at her new outfit being ‘boyish’ without digging at her personally. “Won’t be long before you’re smoking cigars and playing the harmonica”. that’s very different from arthur saying something like, “ooh, you wanna dress like one of the men, now, princess???”
arthur was written by a AAA company, trying to appeal towards a wide audience of modern gamers that have slowly started to evolve from the white straight dudebro stereotype of recent years. i can tell that they didn’t want arthur to be some duke nukem jerk, but they still felt the need to add in some gross language.
i dont own the game myself, being a pc gamer; im currently watching a silent walkthrough of each quest. and i went in thinking arthur was a pure and beautiful sinnamon roll based off of fandom portrayal. call me surprised and pretty disappointed to find out that wasn’t exactly the case.
i just dont want to see people just ignoring arthur’s written language like didn’t happen, or that his language didn’t count as (at least casually) misogynistic at times. because he is misogynistic on occasion.
it’s 1899 in the game, not 2018. men being absolute shits to women was the unfortunate order of the day, to make
Arthur totally supportive/progressive just wouldnt have held up in that
setting and would have been flagged up as “pc pandering” by many of the games core demographic and honestly his character is grey. he is meant to be the saint and sinner both and he starts off as an asshole by his own admission and evolves over the course of the game to be a better man.
and lets be honest every one time he says something misogynistic/cruel in cut scenes, he does something supportive/kind. the vast majority of nasty things said/done are player choice too so therefore not canonical.
bottom line is you can’t hold a character from that era accountable to todays standards. compared to the way 98% of other men in those times would have behaved with/talked to/treated women, Arthur is a card carrying feminist!
look i get that arthur’s portrayal is likely progressive for his time. im talking about how us fans responded to his character like he’s progressive as of right now.
and guess what? it wasn’t rare to see men support women in their fight for rights. the suffrage movement wasn’t just about voting, women had no legal way of escaping domestic abuse because they lacked opportunity, property power, hand in court and law, etc. that’s why the suffrages also lobbied for prohibition – husbands drink all the family’s money away, comes home to beat their wives, and the woman had no way of escaping their abusive husband nor earn their own keep.
my point? people of history dont get free passes for being bigoted, because, no, it wasn’t actually how it was done back then. people recognized oppression when they saw it.
so in real-life historical context, arthur deserves criticism. in fictional video-game-world context, arthur still deserves criticism because thats how we improve our content as creator-audiences.
whitemanning critical 