Hey all, this was meant to be released for International Women's Month, but life got busy. Then I wanted to do it for Lesbian Visibility Week, but the same thing happened again. So consider this as a belated gift to celebrate both very important occasions. I wanted to discuss about how the story is thematically richer when under the perspective of Female V (instead of the reasoning for playing as FemV being for 'gooning'), discuss how Night City specifically oppresses women with the patriarchy (and how some women contribute to the patriarchy and oppression of women), as well as highlight the excellently written female characters, and how the story would be lesser without their focus. I will highlight one male character, but that's more to highlight his arc of overcoming his misogyny.
So I want to state that misogyny is something that is engrained in everyday society, whether internalised or out in the open, it bleeds through the cracks of society and is prevalent, whether conscious or unconsciously, it's something that is defined by a person and is a systemic issue, one that takes decades, if it even gets dismantled for good. And in Night City, this problem is much more prevalent and out in the open. A part of this is because Night City is rooted in Japanese aesthetics, and it is reported that Japan is a patriarchal society and male-dominated. Which is not to say American society isn’t patriarchal, it is, it’s just more subtle, but the combination makes it far more easy for women to be oppressed in 2077.
Take Clouds, Evelyn and Judy’s questline as an example. Clouds as an industry, an institution is very patriarchal and male-dominated, exploiting a person’s femininity for sexual desires, and discards them like objects once done. Especially for working class women like Evelyn trying to escape from her oppression after years of being forced to accommodate for the patriarchy. Instead, she’s then pulled into other forms of oppression such as Fingers (a man who takes advantage of working-class women by coercing them with sexual favours) and an industry that much like Clouds, is built on oppression. And she’s only one woman out of multiple who go through the same ordeal that she suffered through with Clouds and XBDs. It’s no wonder and even agreeable that a working class lesbian wants to form a group to overthrow oppression on women. That’s how The Mox was originally formed after all, women finally having enough of their oppression from men.
But it’s not just open sexism and oppression that is rampant in Night City, microaggressions can also be evident with certain characters. I have noticed how Saul would be dismissive of Mitch whenever he pitches the idea of stealing the Basilisk or arguing against him for what would be best for the Aldecaldos survival, often ignoring him. With Panam however who proposes the same idea as Mitch, he is actively confrontational and shutting Panam down, like he’s trying to put her in her place. A similar thing can be seen with the language around Songbird, with characters like Reed and Myers treating So-Mi like an object, wanting to imprison and experiment on her like she’s not an actual person (I do believe it was a conscious choice from CDPR to have So-Mi be a woman throughout Phantom Liberty).
But it’s not just the men who uphold the patriarchy, because I want to highlight three particular characters who despite being women, have a patriarchal position and continue to oppress women, those being Hanako, Myers and Maiko. Hanako despite being an Arasaka, a family that has near-full control on Night City, has alluded to how she can’t let out her opinions due to her position as a woman, thanks to her father’s patriarchal nature being a looming shadow over her (as she has alluded to in a dialogue piece in Nocturne Op55N1), and how she couldn’t possibly take over the throne of Arasaka. And yet, in the Devil Ending, as soon as she takes over from Yorinobu’s position and brings up Saburo’s engram, she sees no effort to change the patriarchal nature of the Arasaka family, still choosing to allow Saburo, even as an engram to hold his reign and oppress. President Myers is also in a similar vein, she’s given a position of power, and instead of enacting change to better the conditions of the world, she instead prefers to be a chessmaster and keep her imperial status and maintain her patriarchy, much like the real life Margaret Thatcher. And finally Maiko, who is an interesting case, as someone who used to be in that oppressive position as a doll, she then has the privilege to change the system, to help oppressed women, to fight against the men in positions of power (there is an email in the mission Pisces about Tyger Claws thinking that Clouds would be better when run by men) who have harmed sex workers. But instead, she uses her privilege to contribute to the patriarchy, has been complicit to the oppression of Evelyn and other sex workers by being silent, and when she is given a further position of power if you pick the outcome where she takes control of Clouds, she maintains the patriarchy and carries the same level of oppression on vulnerable women as the male bosses such as Hiromi and Woodman (and if you haven’t done the Monster Hunt gig when taking down Jotaro and let Maiko take control of Clouds, you can find her speaking to Jotaro in You Know My Name), making her no better than the male privileged oppressors.
But how is V, specifically FemV, affected by the patriarchy? Well definitely in subtle ways, as evidenced by much of the insults from other gangs, particularly The Animals and Tyger Claws, in which instead of the insults being more standard with MaleV, the insults are far more akin to catcalling and misogynistic, about how they would like to do horrendous things to FemV’s body. Even in a meta-sense, people in the fandom talk about how FemV’s performance is too emotional and too aggressive in comparison to MaleV’s performance, when I would argue that her emotional is part of the point, in which she has to prove herself against a patriarchal and misogynistic society, to fight harder to prove that she’s on the same wavelengths as other Night City legends like Rogue and Spider Murphy.
Finally I want to look at one male character and highlight how he overcomes his misogyny and checks his male privilege and that is Johnny Silverhand. Now as much as we all love Johnny, it’s pretty evident that he is a misogynist, from how he treats his outputs compared to any other man he interacts with. With the likes of Thompson and Smasher, he calls them cowards or pricks, never calling their masculinity into question, never truly insulting them. With Rogue and especially Alt, he constantly cheats on, often is emotionally manipulative and in Alt’s case, would be physically abusive whenever angry. Extending outside of his girlfriends, he is incredibly misogynistic in Judy’s questline, constantly belittling sex workers, oppressed women such as Evelyn, never once calling Judy by her actual name but using derogatory language like ‘chick’ (in general, he uses sexist language such as ‘bird’ and ‘whores’), never once advocating for women’s freedom. Now the one exception to this, and the one male character that is insulted alongside women is with Kerry, but to add on to the point of Johnny being sexist, he often calls Kerry’s manhood into question, always calling Kerry a ‘pussy’ specifically, feminine language of the derogatory kind. Now, not to dismiss MaleV and Johnny, because that dynamic is great, but it is the standard ‘guy’s personality in a hallucination tries to take over another guy’s mind and body’, and while I adore Fight Club, the reason why that trope is successful there is because the story is about examining toxic masculinity between both parties and how one has to fight and check his privilege to save his body and mind, something that I wished that was highlighted on MaleV’s side, how he would have to check his own privilege. With the FemV dynamic however, it becomes much different in that the hallucination is trying to take over a woman’s mind and body, because he has the extra layer of checking his male privilege, his chauvinism and toxic masculinity, having to rethink his stance on the opposite gender. His sexism and chauvinism is a major factor to his character, and bonding with a woman, experiencing all the misogyny, sexism and oppression through a woman's eyes adds a thematic level to his character work (whether a man who is 34 years old having to unlearn his misogyny is something that’s far too late is a topic that I can understand with some groups of people and I wouldn’t hold them for dismissing Johnny, even if I think his growth is a big portion of the story)
So yeah, that's my overall analysis on this topic, I hope this brings further introspection and discussion about Cyberpunk's handling of women.