Barcelona publisher Klicrainbow has just released a new game for the iPhone featuring what they say is the world’s first openly gay video game superhero. It’s called SuperGay and in it, newly out Dr. Tom Palmer fights off an army of scantily clad women cloned from his ex-girlfriends. A gay man beating up women… great.
SuperGay features 10 rainbow-blasting levels filled with fighting, racing and techno dancing. Considering Apple’s recent censoring of Exodus International’s abusive ex-gay app, I heartily applaud the inclusion of a gay superhero onto the iPhone app store.
The game’s plot mimics the gay-friendly movie Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (where Scott had to defeat his girlfriend’s seven deadly exes). But we’re not completely down with Supergay’s woman-pummeling.
Is the idea that these women turned him gay? Or that he should hate them just because they’re his exes? Or do the women hate him for being gay? Or were his exes always just genuinely evil? We don’t get it.
How about we take this to the next level?
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Don’t get us wrong—we’re all for female super villains and for female foot soldiers finally infiltrating action games normally dominated by male foes. But setting a gay man up to abuse women for fun doesn’t sit well with us, especially when we know gay men who find actual women icky. Couldn’t they have at least included a cool helpful female sidekick or ally to help SuperGay along?
It could be worse though… at least SuperGay isn’t an anti-semetic kidnapper.
Joseph
Clearly the women wearing next to noting is so young straight males will buy it.
Ben
This game has terrible ratings on iTunes.
luminum
Was this drawn by David Cantero? I love his stuff.
miguelito
So, it would be alright if he was beating up men? That’s terribly sexist of you. Maybe bitch needs to get served; you don’t know. If women can do anything men can do, then they can take a punch too. How’re those high-riding pants of yours there in the 1930s?
Devington
Oh can the wymynyst studies crap for five minutes. I’m sure if this were about a lesbian running around beating up male exes you’d be praising it.
When did this place turn into Jezebel?
Daniel
Y@miguelito: Yeah I second that, what about the many games featuring female protagonists beating up heaps of male villains, why isn’t that so controversial? People are too quick sometimes to bandy “misogynist” about, it’s like some new buzz word or something.
Jakey
“Yeah I second that, what about the many games featuring female protagonists beating up heaps of male villains, why isn’t that so controversial?”
Because it’s NOT THE SAME THING. This shouldn’t be so difficult to understand. I’m with Daniel, this makes me uncomfortable. Especially as the very first iPhone game with a gay hero…way to fumble that opportunity.
Bianca
@Daniel: Because in the real world it’s women who are abused/raped/murdered by men!!!
Bianca
Plus, in the real world it’s mostly straight men who do all that, not gay men.
Jimmy Fury
@Bianca: I hope you didn’t intend to suggest women never abuse or murder men or other women… did you? Because it sort of looks like it… but that would be batshit crazy…
Anyway, I’m more annoyed by the claim that this is the first gay video game superhero. Because it is most certainly not.
Kev C
Are you fed up with money hungry girlfriends? Does it seem like all women are single minded clones? Anyone can be gay if they want to be. It’s a choice Dr. Palmer made for his new super lifestyle.
Zeus
Why couldn’t they just make a gay superhero videogame in which he beat up “bad guys” rather than making it a point to say he once had girlfriends, thus causing homophobic people to further believe their idea that he “turned” gay most likely on his on accord. It could have just been a gay themed game with the typical comic book bad guy types.
Daniel
@Jakey: So are you basically saying a man hitting a woman=bad but a woman hitting a man=good/empowering/justifiable? If we are going to condemn this game on the basis of violence against women we have to condemn games in which female characters go around pummeling predominantly male characters. It IS the same thing, violence is violence, why should it be more acceptable if it comes from a woman?
And Bianca “Because in the real world it’s women who are abused/raped/murdered by men!!!” – in the “real world” women commit the same acts against men too, albeit much less frequently, but it still happens so that argument fails.
of course
@Daniel: Has there ever been a sentence including the phrase “so basically” that was not a dishonest misrepresentation of what the person being addressed has just said?
No, Daniel, it’s not okay to hit people of either sex.
However, different kinds of violence exist in different historical contexts, so depictions of them in media will have different meanings and different effects.
A picture of a Jew punching a German will be received very differently than a picture of of a Jew punching an Arab. That doesn’t mean it’s okay to punch people in any of these three ethnic groups.
Have I simplified and belabored this obvious point enough that you will not be able to find a way to willfully distort it?
Hamoboy
What doesn’t sit well with me is that the game doesn’t sound very good, from a conceptual point of view. The “abusing the poor wymynz” part? That’s fine! The censure some people are trying to rally against the game is completely illogical. You dumb wannabe feminists need to get a grip. Why would it be OK for him to beat up men, but not women? This puzzles me…
Daniel
@of course: Actually, generally when people say “so basically” they are trying to point out precisely what someone is essentially saying but are hiding because of their points weakness. I agree violence is wrong, but you seem to be holding two different, mutually incompatible statements: that violence is wrong, but when the violence is from a certain group of people we should react differently. If violence is wrong then violence is wrong, historical context should make no difference to how we see it, a judge shouldn’t take into consideration “historical context” when a black man has murdered a white man nor should he do the same if a woman murders her husband. So then, logically, historical context shouldn’t mean we censure games in which a male protagonist beats up females any more that the opposite situation. If we take your way of thinking to it’s next logical extension a 2nd Holocaust in which Jews murder Germans would be more acceptable on the basis of you “historical context” argument.