#i understand a lot of sexist cismen gamers will belligerently misread text in order to validate their own nasty worldviews

[brujahinaskirt]

I think a lot of players terribly misread Arthur's sassy line to Sadie, "[You] wanna run with the men?"

My point in writing this essay very much isn't to argue that Arthur is the most feminist king who ever IS-THIS-GUY-BOTHERING-YOU-QUEEN'ed. I think that interpretation of him is a bit reductive, honestly. But I do aim to argue that Arthur's hangups about gender, whatever you believe they may be, are clearly NOT derived from a penchant for gender exclusionism or from an inherent belief in male supremacy/women's subordination.

I often see this line bizarrely mischaracterized as the moment Sadie's violent rage teaches Arthur that ~women can be tough guys too~ or something along those lines. I don't think it's helpful to call fiction readings "incorrect" in 99% of cases, but given the ample and overt scene-building Rockstar does in this mission to clarify where characters' feelings are coming from, I do think this particular fandom reading badly misses the mark.

Granted, if you didn't play the game and knew nothing about the characters involved, this easily reads as a sexist jab at a woman the speaker thinks needs to get back in line with her gender role. But if you did play the game or even if you simply consider the context of the full conversation, it makes very little sense to read it that way.

Arthur's always been used to living and working with women who wield guns and do crime. We see him pulling heists and facilitating women criminals "running with the men" from the instant we hit Valentine and Arthur happily agrees to Karen's idea that he drive the girls into town to go spree-robbing together. Arthur lets Karen pretty much run the show on the Valentine bank robbery (a situation they enter fully expecting violent trouble); hell, she shoots a cop in the head right in front of him with nothing more than a shrug of her shoulders! He voices no objections to running jobs with Tilly (& Bill) either, to gunslinging with Ms. Grimshaw in Tilly's rescue, or to armed women guarding the camp. He frequently remarks at camp that Mary-Beth, Karen, and Tilly look bored and it's time to get them out "on a job." When Mary-Beth's pickpocketing lands her in a flight for her life, Arthur's second question (after establishing if she's okay) isn't "why aren't you acting ladylike?" or something along those lines; it's a more professional "you didn't lead them back here, did you?"

The point all these interactions are trying to establish is this: This has happened before. And it will keep happening. Though of course not ALL of the camp women actively participate in criminal jobs, women "running with men" and doing violence is normal life for Arthur. From the get-go, Rockstar makes that as clear as can be.

Though I do think Rockstar occasionally just... forgot... about Karen being a full-fledged gunslinger when crafting dialogue for Dutch & Sadie, Arthur never voices any objections to gang women participating in "men's" work, i.e., murder and mayhem.

The critical difference in the "Further Questions of Female Suffrage" quest is that this line is delivered to Sadie, and it's delivered prior to the real deepening of Arthur & Sadie's friendship. At that moment of the plot, she's not crazy gunslinging Sadie to him yet; she's a mourning homesteading widow he knows as "Mrs. Adler." Arthur has no idea she has any applicable murder & mayhem skills, and he rightfully assumes she's never participated in crime before.

Also critical: This line is delivered immediately after Sadie loudly and rudely refuses to do the usual camp chores, insisting that such women's work is inherently belittling and repulsive to her. Arthur does not devalue this work. Sadie does. Among other things, she's effectively disrespecting the labor of the gang girls who do camp chores as well as "run with the men." (Though I'd argue Sadie's not insulting anyone intentionally. Her rage at her grief and situation just has a habit of making her self-centering at times.)

Of course Arthur (who -- along with Charles, Kieran, and Pearson -- is one of the few men at camp to do domestic chores) sasses her for this. Of course he initially thinks she's got silly, wildly misconstrued ideas about what it's like to be an outlaw and do criminal gang jobs; he explicitly points this out to her in the same conversation, and he makes it clear he interpreted her objection as Sadie thinking she's too good for "women's work." And he's not altogether off the mark. (Recall that they have another female gang member who openly claims camp chores are beneath her, Molly, who is protected from reproach thanks to her personal connection to Dutch.)

So he sasses her about what he perceives as a ridiculous and ill-founded desire to "run with the men," given that she has up until that point demonstrated no skills to make that desire to "run with the men" seem like anything but one former homesteader's self-centered and possibly self-sacrificing dream of participating in active criminal life. But Sadie's the one who initially objected to doing women's work by virtue of it being women's; Arthur's sass is a direct response to the nature of her objection.

Of course, this is the mission where she does get the chance to demonstrate those skills. Arthur invites her to come along as soon as Sadie informs him she knows how to use a gun, and when she proves that to be true, he never mocks her about it again.