Reality is a Game

Game thinking from Adam Clare

Tag: feminism

Smashing Stereotypes on Women Gamers

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On 04/07/2012

In Video Games

Yesterday on the wonderful CBC program The Current they looked at women in gaming culture. It’s online now for you to listen to.

They interviewed Brenda Bailey Gershkovitch from the Vancouver-based Silicon Sisters and Anita Sarkeesian from the great blog Feminist Frequency.

This half hour, we’re venturing into muscle-bound, hairy-knuckled, testosterone-fueled territory with a look at one of the great bastions of male culture. The gaming world is a place peopled by female characters mainly with fabled bodies and feeble minds.

In the Batman game, Catwoman oozes sexuality in a skintight leather outfit as she he knocks out her chauvinist enemies. A cheerleader named Lollipop Chainsaw is barely dressed at all as she confronts a zombie invasion with a chainsaw and her boyfriend’s severed head. There’s of course, much more…

Shooting Girls Isn’t Icky

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On 05/02/2012

In Stuff

I just came across an old, but still relevant, post at The Border House about how some men are uncomfortable shooting women in video games.

Chivalry, as most of our readers likely know, is sexist. It is based, as Holly Green said, on the idea that women are weak and need a man to protect them. Obviously this is extremely condescending and untrue–women don’t need special protections any more than men do. This logic has been used to actually deny women rights, with the excuse that it is “for their own good.” Friedhamster exposes this line of thought when he compares killing women in a game to how killing children is all but banned in games: how insulting is it to imply that women and children are somehow equal, similarly helpless and in need of protecting? (Answer: extremely insulting!)

Worth a read, here’s the link.

More recently they have a post about “slut plate” armour that female avatars wear. I’m definitely following this blog from here on in!

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