Girl Gamers

As a female gamer, I have always felt mistreated. My first experience with a legitimate console game was Oblivion. To this day it is my favorite game, but from the very beginning, the sexism, while lesser than that of other games, painfully affected me. All female characters started out with certain stats lower than those of their male counterparts. This gave me the feeling that the only choice to be successful in the game was to be a man, and that is not a good message to be spreading to children. In the following video, another issue I have with video games is addressed- the blatant male violence against women.

Domestic violence is already enough of an issue in the world. But by showing the constant degradation and brutality towards women in a form of media that is used by many youths, the problem can only escalate. The protagonist- the supposed "good guy"- is given the position of power and uses it to abuse and murder women. If that is who kids are striving to be outside of reality, how much longer until it enters the real world? Not only are almost EVERY SINGLE lead character men, they only use violence. Because of that, women and people trying to stay away from violent themes are severely limited in their game choices. So many games that I hear boys that I know talking about as the "best thing ever" are filled with negative, hyper-sexualized and brutalized images of women. It really makes me sad that that is what the gaming community has come to.