Question: Video-games are profoundly sexist, and largely reflect a dominant ideology, which reinforces unequal power relations between men and women. Agree or disagree, use at least three examples.
Hernandez, Bladimir
Game100: Cultural Issues Essay
4/30/12
I agree that video
games are deeply sexist, not all games are but a majority of them are. Either
the game has no women throughout the entire game play or women play the role of
the sidekick to the male and rarely ever partake in being a hero. Not only does
this show sexism, but also those games that do have women, they make them out
to have a perfect figure and complexion. I find that a vast majority of games
show that men prosper among women.
For example, in all of
the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series, there are no women. I understand that
the game is played through the eyes of a modern infantry soldier and in real
life there are no women in front line combat, but this doesn’t necessarily mean
that the developers of CoD: MW 1-3 can completely leave women out of the equation.
There are many jobs and positions that women have in the military. The
developers could have added a woman and have her be a Field Artillery Officer
(13) or an Air and Missile Defense (AMD) Crewmember (14S), and she would still be
able to contribute to combat. However, the developers didn’t use any females in
the series.
In Addition, the game
Assassins Creed series have some women and one woman that is an assassin. But
even so they have women in the game, Shao Jun; a Chinese assassin who plays a
semi big role in the series doesn’t show up until Assassins Creed: Revelations,
which is the 4th game. Throughout the first Assassins Creed game,
there are multiple women coming up to the protagonist Altair asking him for
money and food because they are poor. The women in the game are dressed poorly
like they are hopeless; meanwhile the men are dressed in fancy attire. The
developers of AC could have easily not showed women as weak and poor, and yet
they did.
Furthermore, when women
are shown in video games and if they aren’t portrayed as weak, hopeless, or a sidekick,
then they are shown in the game as having the perfect woman hourglass. In all
of the Tekken, Soul Calibur, and Street Fighter series, all their women are
incredibly busty with wide hips and strong legs. All the women in these series
have that perfect woman hourglass that in real life we know isn’t real to most
women. The developers did this either to show that women are perfect or to show
their sexiness. Either way, that isn’t how the woman body is in real life and
shows sexism because it isn’t factual.
In conclusion, I definitely agree to the idea that most
video games are sexist. There are multiple examples which show how they are and
these aren’t all of them but only a mere few examples. Either most video games don’t
have women starring in them at all or they play a sidekick to a bigger
masculine hero. It’s even worse when women are in video games and they are
shown as perfect. I completely agree that most, not all, video games are
sexist.
