Here's Anita Sarkeesian's latest video on tropes in video games (NSFW warning: contains nude/sexual imagery), which details the many, many, many games in which females or female bodies are explicitly offered as a player reward -- even in beloved franchises like Nintendo's Metroid, which has a rare female protagonist.
For people in the tech industry, her video helps answer a pressing question: What's the deal with tech's "brogrammer" culture, in which women are not seen or sought after as active and equal participants? One major reason why:
For literally three decades, the males who've grown up obsessed with videogames and PC games (and are thus most likely to enter the tech industry) have been bombarded by the message that women are sexual prizes that they must earn through their talent as a gamer (i.e. proficiency with computing interfaces). Consequently, it must also seem alien and strange to many of them that women would even be interested in technology -- since after all, so many software applications (i.e. games) are explicitly designed to show them as part of the program, as opposed to an active user.
(For similar reasons, this video helps explain the downward decline of women interested in technology as a career since the 80s, when companies began mass marketing games -- and for the most part, young males as their sole target.)
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I really need to work on my Sarkeesian blocker extension for Chrome.
Posted by: Slud | Monday, August 31, 2015 at 07:21 PM
SLud -- don't like it, don't read it, don't comment.
Posted by: mac | Tuesday, September 01, 2015 at 04:26 AM
LOL Slud.
I love me some brogramming. Created a billion dollar industry with some of the most advanced tech the world as ever seen while womenz were buying shoes and crying when they're fake nails get chipped.
Ironic thing about the damsel in distress trope is you can just as easily turn it around to be male disposability. Man risks their life on epic dangerous journey to against all odds so woman will be comfort and not have to take responsibility for herself. Much like the historic position of the female of the species through the majority of history. all she has to do is kiss him on the cheek and somehow that's a valid reward.
It's not as if women play up to being sexualised just as much is it now . . 50 shades, aforementioned makeup, spending probably billions of dollars in the fashion industry and the damsel in distress 'trope' in just about every female romance novel going. Oh no, men's men, evil mens
Posted by: DavetheBrave | Tuesday, September 01, 2015 at 05:35 AM
'For people in the tech industry, her video helps answer a pressing question: What's the deal with tech's "brogrammer" culture'
That's like saying space aliens built ancient monuments in it's inaccuracy.
Posted by: Cube Republic | Tuesday, September 01, 2015 at 09:48 AM