Even though I found solace in the female video game characters of my childhood as these icons of Amazonian womanhood, with age I have come to realize that many of these female characters often rely on dated stereotypes. So much so, that many of these female characters become walking tropes, displaying only the most basic of female stereotypes: a love for shopping, makeup, and shoes. Anita Sarkesian, a feminist blogger who critiques anti-woman tropes in video games, created the name of this particular trope, the 'Ms. Male ' character. The 'Ms. Male ' character is defined as a female character with little-to-no personality or defining traits outside of traditionallly regressive “female” characteristics. This allows a game designer to take …show more content…
In the extremely rare cases where they are represented in video games, they are often reduced to being villains or other stereotypes. One such character is Flea from the video game Chrono Trigger. Flea is the assistant to the main villain Magus. Through out the game, Flea terrorizes the heroes, in turn, the characters continuously make disparaging remarks towards Flea referring to flea as a 'trap '. 'Trap ' in this case, is used as a pejorative term that refers to the stereotype of trans people “tricking” people into thinking they are of whichever gender they ascribe to. Trans characters are often hypersexualized with their main trait being their obsessesion with treating characters as sexual conquests. While when I was younger I appreciated any form of queer representation in video games, I now realize that this is just as harmful as not having these characters represented at all. When such a small number of characters all act the same way, it has an effect on the psyche of the players, many of which are young and impressionable like I once was when playing these games. By normalizing these terrible stereotypes, they help perpetuate hatred and ignorance across time and mediums. Just last month online trolls urged Rachel Bryk, a transgender video game coder/ developer, to kill herself because she was trans. And she did just that by jumping off the George …show more content…
These positive games and characters are necessary in order to change the view point many video game developers, publishers and players have towards queer people. Increased positive depicition of these characters (along with the appropriate marketing) would push and sell games without relying on stereotypes. Thankfully, many publishers and developers are trying to do just that. In 2013, one of the main playable protagonists, Ellie, from the post apocalyptic survival game, The Last of Us, is portrayed as a capabale and confident young teenage lesbian who is wrought after losing her girlfiend to the zombie epidemic. The 2013 indie game Gone Home won countless awards for its use of gameplay to depict a narrative revolving around a young lesbian 's decision to come out to her family. In Nintendo 's absolutely adorable life simulation game, Animal Crossing: New Leaf, male or female characters can wear any type of clothing or accessory available, including make up. Many of the cute animal characters (who act as your neighbors in the game) make comments including: “It 's 2013. Boys are wearing make up and dresses. Deal with
This is because it is common for males to freely express their own fantasy that they lack in reality. In addition, they play video games to be their ideal self. If they were to play a female character, it would lean more towards the fact that it depicts what they want their dream girlfriend to look like. In Video Games and Gender by Michelle Zorrilla, video games have long been known as a male-dominated media. There would mostly be male characters than there are female characters because female characters are usually depicted as the subordinate character.
Hate violence is a predominant issue against transgender women who wish for acceptance from society. Individuals believe they have the right to perform violence against these transgender women because of who they are. For example, in the novel Stone Butch Blues, Jess Goldberg is physically a women but prefers to live life as a male. Since Jess chooses to live life as a male, or butch, she is frequently a target of policeman and other individuals because of her identity. The society views Jess as a criminal because during the 1960’s homosexuality was illegal and it was considered a mental disorder. Apparently, our society has made much more progress today against transgender women, but they still face a multitude of hate violence. A major example
Leaper, Breed, Hoffman, and Perlman (2002) reiterates Junn (1997) findings that compared to women, men are overrepresented (Leaper, Breed, Hoffman, & Perlman, 2002). Leaper et al. conducted a time-based structured observational study by evaluating a total of 12 different child target television shows. They selected 3 shows from each of the following categories: traditional adventure, nontraditional adventure, comedy, and educational/family (Leaper et al, 2002). In addition, Leaper et al examined the number of characters in each film while also looking at the amount of time each character exhibited predetermined behaviors (talking fear, negative, physical aggression, victim, romantic, directive, politeness, and support) throughout the show (Leaper et al., 2002). At the conclusion of the study, Leaper et al. reaffirmed that female characters are underrepresented. In addition, however, Leaper et al. found that one genre, traditional adventure (“emphasizing a central male hero”) was more likely to contain gender stereotypical behaviors (Leaper et al., 2002, p. 1655). Ultimately, Leaper et al.’s conclusion can suggest to children that male characters’ overrepresentation in child-targeted media is because men are at the top of the hierarchy and are more important in society than women (Leaper et al.,
This is exemplified in another game produced by Nintendo in their instalments to the Animal Crossing series. The feminine giraffe character, Gracie is a celebrity fashion designer who occasionally communicates to the player. In the Japanese titles of the game series, Gracie is labelled as a male yet in the western version of the game, they have the same game model, yet they are labelled as a female. This illustrates how through translation, ‘deviant’ themes such as transsexuality and/or being transgender is changed to “please the western audience”. Through the preceding examples of Birdo and Gracie, it is clear to see the fact characters who identify as LGBT are being hidden by game companies to attempt to appeal to the mainstream audience, in doing so stripping away any sense of relatability queer individuals have to these characters. This is supported in a quote from my questionnaire that I conducted, a respondent stated that they “don’t see enough games with gender neutral or non-binary characters.” In addition to that, 100% of non-binary respondents to my questionnaire stated that they are not pleased with the way their genden identity is represented in video games. Due to the underrepresentation of non-binary and gender queer characters in video games, individuals
Transgendered people in America have made many great strides since the 1990s. They have encountered violence, lack of health care, and the loss of homes, jobs, family and friends. There have been many phases of the struggle of being transgendered in America over the years. The current phase we must be in now is equal rights. There are many variations of discrimination against the transgendered community. In our society we simply do not like what we do not understand. It is easier to discriminate than to try and understand. We are all created different and we should appreciate our differences. The change must come by addressing the views of the public. There is much justification in the unequal rights of transgendered peoples. The Human Rights Campaign has been started to achieve equal rights for all Americans including the LGBQ community. A serious injustice is in the world of sports. Professional sports are one of societies major traditions totally based on rules and regulations that are meant to preserve the integrality of the games, but may not be inclusive to all its players.
The SyFy Channel’s reality television show Heroes of Cosplay follows a predominately female cast of cosplayers as they participate in several competitions on the fan convention circuit (Brady et al, 2013). Suzanne Scott notes that, in the show, men are shown as the “invisible laborers” whose work is confined to domestic spaces, while their partners, the female cosplayers, move freely through and work in the “public sphere” by participating in conventions (Scott, 2015, p. 152). This can be seen as a direct gender role reversal from traditional gender roles. Traditional gender roles say that women should be mothers and place family over potential careers (). While men should, according to traditional gender roles, be the worker in the outside world and be “bread winners”(). Additionally, traditional gender roles leave the work women do in the home under appreciated whereas in the show it is seen that the women take the bulk of the acknowledgement regardless of the male participation in constructing the costumes (Scott, 2015, p. 152). Heroes of Cosplay has been criticized in some instances for verifying what Suzanne Scott says is the “inherent masculinity of material fan labor” (Scott, 2015, p.153). The show has also been criticized for downplaying the women’s work on their costumes implying that the men actually do the bulk of the work while the women are just objects whose purpose is to display these works (Scott,
Many television shows have transgender characters portrayed offensively, which clearly demonstrates a widespread problem. Transgender characters are being portrayed as “victims”, cast as killers, and working as sex workers. The first thing that writers in the media think of when using a transgender character is prostitution. This is the immediate preconception because in reality sometimes the only job a trans person can get is in sex work. As we saw in Screaming Queens, the transgender community was forced into prostitution among many other degrading consequences of being trans. This idea has stuck and is more likely to be portrayed in media when it comes to assigning roles for transgender characters.
Dill, Karen E., and Kathryn P. Thill. "Video Game Characters and the Socialization of Gender Roles: Young People’s Perceptions Mirror Sexist Media Depictions." Sex Roles 57.11-12 (2007): 851-64. Print.
Throughout most of literature and history, the notion of ‘the woman’ has been little more than a caricature of the actual female identity. Most works of literature rely on only a handful of tropes for their female characters and often use women to prop up the male characters: female characters are sacrificed for plot development. It may be that the author actually sacrifices a female character by killing her off, like Mary Shelly did in Frankenstein in order to get Victor Frankenstein to confront the monster he had created, or by reducing a character to just a childish girl who only fulfills a trope, as Oscar Wilde did with Cecily and Gwendolen in The Importance of Being Earnest. Using female characters in order to further the male characters’
characters created to display a woman’s search for a way out of the bonds of her society.
Despite countless forms of media productions many characters fall into predictable and often unnecessary binary tropes. Gender and social norms have been constructed through media and as such are maintained by the media. Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun, the anime based off of Izumi Tsubaki’s original manga, dismantles gender norms by going against social construction of a binary system. The series goes against such norms and provides ample alternatives by looking at the characters of Kashima Yuu and Momotaru Mikoshiba, as well as the relationship between Yuzuki Seo and Hirotaka Wakamatsu. Each of these characters addresses the humanist theory of feminine theory.
We’ve reached a time when this male-oriented way of thinking is reaching a limit. The girl or woman has more flexibility. This is why a female point of view fits the current times.” (Miyazaki, Schilling, 2008)
Within the gaming industry, whether it is within the PC gaming industry network or the general gaming industry network, sexism exists. This is supported by the findings discussed within this case study. One such example is: “60% of women in the game industry have experienced sexism... Almost 77% of women and about 55% of men have female friends in the game industry that have experienced sexism.” (Allaway, 2014)
Gaming has long been considered a male-dominated activity. There have been numerous scientific studies conducted to analyze the impact video games have on an individual and vice versa, however one of the most common discussions concerning the gaming community is sexism. With today’s growing audience and the popularity of smart phone gaming, it is a mystery as to why gaming has managed to keep its male-minded stereotypes. Most games reflect the sexist gender roles imposed upon gamers by society, however today’s response is a heated protest, some more dramatic than others. Most gamers are demanding more female protagonists, and developers are listening, but it’s a slow climb to equality in the world of pixels and fantasy. Let us discuss the surrounding influences of the video game community, some setbacks and remarkable breakthroughs in diversifying, and the ways gamers shape the games they play.
Masculinity and femininity are two terms, which have been interpreted differently throughout history. Both the males and the females have responsibilities and duties but these duties differ based on one’s gender. Gender has played a prodigious role in the economy, politics, and the society. Everyone starts making interpretations of the strengths and weaknesses based on one’s gender. These interpretations are not always based on his or her ability but is usually based on his or her gender. Males tend to be judged as extremely strong and unfashionable in terms of appearance. Whereas, females are judged as expensive and very fashionable. Males and females both differ in their abilities and their enjoyments. Fashion, entertainment, and strength are three topics, which are used to define masculinity and femininity in the 21st century.