McIntosh and Sarkeesian returned a month later to release part 2 of their series detailing this cliche. In it, they source the following information:

Wood reports that she conducted interviews with 20 heterosexual women who had been in violent relationships. She then asked them to make sense of their relationships. The women discussed relationships in romance narratives including fairy tale and dark versions to organize their relationships. They spoke of wanting or needing to please their partners, finding Prince Charming, making mistakes, and then being upset in that. She then says that this means we have to make new narratives of romance because the women discussed narratives that Western society provides — either Prince Charming or dark, malignant romance.

Every 9 seconds, a website that is about domestic abuse against women only. Facts about domestic violence from Wellspring, a counseling center. Women in Refrigerators by Gaile Simone. Game pages to promote Dear Esther, To the Moon, Passage. A blog about being edgy.

The following information was not sourced and must be: video games are pernicious, the trope is pervasive in the 80s and 90s, the Damsel has seen a resurgence in recent years, male power fantasies, Damsel in Distress is a plot device, there’s a moderate increase of female game characters, video game characters have agency, video game characters require empowerment, video game studios are desperately searching for alternatives, Damsel is a cliche, Damsel is a trope, trope vs cliche, death of women is prevalent and bad, a popular variation is to combine tropes, trope-combinations, trend of throwing women under the bus, developers are hoping to fool gamers, the violence depicted is due to a character’s gender, mercy killing of women goes back to Splatterhouse, the writers of GTA 3 wrote a character for a misogynist joke, mercy killing of women is uniquely gendered, how domestic violence applies to video game characters that aren’t related in any way, that video game violence is causally or correlated with real abuse, abuse against women is used to ratchet up the sexual stakes, any game developers are sitting around and twirling their mustaches, video games are contributing to institutional or systemic sexism, the cultivation effect is extant and demonstrated in research, women’s deaths are written with animus, violence against women is global, a chunk of the industry is building games on brutalized female bodies, the dude in distress is elusive.

As you can see, McIntosh and Sarkeesian did increase the sources they gave. They also increased the assertions that they did not bother to source.

Plot Devices, Cliches, and Tropes

McIntosh and Sarkeesian do provide us with some definitions at the onset of their video description unlike the first. In their definitions they state that the Damsel in Distress is a plot device.

A plot device is simply anything that moves the plot forward, sustains it, or moves it backward. Devices are typically, by their nature, objects of the narrative. They are typically not characters. The primary source of tropes for McIntosh and Sarkeesian, TVTropes, disagrees. It says that characters can be devices or objects by virtue of not being the consumer. For TVTropes, cliches, tropes, motifs, themes, and plot devices are all part of the same word meaning anything in a plot.

From resources that are of repute listed earlier, tropes are simply figures of speech and phrases typically used to deliver some sort of turnabout.

Cliches are overly used motifs or themes that have entered into the point of contrivance. They can be words. They can be characters. They can be anything both concrete and abstract. The point is they are contrived and thus bad.

Wikipedia and Changingminds give us some different plot devices including discovery, flashbacks, asides, back stories, Chekhov’s gun, death traps, Deus Ex Machinas, dream sequences, fables, flashforwards, exposition, in media res, MacGuffins, narration, red herrings, reversals, and twists. Notice these are all things characters can do or have. Sometimes, the character is imbued with the power of these things. Rarely is the person themselves, by their nature alone, these items. The power is the plot device.

One could argue, however, that characters work to progress the plot. That does not make the character an object. It merely makes the character part of the plot which is moved by a plot device.

The declaration that characters are plot devices, no matter how shallow their characterization, is tenuous at best. At worst, it is a continuation of the incredibly sexist statement that a damsel in these plots are mere objects in spite of potentially rich character development. Dismissing a character simply because they do not “do enough” is, well, dismissive.

The Nature of Recency and Edgy

When discussing the resurgence of the trope, McIntosh and Sarkeesian do not tell us the time frame in question. The previous video merely states “the 80s and 90s.” However, they show multiple games, including Super Mario Bros. Wii from 2009, in the first video. They state that Part 2 will deal with recent incarnations of the cliche by showing Outlaws from 1997, Medievil 2 and The Bouncer from 2000, and Duke Nukem 3D from 1996.

While this may seem like a minor issue at hand, it presents a problem in discussing the games in question. At the time of the publishing of the video, in 2013, these games were 17 to 14 years old. This is another instance where McIntosh and Sarkeesian should have conceptualized their scope of research prior to conducting it to make sure readers were well-oriented to the frame of time.

As it exists, it appears that McIntosh and Sarkeesian’s concept of older examples of the cliche include examples that were less than a decade old while newer examples include games that are over a decade old. This is where conceptualization and clear definition could help the reader and viewer orient themselves to the research. Definitions are vital to research at any level.

Another ill-defined concept is “edgy.” McIntosh and Sarkeesian never let us know what that is. Their linked resource on edgy does not either. It shows us what the author thinks is edgy, but the author never really defines it for us other than a quote from Daria:

“As far as I can make out, edgy occurs when middlebrow, middle-aged profiteers are looking to suck the energy — not to mention the spending money — out of the “youth culture.”

It would appear that edgy is when people of a certain age try to make money by doing a certain collection of behaviors that are considered to be wrong. It should be noted that the video game development community is averaged at age 31.

Of note is that Anita Sarkeesian is around 29 to 30. Jonathan McIntosh’s age is unknown as he is not remarkable enough for a Wikipedia page and I won’t dig past that; he is likely around the same age if not older as Facebook research shows 2/3rds of heterosexual relationships involve an older male.

Male Power Fantasies

This is one of the core points against the Damsel cliche in that the Damsel serves only to reinforce the male’s plot, male’s abilities, and the power of the male player. The Damsel, McIntosh and Sarkeesian assert, is simply an object. Tracing down a definition for this is rather impossible. Here’s one statement:

The difference between power fantasy and objectification is how the characters are treated: there are no clips in God of War where the camera slowly pans over his chiseled chest flecked with sweat for the sheer purpose of letting women oogle him. However, there are plenty of clips of female characters who make sexual noises when attacked or have the camera pan over their body in slow-mo just for the male viewer.

However, this statement does not shore up, once again, with the academic background. Quoting from the previous piece which is my own work:

One response to the notion of muscular men in movies or media is that they are male power fantasies. Muscles are not for women. They’re for men. However, research shows that heterosexual women and gay men prefer men with larger chests (and arms in the process) and small buttocks. Straight men also note that they are dissatisfied that they do not fit the ideal. This ideal transcends locations for men’s satisfaction.

In short, muscular men actually make heterosexual men feel more dissatisfied with their bodies. Muscular men tend to attract women and gay men. And muscular men tend to be the men that gay men and heterosexual women desire.

Both men and women across the sexual spectrum desire good looks and facial attractiveness with personality traits falling behind in importance. Whereas culture defines personality traits, biology defines physical attractiveness.

McIntosh and Sarkeesian are discussing male power fantasies in behavior as well as in presentation. To find any sort of meaningful research on this, I searched over 60 academic databases including ERIC, EBSCOHost, Medline, SocINDEX, and Communication and Mass Media Complete for the term “male power fantasy.”

This returned 8 results. Only 2 of the articles were in academic journals. One article was about child day care. The other was about Wonder Woman’s body. Neither of these articles were of use in this discussion. This does not mean there are not articles on this subject area. It just means it’s poorly researched.

I limited this by removing the word “male.” None of the over 400 articles addressed male power fantasies in media. Most merely found that men like to be more dominant and one even found that men are more concerned with the desire and sexual pleasure of their partners. Women were attracted to personal power that diminishes as they show more belief in a Prince Charming that will take care of them. This is another area where a concept is asserted as factual without a solid research base.

If both men and women are attracted to power, that is the access to means and resources in society, then power in itself is not distinctly divisible on gender lines. Both men and women are attracted to power. Rokach confirms this finding when she found no difference in the content of male and female sexual fantasies. Nummi and Pellikka find men and women prefer multiple partner fantasies. Hawley and Hensley even outright state that socially dominant people of both genders exist and may be attracted to each other. Power, it would appear, is not universally gendered when it comes to sexuality.

So from these findings, one must conclude that women and men have sexual fantasies, both women and men prefer physically fit objects of fantasies, and that both women and men engage in fantasizing of people sexually based upon the physical appearance of their gender of attraction. How the two experience those attractions is where the difference lies.

There simply is no evidence outside of assertions from some on the internet that a male power fantasy exists in media and is unique to men and male heterosexual identity. Of note here is that the male power fantasy requires that gay men not exist as gay men would be sexually attracted to these power fantasies naturally in a manner that is not negative.

The landscape of the male power fantasy is not as simple and clean as “Naked women and muscular men are for men!” After all, any visitor that spent any amount of time on Jezebel during soccer season can tell you that the interest of heterosexual women in muscular men exists.

The research does not reflect the existence of the male power fantasy in video games or media in general, but the research does show that men experience body dysmorphia roughly equal to women with anorexia for men being poorly researched. Rates range from 1:7 to 1:10 when it comes to eating disorders men:women. All of these disorders occur across culture, gender, and media representations including Western and Eastern culture.

Simply put: the problem of the body ideal is not gendered. Both genders and all cultures deal with body ideals and meeting stress and social requirements.

The Rationalization of Damsel Hybrids and Exceptions

One of the defining features of this second episode is the amount of rationalizations used to sweep away inconvenient characters that do not fully fit the Damsel cliche. Take for example the clip from Psychonauts. The character, Lili Zanotto, is a gifted psychic who excels in using her power. She has the powers of levitation, telekinesis, pyrokinesis, clairvoyance, and confusion.

This presentation of real power that rivals that of the protagonist of the game is a problem for the Damsel narrative. After all, how can one be both a helpless damsel and an incredibly powerful psychic? Damsels require a degree of helplessness. To handle this problem, just create a new damsel — the scrappy damsel. Dilemma handled.

McIntosh and Sarkeesian also reference Alan Wake which is a supernatural horror game where an author’s story is seemingly coming to life. Alice, Alan’s wife, disappears one night and brings the story to an open. She is not kidnapped. Alan believes that Alice is murdered by the Dark Presence, but she is merely hidden under the lake while Mr. Scratch, not Alan, leaves the cabin and defies the Dark Presence.

At the end of the game, Mr. Scratch and possibly Alan sacrifice themselves so that Alice can arise from the lake and live. Upon swimming out of the lake, Alice immediately calls out for Alan. However, McIntosh and Sarkeesian consider Alan’s call for Alice an example of Damsel while willfully ignoring Alice calling for Alan at the end of the game. If calling for someone is a sign of damseling, is Alan not a damsel now? Alice then lives without Alan for years until being eventually reunited at the end of American Nightmare.

Finding a character to be deeper than just their Damsel role due to humor or even power? They must be the new, improved Dynamic Damsel or Sassy Damsel! This damsel, which McIntosh and Sarkeesian have misnamed, is called the Damsel out of Distress, the Defiant Captive damsel, the Play-Along damsel/prisoner, and the Decoy Damsel. In short, if a woman is ever captured and does nothing, she’s in Distress. If she does something, she’s out of distress, defiant, or just playing along. Either way she is a damsel resulting in the capturing of a female as the sole defining factor of becoming a damsel.

It would appear that this Damsel in Distress trope as identified by McIntosh and Sarkeesian even further limits women’s potential roles as they can never be captured in a narrative. Instead, women must be equal to the protagonist or the protagonist outright.

Find a woman is hurt and the male character is motivated by that for revenge? It can’t be the Monomyth or Hero Myth that was referenced in the previous Medium. No, it must be a new damsel called a Damsel in the Refrigerator. TVTropes already has a name for this newly-created damsel. It’s the DamselScrappy when the damsel is annoying, a Designated Victim when you don’t, and a Disposable Woman when she has no value to the plot.

However, all of these cited tropes serve to put characters into categorical tropes which restrict the narrative and only allow one possible narrative choice for women as characters: main protagonist. Either purposefully or accidentally, McIntosh and Sarkeesian are restricting the narrative for women.

Cherepanov, Feddersen, and Sanroni write that human beings are a species governed by the explanation of things. To enact this near-evolutionary demand, humans as a general select the best explanation for something based upon personal preferences and belief structures. When discussing this from a cognitive point of view, the trio state that this behavior devalues rejected choices and ideas while upgrading chosen ones.

Chen writes that choice may not be able to explain the dissonance, but Dietrich and List write the following:

Reason-based rationalizations can explain non-classical choice behavior, including boundedly rational and sophisticated rational behavior, and predict choices in unobserved contexts, an issue neglected in standard choice theory.

Put into a real life example, the writers state:

When an agent chooses between several options in some context, e.g., yoghurts in a supermarket, he (or she) conceptualizes each option not as a primitive object, but as a bundle of properties. Although each option can have many properties, the agent considers not all of them, but only a subset: the motivationally salient properties. In the supermarket, these may include whether the yoghurt is fruit-flavoured, low-fat, and free from artificial sweeteners, but exclude whether the yoghurt has an odd (as opposed to even) number of letters on its label (an irrelevant property) and whether it has been sustainably produced (a property ignored by many consumers). The agent then makes his choice on the basis of a fundamental preference relation over property bundles. He chooses one option over another, e.g., a low-fat cherry yoghurt over a full-fat, sugar-free vanilla one, if and only if his fundamental preference relation ranks the set of motivationally salient properties of the first option, say {low-fat, fruit-flavoured}, above the set of the second, say {full-fat, vanilla-flavoured, artificially sweetened}.

In short, when considering the choice of behaviors and thoughts, we openly make a choice based on preference of outcome. We choose based on the criteria most important do us, and we actively disregard any criteria that is not. This is the basis of, in research, researcher bias.

So, for example, we would pay attention to a woman being taken and held as a sign of patriarchal social oppression while simultaneously ignoring the fact that the woman is a matriarch, a powerful sorceress, a wise elder, a beloved wife, or the entire reason for peace in the land. One bundle of qualities matters more than another.

The conclusion, that there is sexism in video games, necessitates the ignoring of data that do not fit the desired outcome. This ties in with researcher bias and concerns of postmodernism directly in concern of confirmation bias. One needs only select games or scenes that can be construed as sexist to show sexist intent without actually paying attention to characteristics that do not fit the required bundle.

Should one look for sexism in gaming, they need only find a few examples, strip away any behaviors that do not fit the chosen outcome, and state the evidence is overwhelming. In the course of this, readers are once again left to accept McIntosh and Sarkeesian’s analysis as academic and educational simply based on their assertions of that fact.

Now buckle up, Rupert. I’m going pro.

Paradox: Determinism, Pre-Determinism, In-determinism, and Freedom of Action

One of the cruxes of the argument of the Damsel being damaging is that the cliche restricts the possibilities of characters and representations in media. These restrictions, McIntosh and Sarkeesian assert, are intentional. As both assert, Damseling is done TO women. They’re not who the characters are.

At the core of this argument is the topic of philosophical determinism, pre-determinism, in-determinism, and freedom of action or agency that is related to in-determinism and free will.

Determinism is simply the philosophical idea that all behavior can be traced back to a causal determinate. You are tall because mom was tall. You punched that kid in school because he bullied you. You are afraid of another relationship because your ex-girlfriend abused you physically. Agency and human action can freely occur in determinism, but the arguments are often not fully convincing and based only on the assertion that freedom is the case.

Pre-determinism, accordingly, states that all actions are predetermined typically by an external source. There is no agency at all here other than the original source’s agency. The cause is divine, the effects are many and typically human-oriented. All things are thus inevitably derived from the source. God created you, the world, the universe and all things will tend to a single outcome because God ordained it.

In-determinism is thus the opposite of these things in many regards. In-determinism simply dictates that even a single random probabilistic outcome means that the universe is not dictated by causality as demanded by determinism and pre-determinism. Instead, the world is unpredictable and free based on an infinite amount of potentialities governed by individualist sources.

Freedom of Action, or agency, is another area of philosophical discussion which simply posits that the freedom to act or be agents arises from the ability to act independently of external forces. Even in the face of determinism and pre-determinism, one can act freely. One can also think of this concept as acting voluntarily.

McIntosh and Sarkeesian make three arguments at once in their Damsel video. The first is an argument of pre-determination:

Periodically, game developers may attempt to build a more flushed out relationship or emotional bond between Damsel’d character and the male protagonist. In the most decidedly patronizing examples depictions of female vulnerability are used for an easy way for writers to trigger an emotional reaction in male players.

This quotation sets forth the argument that characters are merely extensions of the will of their creators. As such, their abilities and destinies are completely defined by their creators. They are written and designed from a specific point of view with a specific purpose. Damseling is done TO them. It’s not who the characters are. In the next paragraph, the pair argue:

As we discussed in our first episode, when female characters are damsel’ed, their ostensible agency is removed and they are reduced to a state of victimhood.

“Ostensible” in this quote roughly means ‘something that appears to exist but is not the case.’ It’s hard to tell if McIntosh and Sarkeesian are stating that agency is a false creation due to damseling or if the characters have no agency at all. They did not discuss agency in any depth in their previous video. They discuss objecthood, but they do not discuss agency. Objecthood does not belie or bequeath agency or lack thereof when dealing with video game characters. Thusly, we must derive from this quote that the pair do believe characters have agency that is or has been removed.

McIntosh and Sarkeesian are simultaneously arguing that video game characters are a production singularly of their creators and thus are pre-deterministic in behavior; they also argue that they have or should have agency that is in-determinist in nature.

This is a Barbershop paradox. The supposition that a character is pre-determined to behave in a certain manner by the action of design necessarily contraindicates the possibility that the character is in-determined and in need of analysis based on the necessity of agency and free will.

You cannot be both pre-ordained to do something AND completely free to do something. You cannot be both designed by a creator and deserving of complete agency.

If God created you to be a doctor and that is your pre-determined fate laid out directly in front of you, can you truly choose to be a writer? Does God’s will trump your own? Pre-determinism says that God’s will trumps you. In-determinism says that you, a random agent, trump God. You cannot trump God AND God trump you.

You can have compatibilism to some degree in that determined individuals can have free will as long as they are the originating, determined factor. This explains will, but it does not explain freedom. As such, compatibilism does not apply here as we’re discussing agency or freedom of choice, not the desire or will to do anything.

It is worth noting that the real world is incredibly in-deterministic with occasional deterministic elements mixed in from biology and genetics. For example, the risk factors for violent behaviors that are positively correlated include depression, delinquent peers, negative adult relationships, and antisocial personality factors that can be a mix of biological, sociological, anthropological, and psychological.

Human behavior simply cannot be boiled down to nature or nurture. It’s a little of both. This principle, however, only applies to people — Human beings. Homo sapian sapians.

There’s no evidence currently that human behavior is pre-determined by a creative source. There’s no evidence that video game characters currently have any agency to self-determine their behaviors. Why?

Video game characters have verifiable creators that define the full parameters of their behavior through programming.

People do not.

Therefore, we must reject that video game characters can be anything but pre-determined in their destiny. Their destiny and the outcome of their fates are fully designed by the programmer. A character cannot break free of the media to self-actualize.

Agency, Self-determination, and Pre-determinism

Agency is simply “Free will” or the freedom to act. It is the ability of someone or some entity’s right to act in the real world — freedom. Sociologically, agency is defined as the capacity of individuals to act independently or in a grouping. The act itself, done of volition, is willfull. However, the freedom to do the action itself is more to the point here.

There are few proponents of the idea that humans are entirely independent agents of their behaviors. Instead, we are creatures responding to stimuli based upon conditions, pre-dispositions, and sociocultural factors. In short, we are a product of many systems. Every single psychiatric disorder, for example, has an etiological basis in multiple systems including biological, psychological, and environmental. No psychiatric disorder is universally pinned on a single source. As psychiatric disorders are just behaviors that cause distress and impairment, it stands to reason these behaviors also stem from epigenetic points.

So if human behavior cannot be fully free, can we really expect video game character behaviors to be fully free? Can the creation have greater abilities than the creator? The potential is present, but we have yet to see that as the case.

What people do have is self-determination. This basically means the ability to make decisions for one’s self. It is a cornerstone of mental health. However, even this does not apply to video game characters as characters have no ability to make their own decisions. They are defined by their creator’s bounds regardless of American desires.

The writers deliberately wrote her character to annoy the player so in the end, the violence against her becomes the punch line to a cheap, misogynist joke.

McIntosh and Sarkeesian are correct in this statement. The character may be deliberately written by the developer to annoy. However, the assertion that this is is cheap and misogynistic is not a fact. It is an opinion. The writer may have also been attempting to bring facets of their mother into a character that they did not find to be annoying. We’d need to actually talk to the creator to find out their intent.

Characters are, by their nature, beholden to the programming of the creator. They cannot exercise self-determination. They cannot identify their own determinism. So treating video game characters as requiring self-determination to realize their own potential is completely irrational.

Video game characters cannot recognize their self-potential because they have no potential. Their potential is purely defined by their creator. Human beings have potential because they have self-determination even if they potentially lack free will due to genetic and biological determination.

Violence

It’s especially troubling in-light of the serious real life epidemic of violence against women facing the female population on this planet. Every 9 seconds a woman is assaulted or beaten in the United States and on average more than three women are murdered by their boyfriends husbands, or ex-partners every single day.

This is the first time that McIntosh and Sarkeesian provide any problem statement. The problem is that video game sexism translates to abuse in the real world through some medium. However, McIntosh and Sarkeesian immediately double back on this:

We typically don’t have a monkey-see monkey-do, direct cause and effect relationship with the media we consume. Cultural influence works in much more subtle and complicated ways, however media narratives do have a powerful cultivation effect helping to shape cultural attitudes and opinions.

McIntosh and Sarkeesian are correct here. We do not see a causal relationship between media violence and violent behavior. The field of researching human behavior, known as psychology, is very clear on human behavior factors. Remember our previous discussion on this — behaviors are informed by multiple sources.

One outline of situations affecting human behavior includes potentialities in the physical environment, impingement in the environment, population density and composition, cultures of populations, personalities, physiological states, psychological states, and personal situations.

Behaviorism states that conditions, shaping, emotion, satiation, punishment, aversion, and thinking are all affected by social, personal, and cultural factors. Social cognitive theory builds on this as well. Attitudes and personality can all come together to result in behaviors as well.

McIntosh and Sarkeesian, however, are relying on one theory called the cultivation effect. This concept, heavily cited in the area of communication, states that media cultivates and grows attitudes through messages in history. Human beings may not have psychological, biological, social, and cultural pressures outside of media. There is just that media exposure predicts attitudes that reflect media messages. The methodological problems are many.

Reliance upon a single theory to explain one’s conclusion handicaps the conclusion to that theory. The argument adopts all of the problems and criticisms of that theory. For example, cultivation research often involves white college students who tend to be middle to upper class. They focus on the effects (violent behaviors) and not who is effected. They assume uniformity in violence and simultaneously conceptualize in subjective ways (a particular media being violent).

Cultivation theory also does nothing to address internal psychological states, lenses, and mediating communication factors. Instead, the media bombards the viewer with attitudes that the consumer accepts, internalizes, and uses to guide their daily being. The media, under cultivation, becomes deterministic more than any other deterministic factor.

Every 9 Seconds

The every 9 seconds, someone is raped claim is a myth.

This may seem like a strong statement, but the basis of the statement is that all “every X seconds” measurements are myths. They are simple sound bytes meant to be easily memorable. The reality is that we cannot know how often a crime will happen. Crimes do not happen on a stopwatch. They do not happen at regular intervals.

Crime victimization is down from 1993 from around 80 per 1000 to 26 per 1,000. That is all crimes. While the crime rate did see an uptick from 2010 to 2012, the preliminary report for 2013 states that crimes are down. The full report shows this is the case. Victimization, not reported or closed crimes, are down.

The special report by the Department of Justice on nonfatal domestic violence from 2014 shows that 21% of violent victimizations occur domestically (intimate partner or immediate family) or 1,411,330 victimizations per year. Well-known relationships are 2,103,240 crimes per year or 31.8%. Stranger crimes are 2,548,860 crimes per year or 38.5%.

This shows us that domestic violence is actually less prolific than acquaintance or stranger violent victimizations. Furthermore, intimate partner violence is down while family violence is up. Keep in mind that this is victimization. It is not real crime. It’s not reported by the police. It’s reported by those who state they are a victim.

Women are more likely to be affected by any domestic violence (nearly 80% of reported domestic violence). Therefore we can approximate that of the 1,411,330 domestic crimes per year 1,129,046 are against women. Most of these cases are called “simple assault” meaning they happen without a weapon. Stats in 2012 show that there were 1.4 million domestic victimization while there were 6.6 million violent victimizations overall. In 2013 there were 1.1 million domestic victimizations and 6.1 million violent victimizations overall.

In both instances, assault comprised a large amount of violent victimizations including aggravated and simple assault. Again, this is not reported crime or arrested crime. It’s reported victimizations.

Men were more likely to be victims of every type of violent crime other than rape in 2008 and this is likely the case today. Unfortunately, the FBI stopped tracking prevalence of crimes by gender in the 2008 report. After 2008, the FBI only tracked crime in rates by crime.

Finally, men are more likely to be victims of violent crimes of all orders, other than rape, than women. The FBI’s 2013 report will be the first time they will discuss rape reports for men due to a definition change. However, this report does not fully transition from the old definition to a new one.

Does this mean either gender has it more rough? No.

Crime in 2013 victimized 1.2% of men and 1.1% of women by self-report.

That means that 98% of the population in America never experienced crime victimization. In fact, the only way that crime is experienced by a majority of the population is after a full lifetime and assuming that every year crime hits a new person and no criminal is ever punished. This is simply not the case.

That is why we cannot assume crime happens on a stopwatch.

The most populous type of crime according to police report and victimization, property crime, is reported almost as rarely as rape. There were 1.2 million violent crimes in 2012. There were 8.9 million property crimes in 2012 out of 313,914,040 people for 3% FBI-gathered crimes. In 2013, there were 1.1 million violent crimes and 8.6 million property crimes out of 316,128,839 people for 3%. Clearances, that is arrests or exceptional means, are lower meaning crime is even less common when you look at arrests or exceptional means.

It should be noted that the FBI relies upon reporting from police of offenses known. However, the statistics are very solid and looking quite sexy in this light.

Domestic crime is a problem in a society. However, if we’re declaring domestic violence as a pervasive problem, property crimes are almost 12 times as pervasive. Men are likely to be affected by this more pressing criminal behavior. As an aside, if you’re a minority or separated, you’re also more at risk for domestic violence.

So while domestic violence and women violence is a problem, it is a contextually small problem compared to crimes against property. It’s definitely a smaller problem, statistically, than victimizations against men.

Violence against women is a serious global epidemic; therefore, attempts to address the issue in fictional contexts demands a considerable degree of respect, subtlety and nuance.

According to the FBI statistics here, violence against men is more prevalent in every single non-domestic instance as they are more likely to be victims of every single type of crime other than rape which has never been reported by the FBI for men before 2013's release. This should lead to the conclusion that violence against men is every much a serious epidemic as it is more systemic ( widespread) than rape as rapes were cleared at 54,598 cleared with 79,770 reported out of 9.79 million crimes. .8% of all crimes were rape in 2013. 6.8% of violent crimes were rape in 2013.

In 2013, the most prevalent form of crime was aggravated assault — 62% of violent crimes with 724,149 in all — 7.4% of crimes. Men are historically more likely to be victimized by aggravated assault.

Compare that to property crimes where 8,632,512 occurred. This includes robbery where men, in 2008, experienced a majority of robbery victimizations.

Additionally, victimization and reporting data show that rape is one of the least occurring crimes and victimizations (second behind to murder in terms of rarity). Assault and property crimes are often the most common crimes. Clearance rates for rape are at 40% while rates of clearance for theft and robbery as well as all property crimes, which are much more common (over 80% of crimes are property), are below 20%.

History repeats this finding as men have uniformly been the victim of every single kind of crime in higher rates than women other than rape and domestic crimes. Men are more likely to be victimized by strangers while women are more likely to be victimized by someone they know.

Crime is statistically rare. A large plurality of people will not be affected by crime in a given year. Most won’t even be touched by victimizations. However, men are more statistically likely to be affected by crimes. Racial and ethnic minorities are very likely as well. If you are a lower class, Black, teen male then you are most likely to be affected by crime. Are you a middle-upper class White 30-something year old? Well, you’re pretty good comparatively.

If crime in America is a problem for women, it must logically be a much larger problem for men who are victims of crime in larger rates as men are more likely to be victims and perpetrators of just about every form of crime.

As for global, men are 75% of homicide victims and have a higher rate of suicide. Men are both the principle perpetrators and victims of homicides in every country examined by the WHO. The WHO finds that a history of violence in a man’s family of origin and alcohol abuse stand out as factors that predict violence and abuse. The WHO did not identify video games as a risk factor in any country.

The WHO shows quite strongly that domestic violence is typically targeted at women, but violent crime as a whole and suicide (which happen more frequently) are targeted at men.

These data lead us to conclude that violence against women is, at bare minimum, as prevalent as violence against men. Women do not suffer criminal violence more than men. Common crimes tend to hit men across the board. Women tend to be victims of and report to police domestic abuse/assault and rape. Men tend to be victims of and report robbery, aggravated assault, simple assault, murder, suicide, larceny, theft, and arson.

However, the provided lens of McIntosh and Sarkeesian only speak to women as victims and shapes crime as a function of media that particularly harms women. Crime does not particularly hurt women. It particularly strikes men and has done so since statistics were tracked. We’re just expected to pay particular attention to crime if it affects women.

Finally, in looking at video games and crime or violent behaviors, we have the following charts:

There would appear to an inverse relationship between video game sales and violence by teens, violence to adults, and victimizations across the board.