Two days after Elliot Rodger had killed 7 people and wounded 13 others, I logged onto Pokémon Showdown, an online program that lets you engage in Pokémon battles with people all over the world. I saw a user in the public chat with the name “RESPECT MEN.” I asked if they thought men were respected less than women.

That particular user remained calm, but the chat was immediately flooded with the casually violent misogyny that has arguably reached epidemic proportions. It looked like the same hatred for women laced with a male entitlement to women’s own bodies that is apparent in Elliot Rodger’s manifesto. Messages like “feminists like it raw” and “all feminists are whores” were interspersed with benign messages about strategy.

I was taken aback. A friend of mine, whose concern with gender-based violence may rival mine, was thankfully logged into the program with me. We remarked at the severity of the messages. We laughed at some of the less hostile ones: messages asserting that the gender wage gap was simply “false.” Anyone with Internet access can find that women on average earned 62.1% of what men earned from 1979-2010.

One message in particular struck me:

“Bitches are for fucking. So are feminists.”

I can’t accept that these are isolated incidents. That these are just “kids being kids” or “boys being boys.” I think a cultural narrative has formed around women, and young boys are learning this narrative and playing by it.

I consider the pieces I've read lately on the social contract of marriage, positing that marriage has historically been a financial exchange; the man sells his labor and the woman sells her sexuality, essentially her body, via reproduction. Have these roles and attitudes really been buried?

I’m a huge fan of the Fire Emblem series of tactical role-playing video games. I've enjoyed these games for over a decade, nearly half of my life.

The franchise introduced a new marriage mechanic in the recently released Fire Emblem Awakening. Nearly all characters (it seems, as I haven’t finished the game yet) have the ability to marry and have children with characters of the opposite gender. The cissexism and heterosexism is naturally overwhelming, but those each deserve their own discussions.

The player begins the game by creating a character. This character plays a pivotal part in the plot and can join you in battle. I chose a female unit, happily named her Asuka and gave her silver hair a la Claymore. The game was a blast, one of the best so far.

Up until I was forced to be a brood sow.

The Fire Emblem series has a “Support” mechanic in which you receive bonuses in battle by fostering relationships with other characters; as two characters get closer, through conversations the player witnesses, they receive larger battle bonuses.

There are four tiers of Support; the fourth is unavailable to same-gender relationships and results in marriage, and sometimes children.

Upon reaching that coveted fourth level, my female main unit married Chrom, one of the game’s main protagonists. In order to do this, she was forced to change her class (FE characters have battle classes: sage, warrior, barbarian, etc.) to “bride.”

I remember my eyes widening at the speed with which this all happened. Here I was getting swept into a marriage and apparently having two kids, things I never agreed to. My main unit was always headstrong and independent; a capable magic-user and sword-wielder. The bride class was temporary and unusable in battle. After their first child was born, Chrom assertively tried to get Asuka to stay with the children as he went off to war; as expected, she insisted on coming.

I felt queasy. I didn't expected to be hit in the face with the suffocating sexism I encounter every day within one of my favorite video games. I can’t help but wonder at the impressions left upon young boys and men by these sexist and often violently misogynistic attitudes.

It’s not always so difficult to see. There are no playable female characters in South Park: The Stick of Truth or the Grand Theft Auto series. While skimming a playthrough of the former, the first mention I saw of a woman was in this brief ballad by a young boy named Jimmy, a bard: “There once was a maiden from stonebury hollow. She didn’t talk much but boy did she swallow.”

This song boosts the defense stat of your enemies, who are also young boys.

In Grand Theft Auto games you have the option of engaging in a transaction with a female sex worker, and then beating her to death to get your money back.

By chance, while writing this article I happened to search “Elliot Rodger” on Bing. An auto-complete search filled in “is an American hero.”

“Bitches are for fucking. So are feminists.”

What do we expect young girls to do in the face of all this? What do we expect them to think of themselves?