Blog 7

Over sexualizing females and degrading them in today’s culture has always been pretty prevalent during my lifetime. But it was really interesting and eye opening to listen to the group’s presentation and participate in their activity. The games industry is a huge offender in this department, from putting any female character in skimpy clothes to making a lot of them damsels in distress. Most games from the past and present make the female characters under dressed, posing and acting sexually, and overall doesn’t shed a good light on the female community. In fighting games like Mortal Kombat, the male characters tend to have on armour in most cases, or are at least mostly covered. The women, even though sometimes not even human, are barely clothed. They also have bodies that don’t occur naturally and can only be obtained by alternative means. This is also an issue with male characters. They are all super muscular and look like they’ve been sculpted. In an article by Ryan Perez called “The Misconception of Masculinity in Games he says “The context of a male’s character has become almost entirely dependant on their physical aesthetics and, likewise, tends to dictate the more important aspects of their being. Games with an abundance of action typically feature implausibly bulky and beefy characters.” in a section called “Help I Can’t Wipe My Own Ass!”

I recently watched a movie called Hunting Grounds, and in this movie the female lead was the one of the young couple was courageous and heroic and her husband was the one that was scared and running away from the killer while his wife fought him off. The man left his wife captive by a crazy killer, along with a lost baby they had found and drove back to the city from the woods they were camping. My girlfriend and I noticed and talked about how the normal roles of hollywood were flipped. The woman ended up being the big strong hero while the man cowered and honestly made us yell at him throughout the movie. The wife ended up being the one that saved the man and he was the damsel in distress in a way.

I really enjoyed the activity the group came up with. It was a really good way to show the class what it is like to be a woman in society. You can hear about it and read about it and all that kind of stuff, but that is a more real and impactful way to show the treatment that women face everyday. It was good to have a peek into what happens in meeting rooms. Me being a black man, I know somewhat what the ladies in the group were touching on with being spoken over, not listened to, and even mansplained to and talked down upon. A lot of people, including me, would never have actually thought about it that way and feel the true meaning of what they were saying.

Perez, Ryan. “The Misconception of Masculinity in Games.” VentureBeat, VentureBeat, 17 Mar. 2011, venturebeat.com/community/2011/03/17/the-misconception-of-masculinity-in-games/.