From Eric P. a guest writer-

Do Video Games Promote Violence Against Women?

When I was a kid…Forward, Down, Forward, High Punch and suddenly the world would never be the same.  In case you don’t know, that is the decapitation fatality for Sub-Zero in the original Mortal Kombat.  You could do it to Sonya Blade too but…no one really gave a shit about that- they just wanted the whole game obliterated.

Almost every game has a female in it these days.  Most if not always when they are hurt it is because they are engaging in combat themselves.  I like to think violence begets violence, and live and let live, and etc.  Somehow, some people don’t see it that way.  For instance let’s take a look at this:

Ok there is PLENTY to be said about this.  I want to start from the top.  When women show up in games they are almost always wearing lingerie and carrying weapons.  Sure, on the surface it looks cool, but it makes no sense.  This is like a guy showing up in a pair of briefs wielding machetes- it is ludicrous.  Let’s not forget to have a few gracious camera angles where we can see some ass cheeks too.  Try to think of it in terms of realism.  “We have to kill a highly trained assassin?  Should I wear the Kevlar vest or the thigh-high latex boots with corseted mini and attached garters?  Kevlar-or-hmm…”

Now, the portion of the video where the Hitman proceeds to beat up and kill these women?  Well-what is the character supposed to do?  Let them kill him?  This wouldn’t be much of a game if he did.  So he proceeds to beat them and shoot them like he would with any man who was trying the same.  Ok…

I don’t know about you but I had a hard time watching this.  I can watch men beat each other up all day and thanks to my inner city upbringing it doesn’t faze me.  This does.  Even though this is far from real, there is something about dead women and beating them up that just doesn’t sit well with me.  It doesn’t bother me when it’s a guy and I am aware that it is a double standard and I am trying to deal with it.

Yes, these women were looking for a fight-yes they got it-no argument here.  My question is-well I have a few actually- why do they have to be lingerie clad women with guns, and why don’t they look more like this?

If a hit team showed up looking like this would it be such a big deal?  Would sales really suffer because of it?  I don’t know.  In a game that strives to look real why do we suddenly take a detour when women are involved?  Make them sexy as hell, make them pole dancers with guns-then go back to realism to show how they can be beat up and killed?   Look at how sexy these women are-now beat em’ up!  What!?  Kinda comes off a little Sado-Masochistic if you ask me.  Mind you these are active decisions made by development teams and publishers.  So it boils down to one thing…fantasy.

Some guy(s) somewhere had to hatch this idea, and then realize it into fruition.  I’ll be honest, I am guilty of creating female characters that appeal to my sense of sexuality, and I’m pretty sure that’s what happened here.  We basically got to see some dude’s fantasy fight with chics.  If it wasn’t that, and simply about showing how bad-ass our hitman was, why not have a male hit team try and take him?

It would be silly not to explore the argument further

Another question is:  Why is it that when men beat each other up it seems to be more accepted than when its women being beaten?  I thought we were about equality in today’s society?  Suddenly a woman taking a punch to the face is more over the top than a man taking a punch to the face?    Feminism would say that it promotes violence against women…they may be right to a certain degree, but they don’t seem to care that men are burned, blown up, dropped into acid, and shot in the face in games.  Saying one is ok and not the other is bull-hockey.  Flat out bull-hockey.  It means you care about how one group is represented more than another.  So let’s call it how it is.  (the word is bull-hockey) These feminists only care about a woman’s plight and if men have to suffer in games well then fuck him-he’s a man.

Personally, I didn’t like seeing those women being beaten up and killed in this video, even if our hitman fulfilled his moral duty of closing the eyes of these people he killed- cuz’ you know that’s pretty noble and its the least he can do. We should look as peaceful as we can with broken necks, and multiple gunshots to the chest.  Anyone who doesn’t do that for someone they just killed is just an asshole.  Back to the other side of the ball, women who complain about this sort of thing usually have a “Women should do everything a man does” attitude.  Well in gaming this means fighting killing and…being killed.  Again, I come back to Sonya Blade in Mortal Kombat, which is the first time we really saw a woman (or man for that matter) being impaled on spikes or burned alive in a video game.  No one made much of a stink about the fact that it was a woman back then. Parents and other supposed moral crusaders just wanted it off the shelves.  Sonya wasn’t given special treatment in that game (aside from Johnny Cage’s split punch didn’t work on her, but come on now)  So why is it that we suddenly feel women should be treated any different than a man in games now?

Are we not the protectors?

Well the answer may be that as a man I see stuff like this -you know, call me “old fashioned”-, but I just don’t like it.  I am more of the mindset that our women are our treasures.  When there is a disaster what is our programming? “Women and children first!”  We will and are expected to give up our seat in a lifeboat for someone else’s wife or daughter.  This is what we are programmed to do.  There is a reason for that.  Nature made most men bigger and stronger than most women so we usually have a better shot at surviving physical harm.  Also, let’s not forget that women bear the children that are the future of our species, so no doubt there is a primal urge to ensure their safety.

So what we just saw in the video was fantasy.  Some sexy chics will come to your hotel room and instead of taking turns on you they’ll try and take your life instead.  Um…ok not quite the fantasy story we are used to seeing/hearing about.  Snuff them out one by one, and then when you can-gun them down and beat them up.  Yeah ok.  Listen, you are to protect yourself from any dangerous male or female in this world, but I highly doubt she’ll be a latex clad ‘nun’ who uses rosaries to choke you out.  Just sayin…