Gender Stereotypes Of Male Characters In Video Games

Traditionally, men are viewed as strong, dominant and logical, while women are regarded as the weak sex, thus being dependent on the males to make decisions and to protect them as well as their children. These roles go far back in time when males in fact had to protect their families from other tribes, wild animals etc. Even today the same values are applied both in real life and in media. In general a woman is depicted as wife, mother or a sex object. (Sex, Gender, Gender Identity, Sexual Orientation”, Year unknown).

Video games are progressively becoming a crucial medium today, despite the light connotation of its initial categorization. Today they are a business that produces billions of dollars and employs engineers and artists alike in an art form connecting interactive games, to virtual societies where millions of people dwell. However, like all human products, our same emotion, flaws and injustice show in the games, with the impression of hatred, racism and stereotypes that are our everyday background. What are the creators of these video games real intentions in the desire they produce in the human?

There are so many examples of gender inequality not just through sport. Things such as the gender wage gap ignite huge debates and aggravate a lot of women in the work force. There are always answers from men saying things such as “it’s because the less paying jobs are more female dominated or stereotypically jobs for women” and that just fuel to the fire! Males are facetious and sexist towards women and don’t tend to hear our side of the argument before making their

An expecting couple awaits to discover the gender of their baby. The nurse announces that it’s a girl. The couple is extremely excited, but do they truly grasp the weight of what this implies? Gender is not simply a physical trait, as it affects nearly every aspect of a person’s life. Stereotypes repress the potential in all men and women. The same stereotypes are found throughout literature such as Medea by Euripides, Chaucer’s “The Wife of Bath’s Tale”, “Sonnets” by Shakespeare, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Frederick Waterman’s “The Best Man Wins”. A common thread between these pieces is that power can be gained by those who are suppressed by defying gender stereotypes and social hierarchies.

Think Like a Man (2012) is an American romantic comedy directed by Tim Story. It is based on Steve Harvey’s book Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, which was a mega best-seller of 2009 that provides women with insights into the male’s mind and strategies for conquering a man’s heart. As suggested by its title, the movie encourages women to think like a man so that they can learn to control the man. Under the advice from Harvey’s book, four women determine to learn Harvey’s strategies in order to solve the conflicts with their male partners, who are the perfect embodiments of four types of men: "The Mama's Boy," "The Non-Committer," "The Dreamer," and "The Player." Though Harvey tries to use his works to empower women with their self-respect, all he does is to teach women to “lie, cheat, manipulate, beg, borrow and steal to get into a relationship” (Lang). The idea, “It’s a man’s world,” presented in the opening credit penetrates the whole storyline, in which relationships are depicted as battlefields. The movie only acknowledges females’ sacrifices in the end for a reconciliatory happy ending. This essay argues that Think Like a Man involves tons of gender stereotypes, which convince women that to nag and to trick men is the only way to obtain their respect.

For thousands of years, established gender roles have been a part of our society. Women are commonly known as sensitive, emotional, or passive. On the contrary, men are described as rational, competitive, independent, or aggressive. Believing women are more emotional than men is stereotyping. However, the stereotype is not entirely untrue. Development of gender roles is often conditioned more by environmental or cultural factors than by hereditary or biological factors. The development of gender roles between men and women involves the inference of peer community of each gender, the communication style of male and female and the intimacy or connection level of men and women.

Imagine this. You 're in the middle of a really intense, stressful, and energetic game where it 's you against four other people. You are all alone and struggling to survive and as you 're getting shot at all you hear is some ignorant teenage boy from the other team say “you won 't win... get back into the kitchen and make me a sandwich.” Now I know you might be wondering where this is heading, but this is one of the few examples that women, when playing video games, have to deal with. What many do not realize, is how sexist many can be and how rude or hurtful the things they say can be. They also do not realize that many of these problems come from teenage boys who are not allowing any female to have a chance to show how good they could potentially be or how beneficial they could be to the team or game. Sexism is a big problem in the gaming community that needs to be changed. There have been many problems involving both men and women and it 's all because of how sexist games can be or just based on how sexist people are behind their anonymous alias. On one side of the debate, many, including those who cause the sexism, say these things are said and done because they believe it will increase sales and it will get more attention to their company or game, they believe that these type of games are what gamers want or what they believe is best for their fans, and they believe that these sexist comments are just jokes and messing around. Although some could believe these things

Sexism is everywhere, even in online communities for video games. League of Legends, a fast paced real time strategy game published by Riot Games, upholds the title of “one

A prime example of non-female representation is the testing of medical drugs. Back in the mid -20th Century, drugs were only tested on men thinking that aside from our genitals that we were just smaller versions of men. This caused many problems and is a prime reason for why medical worries of men have had much further research than that of women, take the research done on male enhancement versus birth control. We have had a much slower time of advancing birth control and when it was first reloaded it caused many health problems, sometimes even resulting in death. Another example would be the trope – the problem of women in video games becoming objects. An example of a trope would be Princess Peach always having to be rescued by Mario and not being the main character until very recently. Perhaps if we had more female game designers, this would not be so much of a problem. In a matter of fact, many Indi-game designers are more likely to be women than for big – name companies and this genre of video games have fewer tropes and more female characters as the main character in the video

game, just to avoid being harassed by men around them. That situation may sound ridiculous to and can upset a majority of the population. One should not feel the need to hide their real gender just to attend a baseball game. So why should women feel the need to hide their gender in online gaming? According to a Tedx Talk speaker Stirling Little, sixty-eight percent of women playing video games have reported hiding their real gender for fear of harassment. If someone were to identify themselves as a woman online, it would be unavoidable to receive sexist comments from other players. As a society we have accepted the idea of harassing women as a social norm. In the novel Ready Player one by Ernest Cline, [basics of the book/summary] we are introduced to examples of characters hiding their genders online in order to be taken more seriously. We can compare Ready Player One to today’s society when it comes to gender issues. In both the novel and society, women have limited job opportunities, are objectified for their sex, and are associated with feminine phrases used by others to insult someone. The public has to start caring about how they treat women online because they make up more than half of the gaming population. If people really want their games to stop following the gender stereotypes, they need to look at themselves as a whole and change the way they think.

Today, women continue to move and push forward past their oppressive and limiting past. Women no longer are solely housewives. They hold prominent positions in business, yet television and film still portray them as submissive, emotional, and beautiful, these being their only qualities. Most people would think that since we live in a time where most households bring in two incomes from both husband and wife, that the media would portray more realistic views of women. However, lots of different media sources continue to feed false and negative images of women. Although a more modern and blossoming industry the video game industry is another multi-billion dollar industry that still portrays women in a poor light. Video games have the

Gender disparity in video games is a topic that both scholars and major gaming icons have discussed before. However, the topic recently resurfaced with the upsurging population of female gamers. The integration of females was a spectacle that caused a massive culture shock. Many members of the gaming community were unsure how to handle the change and took to discriminating females. While discrimination may seem unimportant, many scholars and icons believe it is a prominent factor of gender disparity: an environment which typically favors males, a hostile or “toxic” atmosphere, and repeated stereotypes all manifest certain behaviors of both genders that can cause a disparity to grow. Although some sources claim gender disparity is evident in gaming as a whole, others insist the novelty of female discrimination in video games is less prominent due to a more leveled percentage of male-to-females in gaming. However, both agreed that the competitive gaming community is a different story. Time and time again the competitive gaming community was mentioned for its exclusion of women due to biased and misogynistic members who sexualize and degrade females. These members believe women are inferiors that encroach on their territory with unskilled and seductive natures. Therefore, for the females in the gaming community, their actions will shape the future of women in the competitive gaming community. The change in female treatment is detrimental to gender disparity. Not only because

In a study by the Entertainment Software Association in 2014, 48% of all people who play video games in America are women, and another study by the Internet Advertising Bureau in February of 2015 stated that that number had jumped to 52%. That’s more than half of the population. So why is it that less than a quarter of all games feature a female protagonist? And in the event that the protagonist is female, most of the time they are inappropriately dressed to catch the gazes of males rather than be functional in the environment of the game. A good example of this is armor in medieval games. The males in the game normally have full armor that covers all the vital points, while female armor is more of a bikini made out of iron. And if they aren’t the protagonist, most of the time they are simply there for eye candy, serving no purpose other than

As long as anyone can recall there has been a significant underrepresentation of women in video games. Roles of women in video game has been unrecognized, unaccepted and unappreciated. In the most games like Call of Duty, Halo women are use as target of violence or object that men characters wins after winning a battle. In these kind of video games, women are victim or overly sexualized of the women body. So, the question anyone might ask is, is this sexism or are women used as object in these kind of roles? Answer is yes.

Stereotypes have become a prevalent issue in our media. They, without our knowledge, prevent us from moving forward as human. In this essay, I will discuss the effects of stereotypes in media on gender roles, religion, and race.