Sexualization Of Women In Video Games

Some people think that video games are harmless, but some researchers would disagree. Melinda Burgess et al. writes in “Playing with Prejudice: The Prevalence and Consequences of Racial Stereotypes in Video Games,” that women are gender stereotyped and treated as sexual objects in video games today, which affects how male video gamers and society treat women. There are many ways video games use women to attract video gamers, sexuality being a big one. I will argue that Burgess’ claim is true because often male video gamers who play sexually-oriented video games are rewarded for objectifying women and have been shown to treat women as objects and harass them in real life.

In 2014 there was an online survey that questioned many women about sexual harassment. In a survey of 811 women, “Over 99 percent of the female respondents said they had experienced some form of street harassment (only three women said they had not). Examples of these gestures would be hip thrusting, hand motions that simulate sex acts, or gestures with mouth or tongue. Over 80% of women have been targets for sexually explicit comments” (Statistics – Stop Street Harassment Studies). Over the last 30 years objectification and sexualization in advertising, media, music videos, video games, and many other platforms. What is sexual objectification? What does sexualizing mean? Sexual objectification is the act of treating a human being as a an

Dietz, Tracy L. (1998). An examination of violence and gender role portrayals in video games: Implications for gender socialization and aggressive behavior. Sex Roles, 38(5/6), 425-442).

Throughout the world women are depicted to be oversexualized among forms of media such as video games and comic books. The idea of oversexualization towards female characters is that they have been often drawn and animated in hypersexual ways. Even going as far as viewing them as a sex object, their revealing body images are eye candy through the eyes of men. Hence women found in comic books and video games are frequently emphasized by their excessive physical appearances, objectification, portrayal, and character role.

For many years, the video game industry catered to the tastes of young men with their overly-sexualized, one-dimensional female characters, and their beefy male protagonists (to identify with or aspire to). Of course there are exceptions, as there are with anything. There have been many fully-realized, non-sexualized, and interesting female characters, notably more modern characters such as Chloe Price in Dontnod’s second game, Life is Strange, Amita in Far Cry 4, and Square Enix’s more recent portrayals of Lara Croft in Tomb Raider (2013), and Rise of the Tomb Raider, but despite the occasional good example, there are many poor examples to go along; Polygon cites Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes as “[one of] the worst depictions of women in gaming {in 2014}” in

Given that association, this new study took a gander at whether exemplifying sexualized female symbols online changed ladies ' conduct. The Stanford scientists asked 86 ladies matured 18-40 to play utilizing either a sexualized symbol or a non-sexualized symbol (dressed provocatively or conservatively). At that point, specialists outlined some of those symbols to resemble the player encapsulating them. Those ladies who played utilizing sexualized symbols who seemed as though them were all the more tolerating of the assault myth, as indicated by the study. Subsequent to playing the diversion, ladies reacted to numerous inquiries with answers along a five-point scale (emphatically differ to firmly concur), including, "In the lion 's share or assaults, the casualty is indiscriminate or has a terrible notoriety." Those who played attractive symbols who looked like themselves will probably reply "concur" or "unequivocally concur" than those ladies who had non-hot symbols who did not seem as though them. Members were likewise requested that free compose their musings after the study. Those with sexualized symbols will probably self-generalize in their expositions after play. In spite of the fact that this is a little study and unquestionably not a conclusive response to the subject of how computer games influence female players, the outcomes do raise concerns. Upwards of 46% of gamers are ladies, and, as indicated by this examination, in a large portion of the most mainstream

Video games do not only hypersexualize women. Although, researches have noted for years that most video games target a male audience (Ivory. 2), the hypersexualization of men in video games has taken a toll on their players (Greenberg et al. 3). Mass media that display hypersexualized men, and women, such as video games, not only encourages women to become anorexic, it encourages men to take steroids, or to excessively exercise (Barlett et al. 1). Researchers, Barlett, and Harris conducted an experiment in which both men and women were immersed within a video game, that depicted both women and men as hypersexualized (ibid).

According to several sources around 42% of the American population plays video games, and around 1.2 billion people worldwide play video games today. Gaming has become an increasingly more popular hobby since its creation. As such the medium has obviously attracted a multitude of different people and groups, all consisting of diverse backgrounds, body types, sexes, races, nationalities and the like. However, contrary to the numerous demographics video games have come to attract, it is very evident the vast majority of them do not seem to be marketed toward many of them via game characters, and their importance, if any, in a game. Video games show an overwhelming amount of white male characters, despite the many demographics they reach. Of the characters that are not white, or male, that are represented, are often represented poorly. For example, many black characters represented in video games are often characterized as vulgar, and violent. Women represented in games are often characterized as support characters, or objects of sexual desire. Considering forms of sexism, racism, and other such types of prejudices are still prominent in modern society, and these representations obviously do not help how people see these marginalized groups. Ultimately, these representations, or lack thereof, affect people in society in a number of ways, by perpetuating prejudice and harmful stereotypes.

Lara Croft is a well-known adventurer. From rock climbing in Bolivia to shooting at vicious monkeys in a forest in India, Lara Croft has done it all. There is much more to this adventurer though. According to Helen W. Kennedy, author of the article “Lara Croft: Feminiets or Cyberbimbo?”, “[Lara] is a positive role model for young girls or just the perfect combination of eye candy and thumb candy for the boys.” From her debut in 1996 to now, Lara is also seen as an iconic female figure within the gaming community. With Lara we are able to see a strong female role who, unfortunately, is at the same time is overly sexualized. Girls in the gaming community are given a chance to be represented but at a cost. Lara Croft allows for there to be a

After an hour of frustration and an inability to find a topic for this qualitative gender portrayal, I gave up and decided to play video games to relax. All of a sudden, I sat staring at my TV screen completely dumbfounded as a nearly nude woman popped up on the loading screen of Grand Theft Auto V. For very obvious reasons, I was inspired to qualitatively analyze Grand Theft Auto V focusing specifically on gender stereotypes and sexualization present in the game. In order to accurately depict the video game’s portrayal of gender I studied both the story mode and online mode looking closely at the actions and speech, physical appearance, and prevalence of females within the game.

A more in-depth study may look at video games from a Marxist point of view, characterizing the games as a modern day “opiate of the masses” with multi-billion dollar corporations publishing the games to keep the proletariat occupied and oblivious to their plights. A feminist may cite the standard role of female video game characters as being the “damsel in distress” and even strong female characters usually being relegated to sex symbol status.

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

It only takes a second to attach a strong feeling or idea to a character in a movie, advertisement, or video game. Many characterization used are based on the assumed stereotypes, and are usually one-dimensional characters. Typically, these characterizations usually come from inherited family values, education, and the media. While stereotypes existed long before mass media, the media machine certainly helped to accelerate the cultural growth of all kinds of stereotypes. It is beyond this paper to answer why magazines employ these gender stereotypes, instead this research is designed to analyze

The portrayal of men and women in video games, as in other media, is a subject of research in gender studies. This topics is discuss in terms of sexism in video gaming. Especially, women are underrepresented or use as objectification in mainstream games. Women in video games are generally, as a rule of thumb, killed, raped, abused or rescued by the male heroes. This is extremely sad to see because the role of women in society is changing compare to ten years ago. Women has been proven themselves to be stronger and tough in different fields such as sports, politics, education but the representation hasn’t change.

Overall, it was found from my research that even with the emergence of next-generation systems and shifting landscapes in gaming, there is still a cultural perception of the gamer as white male. There are exceptions to this, which can be seen in many commercials that challenge our expectations of what a gamer might look like and how he or she might behave. Certainly, as time goes on, it’s been found that there is an increased inclusivity in terms of who might actually appear in these commercials. Some commercials have begun to play with and tease out these representations: the commercials of Call of Duty: Ghosts, for example, that featured a wide variety of players. While representations of the gamer have mostly stayed consistent, these examples pre-empt the beginnings of a shift, as the video game industry continues to diversify.