Thoughts on ‘The Difference?’

After reading Jenni’s post (http://ftvms212-328-2012.blogspot.com/2012/01/hey-guys-so-after-first-tutorial-today.html) on the way gamers are typically portrayed in popular media, particularly in regards to gender representation, I began to wonder why exactly the coverage was so male focused. It can’t be simply ignorance that turns an average disparity in male and female gamers of about 16% (http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/ESA_EF_2011.pdf) to such disproportioned representations of gender in the media that we currently see. Although my experience may be a limited one, nearly every representation of ‘gamers’ in the media I have seen has been male dominated. What little female representation there does happen to be is often framed as a novelty, depicting the female gamer as a token character.

Celebrating 30 years of gender representations in videogames.

To go a little deeper, I challenge anybody to find a story focused on acts of violence committed by females blamed on videogames. Perhaps it is important that we think about the significance of these two issues: Violence in videogames and a male dominated representation of videogamers. If videogames are making people violent and there are only 16% more male gamers than female, surely we would see a much higher proportion of females shown in accusations of ‘videogame inspired violence’. In a way it seems too convenient that the dominant discourse paints gamers as violent while simultaneously making females of the same gamer population seem considerably more socially invisible. I feel like an underlying patriarchy is at work, seeking to create a scapegoat for more complicated social problems by demonising videogame culture. You would be hard pressed to find a typical headline about violence inspired by videogames if it was committed by a female. Seems like violence and femininity don’t typically mesh in the same patriarchal discourse that is trying to tie gamers to violence, who would’ve guessed?

In the end I think this kind of discourse hurts us all: Once again females are made culturally invisible in a statistically fairly even population, while videogame culture receives another undeserved black mark in the eyes of society and what personally disturbs me the most is the how these two factors eventuate in associating violence with masculinity...

Nothing more invigorating than legitimised violence for white males.