Talk on perception of female gamers by middle & high school aged boys and girls

I take umbrage with that. If we want to shout that violence in video games doesn't cause real life violence then we can't go back and say that "sexist" character designs cause real life sexism.

Well, that's where we get into complicated territory.

Sociologically speaking, every single message we take in from any cultural source has an impact on our belief structure, our values, our ethics, and how we perceive the world. There are billions of messages we get as a constant barrage, and the impact of each one is nearly imperceptible most of the time. There's a reason for that:

Each new message is checked against our existing base of knowledge and perceptions (which is fueled by every message that came before).

This is one reason why kids are significantly more malleable than adults, but it's also why adults are extremely malleable regarding topics that they have little to no prior information. This is, for example, why 50 Shades of Gray is actually a big problem- it misinforms viewers about a topic that there are virtually no public/common sources of cultural information- BDSM/kink culture.

By contrast, violence is something we're inundated with messages about constantly from our first memories onward. As such, by the time we start playing violent games, we're usually old enough that we have enough information so as to not be affected (much) by violent games.

That's not their only consequence though. Seen here, army recruitment raises for Call of Duty players. Propaganda works. Advertising works. Otherwise, we wouldn't use it the ways we do today.

Glorifying violence is unintentionally advertising for violence- the thing is that it's one tiny message against a backboard of uncountable other messages that are usually in stark contrast with that glorification.

However, that's not quite the case with sexism. We still have a very apparent gender binary in our society that tries to compartmentalize our genders in neat little packages with supposedly inherent differences and inherent ways people ought to be treated.

As a result, objectification of women has been a widespread cultural phenomenon for, well, much of human history.

Sexism/objectification in games is by no means a huge message, but it IS still a message that we're getting. Often when we're young as well, meaning there are fewer messages to compare it to as acquired in the analog world. What this does is produce a small chain in a large, positive feedback loop.

As /u/Yes_Indeed said, sexism/objectification, in its current state, lets people know that it's okay to engage in those practices since they're so ubiquitous. In turn, those practices allow us to portray those practices through media artifacts, ensuring the next generation of youth will see those messages. Repeat ad nauseum.

We in the gaming industry often like to tout that there's no link to analog actions as a result of digital influence, but it's technically a lie. The link is just really small and contrasted against a lot of other links. The problem with sexism is that we don't get parents/authority figures telling us early on that sexism is bad (like we do with violence being bad). Instead, we get it drilled into our skulls that boys and girls are fundamentally different creatures. That's what makes sexism in games more potent than violence in games: that it aligns more closely with views we already tend to have.

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