This is bit long, but this post hit me close to the heart. It's a personal response to all the people who made my childhood and my father's life more difficult than it should have been.

Yes, I was sullen, angry, and frustrated as a kid and eventually I took to video games because it helped me cope with being abandoned by my mother, having my sister kidnapped out of province, and having to deal with an endless train of stepmothers, step siblings, and apartment hopping. I'm also mentally ill and I have been since I was a child. It was probably triggered by all the bullshit I grew up with. Thank you for contributing to it.

I realize that this is just anecdotal, but in no way were video games the cause of my emotional state as a kid or even as a teenager. They were a coping mechanism for a shitty life. My father did his best, but raising a kid while holding down a full time job, and fighting to get his daughter back while being harassed by child services, my teachers, and even local police officers married to them wasn't exactly helping us. (Imagine being a single father back then when it was only okay to be a single woman raising a child by yourself.)

I remember my teachers scrutinizing every word I wrote when we had creative projects, and every figure I drew for class, or in between classes. They would use these things as ammunition against my father as if they had some secret agenda against him. I know at least one of them was friends with my mother and her sisters. They would call him up, waste his time with a face to face meeting about how I really should be using my creativity more socially acceptable way.

One time it was because I made a paper devil in class out of shapes we were given to make an angel of some sort. I didn't want to do the same boring thing every other kid was doing. I wanted to make something different and creative, so I did. I got threatened with my father being called if I didn't change it into an angel before recess. I refused.

Heck, I remember I wrote a short story about a ninja who found a crossbow, and suddenly I was being grilled by teachers about this imaginary crossbow. I'm sorry, it's called fucking imagination you shrivelled up old cunts. I sorry for the language. I still hold a grudge.

It's just that I felt like I was being attacked constantly over being a boy. I couldn't do any boy things without some teacher making my life miserable. It's not one incident, but an entire lifetime of being told it's not okay to enjoy the things you enjoy, or to even be a boy.

I'm not saying that there isn't a place for child services to be called, but if you call child services you better damn well have more evidence than your hunch that videogames are bad for boys. Or that drawing a bloody eyeball on a piece of paper means you're going to be a serial killer.

Or, taking something I said out of context and using it to kick me out of my extracurricular activities. I remember crying my eyes out when something I had said to my best friend in jest was overheard, taken to another students mother in a position of authority and used against me.

It's not a bad thing for boys to play videogames even violent ones. That's a learning opportunity for parents to sit down with their kids and be parents and talk to them. I particularly remember my father stopping to talk to me when we were watching a movie and there was a scene with female breasts. I was embarrassed, but my father took the time to turn that into a father son discussion.

To this day I'm grateful that he took the time to let me know I don't have to be ashamed to be attracted to women. That there's nothing disgusting about the female body.

I think we would do well as a species to be a little more concerned about real world violence than the imaginary violence in works of fiction.

Tl; dr: Teachers made mine and my father's life hell.