Thoughts on Sommers’s video on Sexism in Gaming

You can see the video here

Just yesterday, Christina Hoff Sommers have pretty much disprove the points made by a certain video series and opponents of video games that has been thrown around for several weeks now. While I knew that most of the core gaming audience who plays more than 20 hours a week in a ratio of boys to girls is 7 to 1. Of course, male gamers tend to play games that are competitive in nature such as violent or action pack video games while females tend to play other games such as simulation, puzzle games and social games. That is to say, everyone is free to play any type of games regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, etc. I admit that I don’t play games that most male gamers play like violent first person shooting games. I tend to enjoy Japanese games (mostly role playing games), racing/driving, simulation, music types of games.

I think the important point she makes out of this video is that the moral panic of video game causing sexism is not true for many reasons. There is a study that clearly proves that video games scare was about nothing since video games does not cause violent behavior. In other words, the same should be true for this moral panic as gamers tend to be more diverse and accepting of people with different backgrounds. Even so, does this mean that there is sexism in video games. I already shared my thoughts on that issue on my main blog, but some tropes like Damsels in Distress is just lazy story writing and I do agree that creators should strive to make a more interesting and engaging story.

Lastly, while I will not take a side on the debate since I would rather not get involved, it’s not all right to bully/harass people or censor people just because you don’t agree with them. Sure, you should call out abusive behavior, but I believe that everyone should have the right to voice their opinion as long its done rational and civil manner (meaning no berating people or a group of people). Phil Mason (thunderf00t) makes a good point about that in his video responding to his account being blocked on Twitter.