Hey you look like me!

So as a chick I've often been sad when games don't bother to have a female character to play. Today I started playing Alice Madness Returns and was describing it to a friend.

ME: I'm playing as Alice but she has a big ass knife for killing
MOSTLY ASIAN FRIEND: So she's basically me
ME: No, she's a honkie
MOSTLY ASIAN FRIEND: So half me
ME: yes.

I'm not being racist, just accurate. I don't think it's bad to have characters that are white or male, I just think there should be more variety. I want to be able to play as a girl which is often not easy. Luckily I'm white so most female characters when they exist look like me. And you know most people relate better to characters that look like them.

Personally I'm not nearly as pale as Alice but I'm sure I'm as crazy as she is. Although I tend to wash the blood out of my clothes.

Many video games have a range of genders, races and sexualities but those are as rare as a stripper with a Ph.D in Mathematics. The first two inclusive games that come to mind are Mass Effect and Borderlands. Much has been written around the interwebs about Mass Effect and its gender and sexual inclusivity so onto Borderlands 2.

I played Borderlands 2 with my boyfriend and his friend(basically his non-sexual life partner) and they played as the commando and the siren so I was left with either a husky short male or a non gender specific assassin. The choice was easy. Zero, the assassin has a male voice but for the most part is gender neutral. Zero is fun to play but when Gearbox released a second female character I switched teams. Both the female characters are white and one is too young to have a sexual identity but the siren is mainly appears to be heterosexual. The non player characters are generally white and also heterosexual. I should note that the gunzerker appears as latino or hispanic, basically not white.

Here's a picture of Gaige to break up this wall of text. 

Overall the game is heterocentric which is going to be common in video games/entertainment for many more years to come. On the bright side the game is not heteronormative, the female characters have as many responsibilities, skills and talents as their male counterparts. There are fewer females in the game than men but I think it's closer to 1/3 females than the typical 1/4 ratio. Also many of the females are very strong and well developed. I found Tiny Tina and Moxxi to be more developed in the personality realm than some of the comparable male NPCs. There is also a remarkable amount of discussion about sexual pasts and it generally does not come off as the typical slut/stud dynamic.

In Borderlands the female characters are most often in overly sexualized outfits but in all fairness the male characters are also on display and their physical traits are nowhere near realistic either. The entire game is very sexual, one of the characters skill trees is sexual tyrannosaurus, I've seen pornos that are less sexually charged.

Clearly Borderlands is not a polite conversation sort of game but the raunchiness does go both ways along with a fair variety of characters.

Anyway back to my main point, damn am I lucky that I'm not trying to find a character that is female and hispanic and a lesbian.

Female MRAs

Most people will agree that men and women should be treated equally. Men and women should have equal access to school, housing, jobs and other public aspects of life.
Some people will say all persons should have equal access because the gender binary is a false dichotomy.

Then there are white men that insist they somehow got the short end of the stick in Western societies. Despite data from many sources, at many points and places in time indicate that white males have privilege and status that minorities don't even come close to achieving.

Being a white male makes life easier and there have been many great blogs explaining this fact so I don't feel a great need to go into that. Of course many undereducated white men think they have a harder life because educated women or minorities have a better job, car or house. While ignoring that most minorities do not have a better life than the large majority of white men.

These white men join Mens Rights Activists(MRA) and shout from the trailer top how rough their life is. Magically the MRAs have gained support from some women. These women have made claims that women should give up their right to vote and spend more time serving men. Along with promoting other MRA goals that basically encourage a strict gender binary and a return to racial segregation.

Success from keeping others down is not success. Getting a job because the potential employee pool is only other white men is not something to be proud of. Having a clean house but no food on the table because you have a housewife but no money for food is not worth bragging about.

Women should not be working to remove their own rights. People in general should not be removing rights from others. A more stratified society will not produce a better society. Yet that is somehow a belief with a strong following.

Fuck female MRAs. Your gender, race and socioeconomic status do not make you a better or worse person than others. Get off your ass, do something with your life, stop blaming others, lower your self-esteem to an 'unhealthy' level and maybe you'll realize there is a lot more to life.

Also, unless you are invited please do not think so much about my vagina.