Are mothers to blame for a never ending violent cycle?

Recently we have talked about women and cmc in lecture and it just so happened to parallel my crim 453 class lecture “the objectification and victimization of women.”

In video games such as Grand Theft Auto, Tomb Raider, and Anime series’ unfortunately it isn’t uncommon to see women objectified and often victimized. For example, in Grand Theft Auto women are often portrayed as prostitutes or trophies.  Sometimes players are even given monetary rewards for being violent and beating up these women.

            Surely these video games are rated ‘M’ for ‘mature audiences’ in attempt to keep young avid video gamers from exposure to such violence. Although there are these attempts by society, it depends on the individual household. If a child asks for this rated ‘M’ game there are mothers that will say no way, its rated ‘M’ for a reason, you can wait. Then there are mothers that will run out the next opportunity they get and purchase the game for their child. Once it is in the child’s hands they are exposed to different virtual worlds that they might not be mature enough to understand yet. By not being able to understand this it may lead to future difficulties for children, including but not limited to, difficulties distinguishing between real life and virtual life and what’s expected and excepted in virtual life verses real life.     

            By these video games objectifying and victimizing women, although it wasn’t meant for a young audience, that young audience may think its okay to do the same in real life. Adding to the never-ending vicious cycle.

            In an article I found about this vicious cycle provides research about the relationship between the two. Media psychologist Dr. Karen Dill-Shackleford (2011) stated that when women are constantly shown as sex objects rather than a counterpart, constantly represented as demeaning and degraded, and constantly portrayed as submissive, this supports anti-women and violent attitudes.

            Even in video games rendered towards young audiences such as Mario Bros women are used as damsels in distress. For example, Princess Peach (or Daisy; point being that it is a female character) is placed in a situation that she can’t escape from on her own, rather she must be rescued from the ‘bad guy’ by a dominate male character. When questioned about the issue brought about by this plot, developers say it is still being used today, and will continue to be used, because the damsel in distress is an ‘easy motivation.’

            If something is easy everyone would do it, hence probably why Nintendo refuses to let up on the reigns of portraying women as weak or victims. It’s easy enough for everyone to play, therefore possibly higher sales. It seems more like a lucrative business move on their part rather than re-modifying the game so that it doesn’t promote violence in an already highly violent society. Whether Nintendo realizes it or not their video games are just as at fault for promoting violence as others such as Tomb Raider. Even though there isn’t as much gore or weapons, it doesn’t matter how much violence is physically incorporated, the ideology is there and that’s what matters most. Playing video games at a young age and being exposed to this is probably partially at fault for the expectation of more violence as their gaming progresses. The older they become, the more challenges they want to encounter, more gore, etc.

The Walking Dead: Stealing the identity of the Dead

With technology evolving it has become easier to steal a person's identity. Identity theft is when someone steal a piece of your information, whereas identity fraud is when they then use the information, most of the time these two go hand in hand. Identity theft is very common. In 2012 alone there were 12.6 million reported cases. There are also different types of identity theft, like financial which is the most common. Criminal pretending to be someone else when you are convicted. Cloning which is assuming someone else's identity. Synthetic when you take someone's info and combine it with fake information. Medical, when you use their information to obtain medical care or drugs. Lastly there is ghostly which is using the identity of a dead person. The article I found was on Ghosting (http://eco-comics.blogspot.com/2009/06/how-easy-is-it-to-steal-dead-mans.html) It touched on how this method of identity is very rare, in fact it is the rarest form because it is so difficult to execute. It is extremely difficult in todays day in age due to technological advances. Since many records are filed online it is hard for criminals to get a hold of them. As well as finger prints it is all electronic so it is very difficult to steal a dead person's identity

Kids Online and Parents Monitoring

In this week, we talked about the technology across the life span. Unlike the generation of our parents, people in age range of 18 to 29 today has the highest rates of Internet use. Our group uses Internet more than any other age group, and the usage of the Internet of the age group of 13 to 17 is following this group. Teens these days have been growing up with continuous Internet usage. Kids online are benefited by easy access to the academic information. However, on the other hand, they are at the risk of many dangers on the Internet.

            According to the data shown in the class, the number one concern of parents on kids using Internet was encountering strangers online. It is a danger to all the Internet users, but especially kids are vulnerable to the predators because they are not quite good at catching a sign of danger yet. Other concerns that are raised were private information available to advertisers, reputation management, and impact on future opportunities. It was funny to hear the story about son giving the family’s information to the advertiser to earn some items for his game on the Facebook. However, it could be no fun if the information given was more financial related or private medical information. Kids often reveal personal information without even noticing its consequences. Therefore, parents are very concerned about their children using Internet. According to the article, Parents are desperate for any way to help their children avoid the career torpedoing, cyber bully-provoking mishap, and they sometimes choose to monitor or even spy on them in order to protect them from all the dangers online. 77% of the parents answered that they have been monitored their kids, but sometimes these monitoring cause some conflict between kids and parents.  Kids think that parents are invading their privacy by the surveillance online. How can we satisfy both worrying parents and kids’ privacy? A communication is the key. Internet is affordable and accessible to most of the kids today. By comparison, there is not enough education on kids about how to use Internet wisely and safely. Signe Whitson gives some advices on how to communicate with the kids on this issue. First, Parents need to teach what is appropriate or inappropriate before they let their kids to go online, and they should show their child how to set up the privacy features. These settings will protect the child from allowing strangers access to his or her profiles. Next, parents need to thoroughly explain what dangers exist on the Internet to the kids, instead of downloading a monitoring program on the computer. Talk with him or her in clear, frank terms about the real dangers of online predators and the serious need to avoid them.

She recommends since danger online occurs more commonly at the hands of friends than of enemies, it is also critical to teach your child how to "block" comments and contacts by peers who have a history of engaging in cruel online behavior. After all these communication with the kids, Megan Mass, the sexuality educator, asks the parents to be honest about the monitoring when they decide to do so because secretly recording a kid's Internet usage will likely do more harm to the relationship than good for the child.

            I was not monitored when I was a kid, but I had a time limit of using the Internet. Also the computer was placed at the living room. I was told about keeping private information safe online a lot from my parents. Instead of secretly spying on me, my parents set the discipline so I can eventually have a concept of what is appropriate behavior online. Kids are getting more familiar to newest technology, and they can find the way to flee from parents’ monitoring. Regulation without communication only makes kids to sneak out of surveillance and causes rebellion. It is not about controlling them, but it is rather teaching them how to use a technology safe.

Fishing is Plenty of Fun... Until You're the one Biting

Online phishing is a major problem in today's highly technological society. The more we post about ourselves on social media, or buy from different websites, the more exposed we are to those which may attempt to steal our information for their own good. This theft may cause financial loss, identity theft, and more. This is online phishing, and if we are not careful, we could all be caught- hook, line, and sinker.

We were in choir. My choir teacher usually let us listen to the songs that we were going to sing, so we could become familiar with the tune. The class began normal, and she booted up her computer to play the song. Unfortunately, her computer never booted up. Before it even got to the desktop, a notice appeared from the "FBI". It informed her that she had violated federal law by downloading materials illegally. She would have to pay an online fine, or else she would be arrested in the upcoming week. This was an attempt at phishing. Someone had claimed to be the FBI in an attempt to gain her credit card information.

Phishing can come in many different forms. Sometimes it uses a virus like in the above, real life example. Often times, phishers use fake emails and messages to attempt to retrieve the information. Just as a fisherman may bait a line that he has cast, these "phishermen" bait the email with claims of the necessity of needed account information. The emails are not obvious, they often come from someone claiming to be from PNC Bank, or from Bank of America. It may say that "Joe" from Bank of America needs your account number to re-authenticate your finances, while in reality, some hacker just wants to re-authenticate your money into his hands.

There are some ways that people can see through the trap of phishing.  One definitely needs to check the grammar and the spelling in the message. Often, the phishers are oversea attackers, meaning that they may not have the best grasp on the English language. This is an obvious give away- as professional banks would never send a mass email with spelling errors. Another way to check for phishing is to check the links contained in the email. Phishing messages always have links- they go to the websites that ask for the information. This means that the websites will be created to resemble professional URLs. There may be an extra letter somewhere in the link, or it may just appear strange. Another way that you can verify that the email is from an authentic source is to call said source. This is a foolproof way to differentiate between the real and the fake messages.

Online phishing is a real danger to our society. Intelligent people are out there trying to steal our information with deceptive emails all the time. We need to take precautions to avoid being taken advantage of, such as a few extra reads of your emails, or a phone call. Often, the emails may not even have a mistake, and be completely foolproof. It just goes to show the kind of danger that online hackers out for free money can cause.

E-mail Phishing Attacks Take Just Minutes to Hook Recipients

As I scroll through my emails everyday, I see tons of emails that are spam such as; fake bank companies trying to trick me to log on to their website to acquire my personal information. Phishing is a lot more common than we think and everyone gets spam in their emails, so everyone is at risk of getting involved with phishing sometime in their life. Phishing is defined as the "illegal attempt to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details that is used for malicious reasons such as identity theft." The phishing e-mails that I get from banks or credit card companies are almost so deceiving that they look like a legitimate e-mail.   

According to the article I read from Wired, e-mail phishing takes only seconds for someone to receive your information, which gives you little to no time to react and protect your personal information. According the new Verizon Breach Investigations report, if your someone in IT security, you've got one minute and twenty seconds to save your company from being hacked. This is the median time it takes for an employee to open a phishing email that lands on a company’s network and in their inbox, which sets a motion to prevent data from leaking. Verizon noted that 23% of recipients open phishing e-mails and what is more dangerous is the 11% who go as far as to click the attachments that are contained in the e-mail. This is scary information to know because I feel like these statistics are much higher than they should be, especially with so much knowledge on the web about protecting your personal information and identity from phishing. In 37% of the breaches examined, defenders were able to contain the attack within hours. I’m also surprised by this percentage because I feel like as soon as I see anything suspicious on any of my credit card statements, e-mails, or anything else that contains my personal information, I do an investigation immediately or change my password. I also never open any suspicious or spam e-mails.

The article goes on to say that although many organizations are quick to respond to an attack on their network, it still takes a long time to uncover the breach, which is the main issue here. Typically, it can take several months to years to uncover a breach. I think that with technology and the knowledge we can obtain in the world today, we should be more cautious when opening certain e-mails. I also think it is a little ridiculous that it takes some organizations a long time to uncover a breach and therefore people should be taught the proper precautions before opening any type of suspicious e-mails, especially in their workplace where this can affect others and the network they share. I feel like the percentages of recipients who open phishing e-mails will decrease in the future, as people are taught to distinguish the difference between a legitimate e-mail and a phishing e-mail.

Over-Sexualizing Women In Video Games

            I don’t know about you, but when it comes to America, everything seems as though it has to be bigger, better, faster, etc. Whether its food, cars, clothes, or even bodies, America has a sense of pride in making things larger than life and as excessive as possible. This is no different when it comes to video games, cartoons, or movies. There is always a main character that is the hero and he is big, strong, fast, and brave. He defeats all of his enemies and saves the day for society. But where are the females in these storylines? Usually, the females are pictured as sex symbols or helpless characters that need to rely on the male “hero” to make their way throughout the story. For some reason, this is always a part of the story, and the only question that I can ask is, how realistic is this stereotype?  I know plenty of strong women that have never had to rely on a man or be a sex symbol to live their lives to the fullest. In this final blog, I will discuss women in video games and how they are over sexualized and exploited in many cases.

            In my personal experience, I have observed countless times in which females were “sexed” up or made helpless/ditsy in both video games and movies. For example, one of the biggest box office earners ever, Spiderman, has a character named Mary Jane which can fit into either of these roles. Mary Jane is the love interest of Peter Parker (Spiderman) and many times throughout the movie they force Mary Jane to rely on Spiderman to be saved, or make her seem as though she is a sex object/a goal for Peter to win her over. Another example of over sexualization is displayed throughout the video game Tomb Raider. Tomb Raider’s main character is Lara Croft, is a British archaeologist and an adventurer. She is one of the most influential female video game characters that have ever been created, and of course, like we discussed in class, she was made to look like an unrealistic sex object. She couldn’t just be a normal female doing extraordinary things, but instead they had to create her as a busty female with unrealistic proportions who was wearing very little clothing, even though she was going on all kinds of adventures. It made no sense for her to be dressed/proportioned like that, however, sex sells. In an article by The Orion, titled VideoGames Oversexualize Powerful Women, they discuss how women in video games are exploited and over sexualized. The article talks about how almost all women in video games have extremely large breasts, but not a proper bra, or one at all and also bring up the fact of how the women in these games wear significantly less clothing than makes sense to be fighting and battling as they do in the game. The article summarizes that video games give women this unrealistic stereotype that is offensive to many women across the world.

            Personally, I do not think that it is morally right for women to be displayed as they are in almost all video games, however, sex does sell in most cases, and that is why these video game creators portray women in this way. It may be offensive, but they believe that it makes the game more appealing for the average male that is playing these games. I do, however, believe that this problem is slowly changing and that in the near future, women will be seen as more realistic in video games.

Heaven Doesn't Need Furniture

It is always discussed how children are the prime targets for online predators and deception online. Children trust too easily, and are easily extorted by predators for photos and personal information. However, it is not only children who can be easily duped online. We assume children are most vulnerable due to their overtly trusting nature or inability to know how much information is TOO much to post. But, parents and seniors are just as much at risk for engaging in dangerous behaviors online.

Maybe it is because they aren't well versed in the forms of CMC, or maybe it is because they are just as trusting as their children when it comes to the internet.

Seniors are obviously more at risk than middle aged adults. They often fall victim to online theft due to their lack of knowledge and confusion, or because they are lonely and trust whoever they are speaking to. Some examples include giving information over the phone to a supposed IRS agent, or predators posing as their grandchildren to have money wired into their accounts due to some "emergency".

Going further than seniors, the deceased are also at risk. A 2012 study found that about 2.5 million deceased Americans a year are being impersonated by fraudulent people. This can be done because: 1. It takes 3+ months for people to be recognized as dead by Federal Bureaus. 2. Because family of the deceased will not realize it is happening, and once they do, it is difficult to prove your relation to the deceased and that they are actually deceased when someone has been running around pretending to be them.

It's not only the dead and (definitely) dying that are at risk. Parents, too, are over trusting. But, they are often being victims of mistrust when they are involved in topics or areas that are their most vulnerable. For example, in 2013, Sarah was involved in Facebook groups and chatrooms with supposed parents of autistic children so she and others could talk about their experiences with their children.

She became close with a male online, Phyl, to the point where he was supposed to visit her in New York. But, in Catfish fashion, he never showed. His profile vanished as well. It turns out that his disappearance corresponded with him being arrested on 20 accounts of child pornography and sexual touching charges. He was posing as an autistic adult, giving people advice on bathing their autistic children, and probing them for photos or videos of the children in baths. Sarah never complied, but some others did. In this case, the predator was being overtly manipulative over parents in their times of need, rather than predators lurking after children who are too trusting in general with strangers.

In summary, the internet is a terrifying place full of monsters, but not only kids are at risk. Parents, too, can be made a fool of, and even the ghosts of the dead can be found making furniture purchases several months after the funeral.

Cross Assault sexual harassment controversy overshadows on-screen combat

http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/29/cross-assault-sexual-harassment-controversy-overshadows-on-screen-combat/

We have studied this particular incident in class and it is an old news, however I wanted bring back this issue because violence and harassment  in online communities are still presence nowadays.

On Feburary, 2012, Miranda Pakozdi was harassed by another tournament participant, Aris Bakhtanians. His comments toward Miranda were things like: “what is your bra size,” “take your shirt off,” “I will smell you very closely,” and so on. Unfortunately for Bakhtanians, these comments were streamed live on video as part of Capcom's Cross Assault reality series, which pits a team of Street Fighter players and a team of Tekken players against each other in a tournament for significant prize money. However, instead of an apology he blamed the gaming community. "Can I get my Street Fighter without sexual harassment?" asked Twitch.tv community manager Jared Rae of moderately well-known Tekken player Aris Bakhtanians during a conversation about sexist language at pro fighting-game tournaments. "You can't. You can't because they're one and the same thing," he answered. "This is a community that's, you know, 15 or 20 years old, and the sexual harassment is part of a culture, and if you remove that from the fighting game community, it's not the fighting game community." Miranda decided to give up the tournament after receiving on-going harassment by Aris Bakhtanians. From this incident, Aris Bakhtanians lost his sponsorship. The sponsor, Tom Cannon said “we cannot continue to let ignorant, hateful speech slide.” He’s since apologized, explaining that his remarks were made in anger, but that didn’t help much. However, as stated in the article, few voices supported Aris. Twitter user, Supre Arcade twitted “@Super_Yan the entire time you were giggling and enjoying the attention. Someone mentions harassment and not until then do you complain?”

I personally think that sexual harassment is not part of the culture, obviously. It exists, sure, but it's not mainstream. I just think that it's a universal truth of the internet, games and any online communities, from YouTube to political comments threads, that awful people feel more comfortable hurling abuse at you if you're female, gay or part of a racial minority. Even though this specific incident that I’m talking about is old news, but many violence and harassment are still presence in the online community. Are things like the Hepler and Cross Assault situations acceptable? No. Should we quietly ignore incidences of sexism in the gaming community in the hope that it might go away on its own? No. But is this a part of gaming culture? Absolutely not. We are not like that. It's important that we make our voices heard, too. 

Women in Video Games- Gender or Sex Icons?

        In today's society, the media pushes at just about every controversial angle they possibly can, including sexually representing women. Video games are one of the main culprits of this. Most video games represent their "female" characters as sex icons or pathetic, helpless sluts. For example, in the popular video game Grand Theft Auto, you are allowed to assault women, but pay for sexual favors, however none of them are main characters, simply just added "props".

        Women in video games are also represented as damsels in distress. You are often on a mission to either make money, get to the finish line, or complete a challenge. Most, if not all of these, have the main character saving a female in one or more obstacles of the video game. These women are dressed in revealing and sexually representative clothing and almost never dressed modestly. Even the character, Peach from Mario is the one in need of saving throughout the entire Mario series.

       According to Michele Zorilla in http://radford.edu/~mzorrilla2/thesis/gamerepresentation.html, men are completely over represented in video games compared to females with the ratio being 5.3 males for every one (1) female in games, and on top of that, females are never used as the main characters and often have weaker 'skill levels' versus male characters.

       Another common stereotype of women displayed in video games is their body type. Women are either displayed as extremely muscular, or very sexualized. They are portrayed to have the ideal body type where they wear skimpy and revealing clothing. Their breasts are usually visibly noticeable to the players and they appear to look only as sex icons rather than characters. Male characters are also typically very muscular, also showing the "ideal" body type. Personally, I have never seen an overweight character in a video game.

       Women are similarly represented in other forms of media as well. For example, there are only three movies where the female character saves the male character. There are also only a handful of movies that demonstrate the female character not in need of a male. One movie in particular has raised a huge amount of publicity for this exact reason. The movie, Frozen by Disney, represents the main character, Elsa as being a strong and independent women who does not need a man in her life. Raving reviews have been said about the movie for this particular reason. I myself, have heard mothers say how great of a movie it is to show little girls because it is so different from the typical princess stereotype.

Is digital divide of young and elderly people increasing?

Kieran Kelley

CAS 283

Blog 5

4-22-2015

 

Is the digital divide of young and elderly people increasing?

            After our discussion in class on seniors and younger children CMC usuage made me think about some of the situations that I have faced with my own family. I have experienced two different occasions in my family that I have seen my grandmother, and niece use of cell phones for CMC usage. My grandmother recently got her first cell phone this past year. If you are thinking that it’s the newer modern day smart phones you’re wrong. The cell phone my grandmother is currently using is a flip phone because it’s easier for her to use, and because she never used a computer before. Since my grandmother have never experienced the use of a computer before it made no sense to purchase an smartphone that had internet usage on it when she wouldn’t know how to access it.

            This leads to my other experience with technology on the other side of the perspective on how younger children are being brought into a society where almost everyone owns a technology device. With many jobs, and individuals who access the usage of technology it’s prone to be around the child once he or she is born. This leads to them being brought into families where the usage of technology is much higher than when my grandmother was a child.  My niece, who is now 4 years older, is capable of working an IPad, computer, smart phone, and other technology devices. The number of children who are able to work technology devices has increased over the past 10 years due their uprising of how far advanced our society has got with technology. Today’s teenagers grew up with digital machines and to a certain degree —with many binary options, with a visual culture of images and their rapid procession. For example, the article identified five different dimensions of technology which have impacted young lifestyle. The five different technology that have impacted younger children are the enabler of future professional occupation chances, symbolic capital, for entertainment of fun and action, as an object for social distinction, and, as means to structure daily activities. Principally the young get in touch with these technologies through trial and error and informal learning processes among peers. The elderly are more used to reasoning, systematic and logical thinking, linear step–by–step processes which are good for formal learning but turn out to be an obstacle when dealing with new technologies.

            In conclusion, even though the rates of both elderly, and younger generations digital device work has increased, but will never reach the rates of younger users. This divide of knowledge gap between current younger, and older generations is likely to be much closer in the near future. Nevertheless the gap will gradually become smaller over time, because the rates of elderly technology usage is growing. If technology keeps on growing expediently like it’s now, you will see a wide variety of mutual support for many opportunities in the future.  

http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1286/1206 

 

New Smartphone Users

After our discussion on Seniors and CMC it made me think about some instances I've had in my own family. My grandparents just recently got their first cell phones. Yes, cell phones. I'm not talking about a brand new smartphone with all the bells and whistles. Anyway, they've never used a computer before and the thought of having to teach them technology like that is a scary one. I have had this experience with my mother though, as she just bought her first smartphone. To this day, I still get all the "how do I..." questions. The answers seem so simple to me, but I forget that I am a digital native.

With this in mind, I was questioning what the best way to accommodate a digital immigrant is in their learning process. I found an article on lifehacker explaining the best way to set up a smartphone for those that have never used one before. Melanie Pinola, the author of the article, starts by explaining her own personal situation with her 70-year old mother in law that she gave a smartphone for her birthday. She says that she was excited about bringing her into a new age of technology but was worried about her mother in law learning how to properly use it. This reminded me of our discussion on overaccommodtion we had in class. Already Melanie was acting as though she would have no idea what she was doing. That may sound bad, but could very well be the case. She gives a few interesting tips on how to make it a little easier.

Her first bit of advice is to go through the setup process with them. Then, save all of their login information. Chances are, you'll need to retrieve their passwords for them at some point. Next, make sure you enable find my phone just in case a panic attack takes place when it gets lost under couch cushions. Along with this, take the time to setup their lock screen for them and have emergency contacts ready in case they forget how to get into their phone. After all of that, she basically says to just show them how to use everything. One point she brings up that I thought was very interesting is that the younger kids will usually press every button to figure out what they do. Seniors on the other hand, will ask you to show them what they do. I can personally agree with this, especially when I had to teach my mom all the buttons.

She closes by saying that their is a lot of ground to cover, and posted important manufacturer links in case there was an emergency while you are not around. Overall, I think it is important to teach the older generation about technology such as this, but you shouldn't underestimate them. They'll get the hang of it sooner than you think!

Securing Your Information

We spend so much of our time online and use the internet for so many things that we often overlook how vulnerable it makes us. In addition to all the fun and entertainment we have online through social media and games and other things, we’re also online doing things like taxes and shopping and business transactions. As a result, there’s a lot of information that we have willingly shared on the internet that we can’t know for sure if it’s safe or not.

Of course there are various methods of security such as antiviruses, security questions, various passwords, and etc. but the issue is there is just as many different ways to get your information with or without you knowing: phishing, pharming, and keylogging are just a few. Phishing is when people send you messages in order to trick you into giving them your information. Pharming is similar, but hackers use fake websites in order to trick you into logging in your information for them to use later. Keylogging is a bit different and a lot more difficult: it is when there is a program that can record a person’s keystrokes, effectively tracking everything that a person types down to the letter.

Many hacking attempts are geared towards finding someone’s information through getting their password, and thus access to their private information. There are many misconceptions about what constitutes as a strong password. Passwords are an integral part of online security and nearly anything online uses a password, so it is very important that your password is strong. The issue is that this article emphasizes password security and how to better protect yourself from your information being stolen. Many hackers will resort to using brute force to find someone’s password, which is using a program to try all possible combinations of a password. However it is fairly easy to make a password unable to be brute forced.

The easiest way to make your password stronger is to instead of thinking of a password, think of a passphrase (like a sentence instead of a word): use a memorable phrase or sentence instead of a word as a password to add complexity and memorability. Memorability is a key component because sometimes the requirements we have to have in our passwords (symbols, numbers, etc.) made it harder for us to remember so we write them down and store them, often on our computers. However this makes it easier for it to be stolen, especially if it’s an unsecured document.

Although there’s a lot of ways for your information to be stolen, there are just as many ways for you to protect yourself. There are many threats to your security and the easiest first step to securing your information is to improve your password.

It's a Boy's Club

While sexism has actively declined since the 1960s, it is still present in video games. The gaming industry and all aspects of it from game designers to game players have been dominated by men for the longest time. It is has been an all-boys club and only recently have the doors been open to women. When people design these games they purposely make them appeal to men. Women are often over-sexualized, associated with violence, male dependent, and have idealized body types. There are a few female archetypes that we learned about in class but to keep it short I will focus on the “sex icon.” We all know which female sex icon is the most famous and is still one of the hottest female characters of all time, Lara Croft from Tomb Raider. What could a guy want more than a super sexy killing machine? She is not even the worse one out there. Just look at these women from the Mortal Combat game. What these characters are wearing is sexy but also disturbing. Realistically, it’s close to impossible to fight with those types of outfits on, but I guess that is why it’s not real. Just imagine being a girl and growing up in a house hold with only boys. When I was little I played all kinds of games with my older brothers, especially Mortal Combat because it had many girl players to choose from. I always picked the girl player who I thought was the prettiest, had on my favorite color, and had the biggest boobs because that is what I thought beauty looked like. Sometimes young girls are exposed to these images at such a young age it brainwashes them into thinking that is what real women look like. Just like the perfect Barbie dolls we see in the stores, the half-naked swimsuit models in magazines and on TV, and also in online gaming. These women are made to have big breast, curves, and a big but. No one in real life looks like that. Actually, Nicki Minaj comes close but all of it is fake. 

When I look at it from the other side I see how it makes since to make these women the way they do. When it comes down to it, it’s all about selling and making money. More men play and it has always been that way, therefore companies are going to appeal to their main audience. I think if more women played then, the display of women as sex icons would be less. Recent statistics have shown that there has been an increase in the number of women gamers with the rise of games like The Sims and casual gaming apps, such as Diamond Dash and Candy Crush. I found a video on YouTube called, Video Games and the Female Audience and it just about sums up everything we learned in class about women and cmc and what I have been talking about in this blog. It is a really interesting video and definitely hits all the main issue about women in the gaming industry. One thing that stood out to me the most was when he talked about how the creator of Lora Craft, Toby Gard, made her to be a “sexy, powerful, over the top heroine, pretty much a female Indiana Jones.” He goes on to talk about the marketing side of it. The creators make them one way but then the marketers portray them in a way that attracts more men. It’s kind of sad that women’s images have to be degraded in order to sell a video game.  I believe if women feel a certain type of way about the way we are being portrayed in the media and everywhere else then they should stand up a say something. Women have been to quiet and we have been pushed to the side for way to long. We are more powerful now than ever and we should take full advantage of that.