Tuesday, March 9, 2010

They reboot comics -- can we reboot society?

I tend to post a lot on Kotaku, a major game blog for those who don't know. Today, a post went up regarding the lack of playable women in war games like Call of Duty. The piece inadvertently slighted the service of a lot of female service members by starting off with this line:

Women have been serving admirably in warzones for the U.S. military for about a decade.


Clearly, women have been serving and dying in war zones for far longer than a decade. It belittles those that sacrificed before 2000 almost as having not existed. Considering this site is read by a lot of teens and young adults, it really screws with our perception of history.

In fact, the first recorded woman fighting and being wounded in an American war is during the American Revolution -- she was given an honorable discharge by George Washington even though she had to pretend to be a man to do so. In any case, there is a long history of women being in actual battle zones - including WWII, Korea, Vietnam, up to current times (see Jessica Lynch).

To be fair, the writer corrected the intro line to "Women have been serving admirably in warzones for the U.S. military for years.", which is much better -- but, what concerns me is the misogyny that seems apparent within the thread I was posting. There were comments like:

So if in this modern age of blistering feminism, what makes you think that back before women suffrage women did anything pertaining to battle other than knitting up soldiers and flags?

Compared to the 416,800 Male casualties, I'm pretty sure that 16 was kinda easy to miss.


Those were actually posted -- and there were more. It's amazing that the marginalization of contributions women have made continues even today. I'm sure to the families of those women killed, it wasn't very easy to miss.

Honestly, I just don't understand what's wrong with people in this nation. You're bad if you're gay. You can't contribute if you're black. If you're an intellectual, you're useless. If you're creative, you're dangerous.

Ugh ... just not happy with humanity today.

5 comments:

  1. Get back in the kitchen, and dont forget the laundry.

    ReplyDelete
  2. You equal standing up for something you believe in as a feminine ideal? Wow ... I thought it was a human ideal.

    ReplyDelete
  3. You have a picture of a woman grabbing her tits, your point is invalid.

    ReplyDelete
  4. That's seriously the dumbest point I've ever seen made - how does one thing have to do with another?

    ReplyDelete
  5. "You have a picture of a woman grabbing her tits, your point is invalid." ...as your profile picture.

    Beat me to the punch. I, however, concur with the statement.

    ReplyDelete