Do boy gamers hate girl gamers? Yes. frankly, I'm sick of you baby factories mucking up my cathartic games of virtual butchery with your rainbows and puppy dogs. I wince every time my girlfriend wanders barefoot out of the kitchen to play a game of Animal Crossing on my Gamecube: Doesn't she know that the estrogen she's oozing all over the controller is having an acidic reaction to the Cheetos-dust patina I've laboriously worked up over the years? You girls want to game? I've got a game you can play. It's called "make me a sandwich."

I'm just being sarcastic, of course. No, I love girls, and I love games — in my book, they go together like bacon and peanut butter. But apparently, not all male gamers are thus enlightened, and Global Gaming League has posted up a series of anecdotal vignettes from girl gamers about the rank misogyny they face everyday in pursuing their hobby. As it turns out, a common reaction from the rank mouth-breathers who habitate XBox Live when put into contact with a real, live girl gamer is either smug condescension or an out-of-control boner that whips around the room, snapping spines, like loose fire hose. Who'da thunk? Florian Eckhardt

Do Boys Hate Girls? [GGL]

Perhaps the most obnoxious element about the occasional Escapist article concerning the misogynistic subjugation of females by game devs is the nagging suspicion the reader gets that the author is only writing it in a misguided attempt to get laid. As if a few hundred words of simpering apologetics about the fact that men actually find busty polygonal women in spandex attractive is going to make female gamers the world over see the author's sensitive soul through his pale, flabby shell.

If you've ever been similarly irked by these rather dry, pompous analyses of the immorality of sex appeal in games, you'll probably like this brutal skewering on the subject by Richard Cobbett. Here's a small taste:

[Lara Croft's chest] is your introduction; your jumping off point. How you tackle this thorny issue will affect the whole tone of your cutting article. Refer to "Lara's chest", and you sound debonaire and suave, aware of the connotations, yet subtly removed from them.

FLORIAN ECKHARDT

Writing A 'Girls In Games' Article [Richard Cobbett]

On that note, Toybane has done a comparison between the original Japanese box art for Super Princess Peach on the Nintendo DS and its American counterpart. As it turns out, while the Japanese cover captures Princess Peach in the middle of a full-on episode of hysteria, the American box art is a lot less misogynistic, doing its damnedest to portray Peach as a bubblegum pink, Sigourney-Weaver-type heroine.

Super Princess Peach & The Male Gaze Part 1: A Portrait of a Distressed Damsel [Toybane]
Related: Super Princess Peach: One Moody Game