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New Anita Sarkeesian Video Looks At Gaming's 'Ms. Male' Trope

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Feminist Frequency continues its 'Tropes vs Women in Games' series, this time spending some time analyzing female characters who are kind of copy and paste versions of the male lead—only with added stereotypical stuff like the color pink, bows, interest in shopping, amongst other things.

Think, for example, of Ms. Pac Man. Or heck, if you want to look beyond games, think about how the story of Adam and Eve centers around the idea that Eve was made out of Adam's ribs. The video goes into much more detail about these examples, which Sarkeesian calls 'Ms. Male characters.'

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Sarkeesian goes on to argue that these characterizations are limiting, because female characters then tend to be either defined by their relationship to the male lead—or worse, their only defining characteristic is that they are women in a cast that is otherwise full of men.

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And as usual, while you may not always agree with Sarkeesian's ideas, they're certainly thought-provoking. If nothing else, relying less on tropes—regardless of what kind they are—can only be a good thing in my books. Hopefully the discussion here about her ideas can remain civil and not be knee-jerk reactions to the video...unlike some of the folks on YouTube:

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Eventually, you'll be able to find a transcript of this video here.