Fantasy Flesh

No, not that kind of fantasy. I'm taking about the medieval fantasy fiction genre, and more specifically, as it applies to video games. How is it that in 2015 - after everything that's been written and said about the treatment of women in video games - we still end up with advertising images like this: 

Join me in a round of, "What's wrong with this picture." Here are some hints.

A. Who is not wearing a helmet?

B. Who is baring some seriously vulnerable organs (heart & lungs) as well as the throat?

C. Who isn't looking straight at you with a Stare of Doom?

Look, I'm glad that society is embracing the strong warrior woman. I love that women are free to explore and express their sexuality, and I believe they have every right to do so (and not fear for their safety - but that's a whole other topic).

But.

Why are we still fighting to be depicted in games (and movies) as warrior women who aren't sexy? The two don't have to go together. They are not related. At all. 

Has GamerGate taught the video game industry nothing? It's not always about the sexy sex! Maybe it is for some guys and girls, but a sizable portion of game players - of all genders - would like this to please stop. It's bad enough to have your game character in metal bikinis because of the awesome stats. At least let the advertising have some realism and uniform appeal.

Or, if you must sell with sex, let that hot rogue on the right show us some skin, too.

Day of the Girl

Celebrate the girl child, an often unappreciated and undervalued resource in many parts of the world!

Empowering girls, and the women they'll become, leads to increased prosperity, stability, and quality of life. Don't believe me? Here's some reading for you:

"The benefits of implementing [gender equality] go beyond the immediate effect on the lives of women (one half of the world’s population); the managing role she plays causes the effect to be multiplied through her children, family, community, country and continent producing what is termed the multiplier effect." -- from the "Multiplier Effect."

The UN agrees. So does the World Bank.

Who doesn't? The Muslim Brotherhood, Russia, Iran and the Vatican. 

It's clear that raising girl babies, educating girl children, employing women, and giving them agency over their lives, will result in a net benefit for society as a whole. Will it create local negative effects for boys and men? No doubt about it. Boys will see more competition at school. Men will have to face the same in the workplace and political spheres. At the household level, husbands will have to share the decision-making with their wives (exactly what the Muslim Brotherhood fear) and will shoulder a greater share of domestic work.

There are backlash effects for women, too: Unintended Consequences.

Those are the oscillations that come with any great social change, though, and they will taper off as gender equality becomes integrated with (and integral to) a given group of people.

All children - boys, girls, and in-between - deserve to be celebrated. They are the cornerstones of humanity's future. Today, however, let's single out the girls and give them an extra boost. For most of human history, the girls have been in the margins, good for nothing but producing more babies (preferably boys).

Today is the International Day of the Girl.

All Mixed Up

Skin color is a hot topic right now. The police shooting(s) of unarmed black men is the main impetus and raises some interesting questions about the future of race relations in ethnically diverse neighborhoods. I happen to live in a place where many couples are "mixed" which means that our children have skin colors ranging from very dark to very light. You'd be hard pressed to tell what ethnic background some of these kids have by looking at them. You'd also guess wrongly about what many of their parents look like.

This is, I hope, a peek into the near term future of humanity. Genetic research has shown the falsity of the concept of "race" based distinctions as they are usually defined: by skin color, language, or region. The texture of our hair and the shape of our eyes has no bearing on any other aspect of our bodies. So why are we still obsessed over cultural or "racial" purity? Why do people assume that children must look like their parents? What will happen when we can engineer ourselves, or our children, to a particular appearance?

The typical dystopian vision of humanity is that everyone would cleave to the Northern European ideal, but I think we need to give people more credit. We'll always have rebels who want to violate norms and rock the boat. We'll have the arbitrariness of human chemistry and parents who want their children to resemble themselves. This means that we'll always have people who look different from each other, which begs the question, what will we do with these differences once they are consciously chosen?

Here's a possible scenario: a group of police officers of varied appearance encounters an unarmed, male youth. Today, they'd make assumptions about him based on his appearance versus their own. In the future, they won't be able to do that. A dark skinned youth could have light skinned parents, or dark skinned parents, or something in between. The police officers would have to stop, think, and assess their danger level based on other factors.  The most salient will likely be economic class and the appearance of the neighborhood to which the police are called.

In our long history, in plenty of societies where everyone basically looked the same, the people with power still found ways to abuse those without. That aspect of our nature, I suspect, will not go away even in our post-human, post-racial future. The sad truth of today is that many poor neighborhoods in the U.S.A. are populated by people with dark skin. It's going to be interesting to witness a future when that's no longer the case.