I am chilled by the comments to be honest. I'm a female gamer and while I would not consider myself "called" to the feminist agenda (or at least the extreme bits of it, which have the loudest advocates though they may be a minority of the feminist crowd) I am well aware of the slant in the representation of my gender in my favorite entertainment medium.
This is where most males point out that they too are stereotyped. This is true and yet it is not the same type of stereotyping in most cases. Let me briefly explain what I mean there. Men are, by and large in video games, portrayed as either really masculine, tough, burly, physical, and good in combat or smart, clever, charming, suave, etc. These are positive stereotypes. They are still stereotypes, they can still be harmful and misrepresentative of the group, but they are positive attributes being exaggerated - and they are the type of attributes that are generally viewed as positive by males as well as females. This is like the stereotype that all Asians are good at math or all African Americans are particularly athletic. It isn't okay to generalize to that degree, but it isn't the same thing as negative stereotypes like Asian people are bad drivers or African American people talk through movies. Women, on the other hand, are stereotyped in games in ways that are not considered positive by females as well as males in general, the slant is clearly toward a physical ideal that is perceived to be valued by males (talking about giant breasts and skimpy outfits here).
I've not been happy about this issue, but I've not seen a need to be ardently proactive about it either, because I feel that as the industry gains more audience equality the problem will correct itself. It did used to be that most players were guys. It makes some sense that they would be catered to as the primary audience and the consideration for female players wouldn't be a high priority (being that they were the minority). As things have begun to even out though, there is a disturbing trend for a certain group of players who are males lashing out at any female player who wants to recognize her values in what she plays. As if we are unwelcome. As if we don't deserve to be part of the community and feel comfortable in it as much as anyone else. This is particularly painful for me as someone who has always been part of the community from the days when it was very much a boys club and thought things would naturally improve and that the improvement would be welcomed.
The thing is there to be studied and she wants to study it - I don't see the issue. This isn't a campaign to boycott games for being what they've been, it's a research project into what have they been, indeed, and where are they going. If we can't stand to be questioned about our history as a community we are not going to develop in a healthy direction. Maybe that is the crux of the problem though. There isn't a "game community" really. We aren't so much a real community as we are a group of people who enjoy a shared hobby and had in the past been forced to band together in defense of that hobby against scrutiny of a wider society. Now that issue is waning and our cohesion is waning with it perhaps. But I digress.
What shocks me is the comments and the hate. I often convince myself that such things are outlying elements of a few people who would be that way no matter where they were or what they were doing. The more this issue comes up though the more I see that I really may not even want to be part of this "community" if that is what the sentiment of it is. So much hatred over simply pointing out that things have been unequal and the outright denial of the possibility that anything about the video games in question could ever be unequal... it just staggers me.
