Fashion magazines, movies, and TV all perpetuate these negative stereotypes. For the sake of this discussion, we're focusing on just videogames and how they portray social issues.Melaphont said:Snip.
And it's not outright damaging to one's psychological health, but over time and over population, it's still damaging. There's a large body of evidence that links perceptions to understanding. How we perceive people affects how we treat them and how we treat them affects what they become. Culture is the lens through which we perceive the condition of society.
While yes, men are often boxed into certain stereotypes the key difference is perspective. Since most games are written from a male perspective (both in terms of people doing the writing and the perspective the player is meant to take) those stereotypes fit a power fantasy; the male character is how we wish ourselves to be. Given this perspective, women are depicted as the other. I.e. This is how we wish women would look/act. Neither of these stereotypes are particularly good, but one tends to be empowering while the other is dehumanizing.
It's why I'm so confused as to why people try to separate out social criticism of a work from the aesthetic or mechanical criticism. If a piece of media has no social value, then it's not worth critiquing in any sense. It's worthless. Any discussion of it would be little more than a product review on Consumer Reports.