Blog #2 Matthew York

When I think about gender and sexuality as a whole, one object of media that influenced me greatly was Grand Theft Auto, which was a video game that I played when I was a kid. While several were made and more are being made today, the main plot of the game hasn't changed. The game consisted of you as the main character with the overall goal to become successful and do whatever it takes to be rich and famous. While this may seem harmless, it also meant that to become successful, you have to step on everyone in your way. These games did a terrible job of portraying woman in a positive sense and made no attempt at censorship. Every other cutscene consisted of you throwing or abusing some woman in the game. If you weren't abusing them, you were having sex with them and then later abusing them. The game treated woman like eye candy that had no purpose but to look good. Even the loading screens depicted half naked woman. This led me to believe that women were objects and demanded no respect. While I quickly learned that this wasn't true, when I was

playing the game, I was conditioned to harm and abuse woman like it was commonplace. I looked up the trailer for the new Grand Theft Auto and just as I expected, you still play a womanizer. I was recently playing one of the newer versions of the game and as it loaded in, this picture (left) was the only thing on my screen as I waited to play. That was the first thing I was supposed to remember about this game, which was a little bit upsetting. Games that aim towards defacing woman and stretching the reality of everyday situations are becoming fewer but it only takes one game (or series of games) to affect someone's opinion of gender diversity or other topic. I know growing up, this game could've affected my sense of respect towards woman. While it didn't end up changing my perspective, I only hope that it doesn't affect our nation's youth.