Last week, a French politician pushed for government measures to punish sexist games. French secretary Axelle Lemaire wants to take advertising and tax privileges away from games that government bureaucrats find to be problematic. Now this Anita Sarkeesian-inspired lunacy is crossing the channel.
British Labor Party MP Chi Onwurah wants her government to identify games that have sexist demeaning representations of women. “I’d like to be working with industry bodies so that we can celebrate the good examples and identify the bad ones,” she said to Newsweek.
Onwurah wants to factor sexism into the age rating system. Sexual content is already a considerable factor so it is unclear how sexism will be identified. She also proved in the interview she doesn’t know much about video games.
Another Labor MP Tulip Siddiq told Newsweek, “The most famous video game franchise in history, Super Mario Bros., frequently sees a helpless Princess Daisy in need of rescue by Mario and Luigi.”
It’s Princess Peach, ya dip. And really? The 8 bit Super Mario Bros. is her first thought of sexism. So any game where a man rescues a woman will get an 18+ rating for explicit triggering content?
“Why in the Lara Croft series, focusing on an ostensibly more positive role model, is she still depicted through such sexualized imagery?” Siddiq said.
So a tank top and short shorts is sexist too. How will any game be able to get this MP’s feminist stamp of approval?
If these censorious regulations go into effect in both the UK and France, two relatively large markets, game developers worldwide will have to change their games to appease these puritanical bureaucrats. Pretty soon they’ll just throw their hands in the air, give up and put all the women in burkas to comply with the Sharia law of Sarkeesian’s video game feminism.
Correction: The original version of this story misattributed the former two quotes to Chi Onwurah.
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