Grand Theft Auto, the video game that has become synonymous with glorified and anti-woman violence, has somehow managed to do it again.
In the newest version of the game, the player—experiencing the game from a first-person perspective—can now choose to have sex with prostitutes and experience the entire thing. What if he doesn’t want to pay for the sex? Then he kills her. Disgusting.
Women are people. Women are not objects to be sexualized, exploited and murdered for male entertainment. Images of women in society are important. They affect and work hand in hand with people’s consciousness about women in their real lives.
Our bodies, sexualized and commodified, are splashed across billboards. Our personalities are reduced to one-dimensional side dishes served up to enhance the central male protaganist in TV shows and movies.
It’s no wonder that in a society that chooses to display women in such a fashion, 2 million women are raped every year.
According to the Centers for Disease Prevention, 19 percent of women have been raped and 43 percent of women have experienced another form of sexual violence in their lifetimes.
And the gaming industry is one of the worst. It is not coincidental that an industry that produces some of the most violent, misogynist images and actions carried out against women is also unsafe for women to participate in as developers and professionals.
Minimally, the makers of Grand Theft Auto should be forced to remove the games from the market entirely. Personally, I’d like to see them forced to create a game that shows women, and men, in authentically powerful, cooperative roles that create rather than destroy. But I’m pretty sure that’s wishful thinking.
It’s going to take a complete rehaul of this bankrupt system where profit is made from women and from women’s bodies. And the makers of a disgusting video game are really just doing what they’re supposed to in society—trying to make the biggest buck. That doesn’t absolve them of their responsibility for their work. But it points to the larger problem.
We live in a society where both virtually and in reality, women are commodified and objectified. Violence against women is a symptom of a system that treats people as mere tools. It is a system that benefits off the exploitation and degradation of women—and one we must struggle against every day.
