The “girl next door” in virtual play space: victim, or vixen, or invisible?

This paper begins a comprehensive analysis of gender and virtual gaming, and the ethics and legality surrounding this dyad. The first part of the paper introduces the ideas of gaming as an act of representational politics - what is taking place with female images, girls and women as characters and as players, and consequently, how can we assess the ethical significance of these in a broad social realm? While various sociologists, psychologists, educators and others debate the direct and causal impact of video and computer gaming on children and young adults in terms of violence, this paper avoids that hotly contested link (especially within the current climate of school shootings and children-on-children violence). Instead, the legalistic concept of “dangerous information” is invoked and explored. We argue that such forms of expression as music, games, film, television, etc., do not in and of themselves incite or promote violence, bias, bigotry or sexism. A large amount of case law is presented and discussed to support this premise. Instead, these forms of “entertainment” contribute to forms of social discourse and maintain a rigid politics of gender in which women and girls are relegated to the unethical social realm where they exist only as victims or vixens, or do not exist at all