Editor's note: Jasmine joins Alex and Andrew in a discussion of raising girls and what it is to be a female gamer in our supersexualized and gender-stereotyped culture in the eighth installment of Generation Video Game. -Jason

Alex and I are the fathers of girls. It is a difficult task. Sure, women have more opportunity than previous generations, and equality, no matter how you want to measure, is better than ever.

But it's not perfect, and as in video games, the last level is always hardest.

We are going to have to raise young women who can, for all intents and purposes, lead completely separate lives through communication. You only need head to 4chan (I will not link the site, as I recommend you don't) to see thousands of photos of young women who, either through trust or stupidity, rendered themselves vulnerable, only to have their nudity exploited by a world-wide audience. Maybe they're alright with it. Now that's a scary thought.

Just about every recreational pursuit is dominated by one or the other gender, but hardly any is exclusively one gender or the other. Even knitting has its male practitioners.

Video games are no different. Yes, women do play video games, but game developers and gamers are predominantly male. Alex and I, as fathers of daughters, decided to express some of our frustrations with gender issues in video games. To round out the discussion, we are very pleased to have Bitmob's own Jasmine Maleficent Rea to provide us with insight on these issues from the other side of the gender divide.

Online Abuse

Andrew: YouTube videos of women enduring harassment in online games are nothing new. That doesn't make them any less disgusting! Here's the deal: Anyone can face harassment for anything...and they will. I can shrug off people calling me "fag," but then again, I don't have gay sex. To call a woman a bitch is a whole other matter.

Humanity has a long history of misogyny, with incredibly disturbing consequences. I do hope I can raise a confident and intelligent daughter who can face these issues head-on, but I would like to address the circumstances that allow for this behavior to proliferate. Removing anonymity (à la Facebook) from online personas is a good start. But I also fear that culture will head down a road where online insults are perfectly acceptable, whether your name is attached or not. I've seen Uno matches devolve in to perfectly uncivilized behavior, with the perp's face being filmed by their cameras. Can't get less anonymous than that.

Alex: I'd like to think that time will remove problems like this, that more girls are beginning to play games and the average age of gamers increasing every day will make this entire discussion a moot point. Still, perhaps Devo was right (Devo is short for deevolution, the belief that we aren't evolving but in fact deevolving). It certainly hasn't felt like humanity's capability for intelligence has evolved in the time that I've been kicking around, but I won't get too political here (meta zing!).

So while I'd love to believe that my daughter will find acceptance in the online realm of the future, I'm still realistic about it. After that, my only hope is that the game consoles of the future will have much better parental controls/block features/and other such systems that I can use to protect my daughter until she's old enough to just ignore it.

Jasmine: I've encountered my fair share of haters in online games. I'm not a savvy multiplayer person, nor do I wish to engage any of my teammates in conversation. My silence and a quick glimpse at my profile tells people all they think they need to know. I'm a girl who doesn't talk...am I really a girl? I'm constantly accused of pretending to be a girl because I refuse to communicate. I'm not encouraged to interact with the online community because of this behavior.

My response is to mute, ignore, and later report those who target me. They aren't insulting me, as I've been called many a terrible thing directly to my face, but they are damaging the gaming experience. I was raised to have a fairly thick skin, and most of my life I was made fun of for something or the other. Too short, too heavy, too loud, too pale...it's unending. And no matter how you shelter a girl from it, this abuse happens. The biggest problems girls face in the world are other girls. If you can survive what they dish out, you can put a punk on Xbox Live in his place by taking the proper action. My poor experiences with other girls led me to adopt a very gruff and tomboyish attitude toward these things.

Patronizing Subject Matter

Andrew: I don't want my daughter to play "girlie" games. I think they're ridiculous in the extreme, and they reinforce gender stereotypes that I don't approve of. But at the same time, I don't want to restrict her from something she would choose by herself. Gender stereotypes receive reinforcement from just about everywhere, and a young girl in a public school will be hard pressed not to have strong influences pushing toward the Lisa Frank of 2016.

I should also point out that I believe boys are subject to the same pressures and content. Culture pushes boys toward violence, military, robots, competition, and aggression as much as it directs girls towards product like Stardoll. The games I will take to her will lean toward gender neutrality, and I will let her explore games she chooses, within reason. If Bratz are still around in 6 years, they won't be in my house.

Alex: Ugh, Bratz. The trick here is to not let these stereotypical "boy" and "girl" toys push them toward behaviors. The boy clichés can easily cross the line to aggressive behaviors, and the girl ones can lead to bratty behaviors. I think that if we accompany the onslaught of princess games with the proper parental actions, we'll be alright. Treating our girls like they're perfect little princesses that get whatever they want would do more damage then a toy or game that lets them pretend to be a princess. At the same time, we'll have to monitor these products.

Let's take that Bratz example: Watching 1 minute of that TV show uncovers horrible things, like a character who had a nose job. How crap like that ever became popular, without parents taking the 2 seconds it should take them to see what a terrible example it is for little children, is beyond me.

Jasmine: Children are incredibly discerning despite what many people think. My parents had what I feel is the correct approach to toy selection: "Does she really like it?" I had princess toys and tea sets, but I also had Power Rangers, toy guns, instruments, building sets, and video games. The focus was on what I really wanted and what I allowed commercials to sell me. Sure, I wanted the baby doll that talked. Then I got it and absolutely hated it. The toys I wanted were more about creativity and imagination than about Barbie or other girl-dream mascots. Being given the choice is what creates a well-rounded person.

I did, however, have Barbies. I remember an incident from when I was in kindergarten. A set of twins lived up the street from me, a boy and a girl. The girl was as girlie as she could possibly be, and her parents willingly catered to it. Her brother hated the dump trucks and racing cars they forced him to play with. Of the two, I really liked the boy and would often invite him over. We would spend afternoons playing with Barbies, because he really liked the clothes, and I had a selection of hand-made dresses my mother made that he simply adored. His parents would yell at him when he braided the hair on his sister's dolls, and I thought that was mean. Now I know exactly why they were trying to discourage him, and it sickens me. He liked dolls...so what? I wore Red and Green Power Ranger costumes for Halloween.

This happened with video games to some extent as well. Girls weren't truly in the target audience when I was a child. It was a boy's world full of edginess and fighting, but I loved it. My father saw my interest and encouraged it, but he also wanted an excuse to buy a SNES and a PlayStation. The only girl games available were crudely done Barbie dress-up Game Boy games and a few kiddie TV tie-ins. Video games were like interactive movies to me, and that lead me to round up my male friends and act out stories based on video games. The girl in the aforementioned set of twins said her parents didn't let her play video games because they were boy things. Were they not fun? I loved watching and playing games more than watching television most of the time. I spent most of my childhood being very confused about what side of the line I was supposed to be on, but I stuck by my passions.

If your child wants to be themselves, and it isn't harming anyone, let them. Playing with dolls doesn't necessarily mean your son is gay, and identifying with male characters and themes doesn't mean your daughter is a lesbian. Playing to one's gender is a cruel way of stifling individuality and creativity at a young age, and it establishes an almost unobtainable sense of role perfection that leads to bullying. But it won't stop. For every set of parents that are supportive of their child's development, thousands mold their children into copies of themselves.

Objectification

Andrew: This is perhaps one of the prevalent gender issues in video games, and I can't see it going away anytime soon. What I don't get is the justification of the objectification of women in video games. Are people truly tuned into this? Are they really turned on by it? We've all seen the lists of best video-game babes or boobs (sometimes both), so I can only surmise that an audience exists for it. And I think that is the most upsetting thing.

While I won't excuse the producer, designer, or artist for creating impossibly massive titties on a blond ninja, I can understand it as some perverse fantasy or projection. I mean, it is their creation, after all. But the video-game audience has approximately 1 million terabytes of porn accessible by Google alone. They should demand that video games be a realm for the exploration of more honorable and ethical ideas instead of textured cleavage.

Alex: This problem will never go away. The movie industry is decades older than the video-game industry, and it still features rampant objectification of women. I think the real issue is that it's still somewhat rare for women in the movie industry, as well as the video game industry, to be in control. Sure, you can provide examples -- Sofia Coppola, Jade Raymond -- but it's still quite uncommon for a woman to be at the head in either field. Perhaps once women are as commonplace as they are in literature, film and gaming won't have so much misogyny. It'll always be around -- future Michael Bays are inevitable -- but hopefully we've have more positive examples for us to allow our children to play. At that point, it just comes back to parental observation, like always.

Jasmine: The problem with the objectification is that it's an issue to one person and a way of life to the next. Alex is right about it never going away. While porn stars who truly love their jobs and superfeminine women like the Hollywood set exist, so will objectification. The counter is presenting stronger women who are not masculine in attitude and presenting career women in a less bitchy way.

Women are supersexual or icy -- that's the way the media often portrays them. 30 Rock, House, and Modern Family are doing their part to soften the image on TV, and so too are films with capable heroines.

I do believe games are taking a turn for the better. Fallout 3, Heavy Rain, and Mirror's Edge all present believable women without making them unrealistically sexual or completely detatched from their femininity. It's just a start, but the times, they are a-changin'....