At five-years-old my daughter has three times the gaming cred I did when I was her age. She plays the original Super Mario Bros. on my Wii (she prefers the original because while it's harder it's also less complex), various adventure titles with my help ranging from Sly Cooper on PS2 to Knackon PS4, occasional rounds with my wife's 3DS (2K makes excellent educational games based on Nick Jr. properties), flash games online and she has her own dedicated portable system, the LeapPad 2. Though LeapPad games are also largely educational they still employ modern gaming mechanics like stealth levels, puzzlers, and even old-school button-mashing.
My point is that from the age of three she's been a gamer. Gaming has been the norm in her life as much as movies and books have been, and I don't really see that ever changing. Gaming has gone mainstream, and one day sooner than I'd like she's going to start sharing her love of the hobby with people in real life and, dear God, online. Having watched the progress of things like #GamerGate and the years-long harassment of Anita Sarkeesian and other women I realize that I'm going to have to prepare her for that in ways I wouldn't have to do with a son. I have to tell her...
10. There are some great heroines in games for you to engage with, though most of them like Lara Croft I won't be letting you meet until you're way older. Celebrate those girls and women, but it's going to be a long, long time before they make up an equal part of your gaming experience. Lots of times it just never even occurs to game developers someone would want to play as a girl.
9. Even when you do see female characters a lot of the time they're going to be indistinguishable from power-ups or trophies. It's called objectification, and it sucks because it costs female characters big chunks of their humanity. If the woman's role could be replaced with an inanimate object with little to no change then you're seeing it, and it should trouble you.
8. A lot of games (and books and movies and television shows) portray violence against women as part of everyday life. And it is, but it shouldn't be. A video game probably won't make someone hit you for not acting how he or she wants, but it might make other people think you were asking for it or deserved it somehow. Make no mistake; someone who actively enjoys beating up women in a video game is probably not someone you're 100 percent safe with.
7. You will likely never be able to express an opinion on gaming from a public forum and not receive horrific, gender-based insults and threats. Especially a dissenting opinion. Most of these will be all talk, but we'll never know until something actually happens. Speaking of...
6. Unless something violent does happen to you as of right now there is almost no authority that will take this abuse very seriously and most of them aren't allowed to do anything about it even if they consider it serious. Luckily, there have been a lot of people who have taken the abuse they've gotten public and maybe one day soon this will not be the case.
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