This is a recovered copy of a post lost in our server meltdown. Sadly we don’t have the comments.
In time for International Women’s Day in Australia the first of Anita Sarkeesian’s Tropes vs. Women in Video Games has been released. This one is the Damsel in Distress trope.
Trigger warning: watching this may make you want to smash the patriarchy. But seriously, this runs for about 24 minutes so find some time where you can watch it all at once if you can and take a stress ball because could make you seriously want to HULK SMASH things.
TW: for video game violence against women (towards the end)
In the game of Patriarchy women are not the opposing team. They are the ball.
If you don’t have time to watch the whole thing, fast forward to about 17:55 which will give you a quick overview of how male characters are treated in the video game world as compared to the treatment female characters get.
Categories: culture wars, gender & feminism, media
96th Down Under Feminists Carnival 
Don’t read Paglia, read Ivins 
DUFC #69 
Today in Tangential Learning: the smell of chloroform 
Hoyden About Town 
Oh no, I just realised my whole anecdote about the railway tracks is gone. Bum.
Ohhh, that was really fascinating too Orlando. I wonder what else they have changed around to make it man saves weak woman instead of ‘self rescuing woman rescues herself’ or rescues man from danger.
Please post your analogy again Orlando!
OK, here goes. The motif of the villain tying someone to the railway tracks predates the Keystone Cops movie that Anita mentions. It was first seen in a 19th century melodrama, but in that version it was the comic sidekick who was tied to the tracks, and he was rescued by the heroine. The villain had locked her in the signal box, but she breaks her way out with an axe in the nick of time to free the comic, who then turns to the audience and says, “An’ these are the women who ain’t to have the vote.”
In a more recent, related, good news story, here is a fab dad who developed some hacks in order to make Pauline a playable character for his daughter: http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/10/4086458/father-hacks-donkey-kong-for-daughter-swaps-mario-pauline