Common Core High School Class Calls Video Games ‘Sexist’

Libertarian feminist Dr. Christina Hoff Sommers is no friend to liberal academics, as the latest planned boycott of an upcoming UCLA appearance still demonstrates, but one cannot deny her influence and public recognition on the issues of feminism and political correctness in the current political sphere.  She makes no apologies regarding her opinion, which is very similar to my own that leftist political correctness has hijacked the feminist cause and turned it into something akin to political and societal napalm.  I love her for it.

Dr. Sommers’ crosshairs have most recently caught sight of a truly baffling case, indeed – a high school class built for the express purpose of satisfying a particular requirement of the Common Core class model, titled “Is Gaming A Boy’s Club,” is perpetuating that completely-original-no-kidding myth that video games are the devil and are the reason for [insert current negative headline of the time].  This, of course, is ludicrous, and Dr. Sommers in her own words says as much (albeit much more eloquently) during a video segment she recorded for the American Enterprise Institute, “The War on Gamers Continues:”

“‘Is Gaming A Boy’s Club?’ is the name of a school lesson plan developed by the Anti-Defamation League—ADL for short. The ADL is a well-respected organization that has fought anti-Semitism and racism for decades. As a long-time admirer of the ADL, I am baffled by its sponsorship of such a biased and dogmatic curriculum. The lesson plan advertises itself as meeting standards for inclusion in the Common Core—an influential national curriculum. The entire lesson plan is dedicated to the proposition that video games are a hotbed of sexism and misogyny, and it gives students the message that anyone who dares to suggest that games should be more inclusive can expect to be terrorized by malevolent gamers.”

Dr. Sommers continues in the segment to also point out that the supposed scholarship behind these fatuous claims is not scholarly at all, and cultivates conformation bias in place of actual seeking of the truth in order to solve a perceived problem.  “Lesson materials include a video and an article by feminist critic Anita Sarkeesian—both are harsh indictments of the world of gaming,” Sommers explains.  “That would be fine if she were not the only assigned author.”

Ouch.

The prospect of female gamers being ostracized or ignored completely by feminists trying to make video games about misogyny is also very likely, illustrates Dr. Sommers:

“The curriculum also includes a small group discussion on sexism and video games and ‘additional resources’ that focus on—guess what?– harassment, misogyny, and terror in the culture of video games.  The curriculum is not only obsessively one-sided—much it is false, misleading, or exaggerated. Let’s start with the very first sentence. ‘Video games do not have a good track record when it comes to positively including girls and women.’ But on page 3 of the curriculum students learn that women now constitute 48 percent of video game players—up from 40 percent in 2010. An important study has shown that there has been a major demographic shift in the video game industry toward the inclusion of women, but men and women prefer to play different types of games.”

In other words, the claim at the top of the class that video games are inherently anti-women is directly contradicted by the same course’s own sources later on.  Which is it, ADL?  Apparently, it’s both, either, or neither, depending on the venue.  Not the most intellectually honest stance to take, but certainly successful from the capitalist’s perspective in that Common Core must sometimes be misrepresented in order to be embraced by certain circles.  In this case, the ADL’s apparent push to assuage the hostility toward Common Core seems evident, and therefore we should applaud Dr. Sommers for standing up and pointing out this fact.

Full video segment can be viewed below:

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