I’m not much of a consumer of video games myself, but sadly not much of the imagery shown in Anita Sarkeesian’s video “Women as Background Decoration” surprised me. Both the blatant sexualizations and reduction of the women characters’ humanities to sex objects and the acts of normalized physical violence done to them disgusted me, but were not overly surprised me. The biggest question that kept occurring to me was how this constant desensitization of violence and sexuality, oftentimes depicted as one and the same, affects the boys and young men who consume this media. Oftentimes the audience for this media are boys going through puberty, and between media like this and their presumed consumption of pornography around that age, the messaging they consume about how they are meant to treat women in their lives must be hugely influential. While we can’t solely pinpoint the cause of phenomena such as rape culture, domestic violence, etc. to the creators and consumers of video games such as these, surely they can be considered a piece to this complicated puzzle? As someone with a teenage younger brother at home, it definitely concerns me to see such scenes, knowing that teenage boys particularly are searching for narratives they deem to be counternormative to the lessons they are learning at school and at home, making these seemingly edgy violent video games widely appealing to their developing moral senses. It brings them closer to their peers, who are also playing these games, and an anonymous online community who may exist on the fringe of society with beliefs that range from “satirical” to blatantly violent. All of it makes me deeply concerned.Â