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Dad Hacks "Donkey Kong" - Now Pauline Rescues Mario
H_Fisher writes "What do you do when your daughter wants the girl to be the hero of your old video game? If you're Mike Mika, you hack the game ROM to reverse the roles. He even changed the 'M' at the top of the screen to a 'P.'"
... let's just hope his daughter doesn't want two moms. Just sayin' we know what he'll be hacking next is all.
What is the deal with this "gender empowerment" thing? Guys like to play as female characters all the time. Read anything into it that you like. But the fact is that largely, the media fits the audience.
How is this gender empowerment when a man does it for a woman? At best it's "I want, I get" empowerment which is just kind of the wrong message I think here. "I deserve because I'm female" doesn't make sense to me and shouldn't make sense to anyone with a sense of respect.
What is this drive everywhere we look? "How can we change the world [superficially] so women feel more empowered?" The world got the way it was/is because of men doing a lot of things. Driven men. Hard working men. I'm not saying there aren't driven women and hard working women. I'm saying there's not enough of them to make a difference. So why are men responsible for women and their lack of interest or lack of ambition? The world already accomodates women who are driven and have ambition. Why do we have to do more?
"Oh hey! It's a game dude! Why are you making such a big deal out of it?" Because it's in childhood that expectations of life are formed. "Back in the day" people were extremely concerned about spoiling children. Well, back in the day, I was all for it... I was a child after all. But lately, I'm beginning to understand what it was all about. Childhood is a stage in which many of our ideas about life are formed. The notions we carry into adulthood were often formed during childhood. (Why do boys marry women who were like their mothers? Girls attracted to men like their fathers?) So yes, it makes sense we shouldn't spoil our children.
And what of it? A little princess of a girl goes out into the world expecting everyone to treat her like daddy and the boys at school did? The real world wants something in exchange and before long she wants what she had badly enough that she will give whatever it takes to get it back. We all know where this goes I suppose. Instead of catering, we should be teaching and training for the world they will live in. Parents should be teaching their children how to live in this world and if they don't like the world, how to help change it for the better.
"Women in the workplace." "Women in _______" We say these things like they are new ideas. These weren't exactly new ideas before I was born. Why are they still being studied 50+ years later? We know we can't make women more like men. And we shouldn't. It's an insult to women. So instead what are we doing? Making men more like women?!? How is that not an insult to men?
Okay... somehow my rant button was pushed instead of "wake up and get ready for work." Hope it was at least entertaining.