Conclusion

So, why all the fuss? What’s the big deal? Why should we be concerned about the lack of Feminist progress made in the rhetoric of the relatively new E-gaming community? These questions can be answered by returning to Kenneth Burke. In A Rhetoric of Motives, Burke warned about the powerful influence of violent movie imagery:

Imagery invites us to respond in accordance with its nature. An adolescent is trained by our motion pictures to meditate much on the imagery of brutality and murder, as signs of action in an ideal world. By the time he is fifteen, he has witnessed more violence than most soldiers experience in a lifetime. And he has participated in all this imagery, empathically reenacting it. His awareness of himself as a developing person requires a vocabulary – and the images of brutality and violence provide such a vocabulary. One can expect such imagery to have sinister effects, particularly in view of the fact that the excessive naturalism of modern photographic art presents the violence without formal devices that bring out the purely artistic or fictive nature of such art. (18)

Burke is talking about movies, but his words seem even more powerful and prophetic when applied to anti-Feminist rhetoric in E-gaming. Indeed, Burke’s own rhetoric is squarely caught up in patriarchy; there’s no room in his language for the female adolescent. Burke was concerned in 1950 about the detrimental effects of realistically violent imagery on the formation of adolescent identity, arguing that to see violent imagery is to participate in it, which causes the imagery to be integrated and accepted into personal ideology. E-games played on personal computers allow for a much higher level of participation and interactivity between the gamer and the game, and provide graphics that are becoming more and more lifelike and realistic.

Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton

In Burkean terms, anti-Feminist imageries in E-games are helping to form anti-Feminist identities in gamers. This imagery may be most damaging to adolescent gamers, who may be unable to distinguish between the visually realistic fictive elements of an interactive narrative and reality. Through Burke, we can see how damaging this patriarchal rhetoric in E-gaming truly is: do we really want the next generation of Americans (many of whom will be E-gamers themselves) to have these anti-Feminist ideals at the core of their identity?
What is needed is vigilance and awareness, followed by action. The current E-gaming trends will shift again soon, and it’s uncertain what lies ahead. Will it be more anti-Feminist rhetoric?

I live [...] For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that I can do.

This quote was written on the title page of Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s journal, and certainly applies to the current lack of awareness about the anti-Feminist rhetoric in the E-gaming community. Only with closer rhetorical monitoring and sufficient assistance to the Feminist cause will we ever be able to tear down the numerous idols of lust in the electronic gaming community.