3.1 Equality & Diversity

What is Equality & Diversity

Equality is a major topic in the 21st century, creating a huge change on how we see each other and how we act towards each other. Unfortunately however, we are still trying to make everything equal in our society. This is because this is a sensitive topic and there are many issues and problems that we have to resolve to move forward. Equality’s definition is “the state or quality of being equal; correspondence in quantity, degree, value, rank or ability”; source from “Dictionary.com“.

Diversity is the inclusion of a large range of people no matter of their race, sex, age, disability, skin colour, culture or religion. In this century there has been a huge increase in diversity in society, however there is still a lot more needed to be done. Diversity is very beneficial in our society as it allows us to share each others skills and talents to create better versions of literally everything. In addition, someones skill or knowledge is no longer judged on something about them, for example their race. Lastly, the definition of diversity is “the inclusion of individuals representing more than one national origin, colour, religion, socioeconomic, stratum, sexual orientation”; sourced from “Dictionary.com“. 

Unfortunately, people in the Games Industry sometime use diversity just for the sake of it, like as though they just want to make themselves look like a better company or person, even if it is unnecessary or the character is a different race. A recent example of this is ‘The Witcher’s’ new Netflix series. A character in the game called Ciri is a Caucasian teenager, however the Director of the TV series is looking to use a BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) actress for the character. Now, the real issue with this is not that someone who is not Caucasian could not do it. It is that they will not particularly look like Ciri, moreover the game is mostly filled with Scandinavians, so having a different race will look strange. Lastly, using diversity to just seem relatable makes the company seem rather pathetic and creates a more negative effect other than a positive one.

Race & Ethnicity

What is Race?

Race is a group of people with similar physical features, this tends to be skin colour, hair texture and similar features. These features are normally similar in countries as people from the same country tend to have similar features, meaning they are in the same ‘Race’. An example, of this is the ‘Asian Race’.

What is Ethnicity?

this a group or category who identify themselves with similarities with people around them, these similarities will be their nationality, language, culture and society. In addition, ethnicity is usually inherited from your parents, unless you are born in a different country to the rest of your family.

Race & Ethnicity MindMap

The link below is a link to a mind map with different races/ethnicity’s all over the globe. This small mindmap is a  small example of how many different races and ethnicity’s there are, if i were to write down all of them id still be doing it whilst you are reading this :).

Race & Ethnicity MindMap

In Class Task

In this task we had to answer all the questions in pairs simple with either ‘True’ or ‘False’. Even though we totally guessed everything, we were surprised when we got everything correct. But even more surprised by some of the facts and when the events happened.

Sexuality

LGBTQIAPK+ Idols

What is Sexuality?

Human sexuality is the way people experience and express themselves sexually. This involves biological, erotic, physical, emotional, social, or spiritual feelings and behaviors. Because it is a broad term, which has varied over time, it lacks a precise definition.

sourced from; Wiki

Examples of different Sexuality’s

• Asexual: No attraction to sexuality.
• Bisexual: When you are attracted to two or more genders.  This term is usually used to describe being attracted to men and women, but can be applied to being attracted to any two or more genders. However, you do not have to be equally attracted to either gender.
• Pansexual: When you are attracted to all genders and/or do not concern gender when you are attracted towards someone.
• Polyamorous: people who have or are open to have relationships with multiple people at the same time.
• Homosexual: The attraction to a gender the same as their own.

sourced from: List of Sexuality’s

Alan Turing

Alan Turing was a computer science in World War 2, who went down in history for being the man to break the German Enigma Code that helped England find out what the Germans were planning.  However, even though he made one of the biggest break through’s in World War 2 history, Alan Turing  was convicted of “Gross Indecency” with another male. This is because Alan was Homosexual and was discriminated for his sexuality at the time.

In addition to his conviction, Alan Turing was then forced to go through a “Organo-Therapy” were the patient has a chemical castration, removing hormones that could be affecting his emotions (potentially making him ‘feel’ homosexual). However, unfortunately because of these horrendous results Alan committed suicide two years later, using cyanide, at the age of 41.

Ellen DeGeneres

Ellen DeGeneres is a TV show host, who hosts ‘The Ellen DeGeneres Show’. Furthermore she is very well known for being a LGBT+ activist and sharing with the public truly about her sexuality. Becoming one of the most famous LGBT+ activists and increasing popularity and information about what it means to be apart of LGBT+.

Unfortunately, even though she was famous etc she still cam across discrimination over her career, which created issues with her performance in her career. A horrendous example of this is in 1997 and article from CNN says that Ellen became very upset after ‘coming out’ about her sexuality because the production ABC applied a ‘Parental Advisory’ on her show, “Ellen”, because of Ellen’s sexuality.

Micheal Sam

Micheal Sam was the first professional American footballer to ever come out as Homosexual/Gay. This is a major step as many fans of the sport are very narrow sighted (or most likely dumb) to change and diversity. In addition, quite a lot of the football fans have very extreme views on members of LGBT+. Because of this after Micheal ‘coming out’ his time in the NFL was not long. For the next year he was passed from team to team, until he was left without a team. Unfortunately, because of all of this he quit his career because of mental health reasons, most likely created from the trauma of being kicked to curb out of his dream career because of sexuality.

In Class Task about LGBT

In this task we had to link key days with information with specific dates. As you can see i did not do too well, however this is not bad because the task did not rely on us getting them all right. The aim of the task was to show/highlight key information that we never knew before and how laws have only really recently been passed. Helping to show us the importance of Sexuality and how it effects everyone majorly in these modern times.

Violence

What is Violence?

Behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.

How is violence used in the…

Neanderthal Period- The neanderthal people used violence to survive. They would kill prey and destroy anything they could later have as food or shelter. Violence was also used by them to to attack predators or anyone or anything that threatened them. They would have destroyed trees and bushes to help build them a shelter to live in.

Medieval Period- violence in the medieval period was mainly between humans, especially those of different religions or other countries. Countries would go to war and use weapons and machines to hurt or even kill each other. However, violence was also used for the guilty, beheading’s were commonly used. For two reasons, one, as a way of eliminating prisoners and secondly, as a way of intimidating anyone else in the hope that they would not do the same as the guilty. Otherwise they would end up with the same fate.

Industrial Period- The biggest event in this period was the ‘Industrial Revolution’, this gave mankind the ability to mass produce on a gigantic scale. However, this new technology came far before we were ready, creating resultant violence and inevitably sending countries into chaos. This lead to the oppressed being put into horrible conditions that could end up killing them.

Violence in video games

Violence has always been a major part of millions of games through the industry and the years it has been around. The level of violence in games can be as basic as the player jumping on an enemy to squish them, removing/killing them from the level. On the opposite end of the spectrum there are games with torture, murder and other extremely violent scenes, creating fantasies that people may wish to be able to experience. Furthermore, violence can be even in children’s games on a basic/ innocent level, this tends to stop it from effecting children’s views and thoughts. However, people argue otherwise saying that violence in games effects children majorly, making them become violent in their older tears. In my opinion i believe that that is incorrect because even kids as young as five can clearly separate virtual from reality.

 

What is Representation?

Representation is the how people, the media, industries etc present gender, ethnicity, race and social issues. The media and industries have a huge influence on people about anything and everything they represent to the public, allowing them create and change peoples opinions on different subjects. This could be about genders, races or anything you can think of, obviously within reason.

In Class Task about how women are represented over the years

In this task we were given a large pile of pictures of different advert posters, with these we had to lay them out in order of age, in a time line. Trying to make it as accurate as possible without any help from the internet, just by using personal knowledge and when we think they were made. This was proven rather difficult. The reason for this task was to show us how women were represented has continuously been changing over the past century. 

By the end of the task i was shocked at how even in our modern era big companies like “Nissan” are using very sexualized representations of women to try and attract customers to their product. However, our group did pretty well at putting our posters in order, with only a few in the incorrect places.

Women in the Games Industry

This industry has always been and continues to be heavily male orientated. This accounts for people working in the industry and customers who are a part of it. Fortunately, this is beginning to change as more women are becoming a part of the industry, seeing the positives of it and what part of it they can fit in with. This has been proven by a survey done in 2015 involving 3,000 employees in the industry. This survey showed that 75% of the workforce being male and the other 22% being female, the rest was another gender. This compared to a survey done in 2005 where only 11.5% of the workforce being female, shows us that the workforce of females in the industry has doubled.

sourced from: women in industry stats

Representation of Women in Games

Women in video games have usually been used as ways of attracting males to play companies games because of their looks etc. With female characters rarely being heroic or main characters with genuine emotions. However, this is beginning to change as more women join the gaming community, companies have realised they need to change how women are presented in the industry.  Example of women being presented as overly sexualized is Lara croft and the first installation of the “Tomb Raider”. Lara was labeled the first ‘Cyber-babe’ because of her large polygonal breasts. For the years to come the companies that created the game series began to develop the character from an overly sexualized female to a heroic character who served a powerful purpose in the story within the games, making that the main focus of the game, rather than her breasts.

How women have been presented throughout history

How women have been treated in history has depended on the culture and country they are in. With the only thing they have all really had in common is that they have all mainly been the minority of the genders.

In the UK, women in history have been looked upon to be the housewives of the family, cooking, cleaning, looking after the children and all of these sort of jobs to be done by the female rather than the male. This was because men were expected to go out and work, to bring in the money for the family. There is no real explanation for this other that it was seen that men were the only ones were able to successfully be able to work and so women had to look after the home.

Below, we had to complete another event and date match up where the events where when women’s rights laws were passed and other key events happened. And again the idea of this task was show and shock us the years these events happened, this did work. This is because sexual offences act that stopped intercourse without consent was only passed as law in 1956, which to me is insane because this meant it was perfectly fine to basically rape up until this date.