From the time of ancient civilizations to the centuries of modern advancements, we have grown far in expanding both literary works and scientific achievements. Yet one aspect remains the same, whether neglected or simply ignored, the persistence of misogynist attitudes in our culture continue to hinder ongoing possibilities of the future.

Now you might ask, why do such thoughts continue to occur? Are we not settled into an era of historically remarkable changes? Movements that we would have never regarded to come true before? Well, to begin with, the issue of misogyny has been deeply rooted in the history of our culture. Early stories and depictions widely regarded women as nothing more than objects of affection or, crudely speaking, “trophies” of a culture determined to highlight masculinity. Being the “fragile creatures” that they were, the only expectations of them were to master the duties of housekeeping and child rearing.

It was deemed as the “natural balance” of a “harmonious society” and, as such, women interested in working and competing along with their male counterparts endured much ridicule and mockery. But times have changed and intellectuals have extended to include both genders. Women are able to work and are allowed the same rights as men, so then what’s wrong? The problem with this disposition is that “gender equality” is only a term written on paper; a means to pacify the growing population who wanted change.

In fact, upon closer inspection we continue to see offensive treatment towards women in not only a profession working environment but in the online networking world as well. Robert Yang, author of the piece “On ‘FeministWhorePurna’ and the Ludo-material Politics of Gendered Damage Power-ups in Open-World RPG Video Games”, shares “Deep Silver’s 2011 open-world zombie game Dead Island…in light of its ‘Feminist Whore’ scandal…outlets reported in a data file…containing the text string ‘FeministWhorePurna’…referring to a player skill power-up for a woman named Purna (pg 97)”.

In response to this news coverage, developers of the game excused themselves by explaining that “The line in question was something a programmer considered as a private joke. The skill naturally has a completely different in-game name… (pg 98)”. Rather than take immediate action to properly renounce this very same programmer (whose ‘jokes’ and morality should be taken into deep consideration when hired), the company merely made a apologetic statement. Their sales did not go down; it promoted the game to a greater degree which onlookers bought out of curiosity and entertainment through the scandal.

The absurdity does not stop there. In the article “Code is Political” written by Julianne Tveten, states “a number of ‘esoteric’ languages…surfaced, infusing blithe humor into computer code to create subcultural jokes,” with one founder being 4chan, who “created an anti-feminist language called C+= (C Plus Equality); its code include functions like “CheckPrivilege()” and “yell(‘RAPE RAPE RAPE RAPE!!!!!’)””. How anyone finds this to be simply a joke is beyond baffling. How no one thought this to be a serious issue is even more perplexing. Then is the nature of “men” just savages, or the communal impact that makes them so?