Gender And Intersectionality

After reading a cut of Peggy McIntosh's paper on Male and White Privilege the most obvious parallel I could draw from a game was that of Bioshock Infinite and how it displayed the views of traditional christian patriarchs in a post emancipation America. While the game definitely took it to the extreme in its themes when discussing this area as to give black and Irish workers prison like uniforms and have them apologise for their appearance on approach, in a game about time and space tears you could almost call it subtle.
The game did truly explore the nature of white privilege in depth in the character Comstock, specifically in how rationalised and viewed black people as sub-human with his phrase 'no creature in gods kingdom is born free. Except the white man.' Also the way he took Lincoln's emancipation of slaves as an insult further cemented the mind of a man believing to be entitled to white privilege. Racists thought they were cheated and stolen from after the emancipation as for decades their families had been entirely built profiting off slave labour to the point where it was the only thing that made sense. Yet Comstock created a world literally above the law with Columbia, using the belief that blinded him to manipulated the minds of his people and when this failed he resorted to propaganda and violence, an extreme interpretation of real world events.

I also watched John Berger's Way of Seeing and I really appreciated the messaged he made throughout the program of how women are represented in traditional art as objects of desire in the eyes of man and not as themselves. Clearly he was being meticulous in his choice of words at the time, this was the 1970's, to avoid commenting directly on sexism. A similar study today would like result in rather harsher language but for the most part I agreed with the points he made on the subject of nudes in art in that, a nude should be an image of the subjects self not be the object of the painters desire. This made me contemplate the nature of male privilege and the prevalence of the nude or desirable female form in both art and games. In comparison there are seemingly far less male nudes compared female nudes in art and even less, if any, male nudes making them the object of desire. The art featured in the program had some male nudes as part of some paintings but almost all of them where depicted in facing away or in a position of power. Games are also a common place to see male privilege, look at The Witcher 3. While I personally consider all the main female characters to be well developed and have genuine personality, not to mention intimate relations with any feel earned through either the players choice of the internal dialogue between Geralt and his love interests. However in a game appearing to have a generally gender neutral stance towards the importance of characters in the story, all the lead females are still very sexualised. Further still is the fact that sex scenes between Geralt and a lover often feature their complete nudity whereas Geralt will always appear with shorts on, not to mention there isn't any genitalia on his character model, ironic for how infamous his character is for sleeping around.
Knowing CD Project Red attitude as a developer though more than likely made this decision to appeal to the western market. Imagine a headline of 'Full Male Nudity in Game' probably wouldn't be good for business especially in the states where a naked penis is still a source of controversy.