I am
not a gamer. I think that the last game I played was Mortal
Kombat back in the 90s which mainly consisted of hitting a lot of
buttons with no idea what I was doing. (Worked for me though, I
had a good success rate!)
The
guy I am dating is a gamer. I was interested to see how games
have progressed over the years, in terms of graphics, how realistic, what they were like to play now etc etc. My first introduction was the new Spiderman game and I
was amazed at how far games have come along. You could actually learn your way around New York just by playing the game and the quality of the animation is as good as and in some cases better than film quality.
Then he showed me Battlefield V. I wasn't sure a first
person shooter game was going to be something that interested me, but he showed me the advertisement video as a taster and I was shocked to see
that one of the first people I saw was a woman. On the front
line, in a WW2 game.
Women
were not on the front line in WW2.
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| Photo Credit |
The
Russians, I agree, had women in active duty, such as Lyudmila
Pavlichenko, the famous Soviet sniper. But were there
American and British women on the front lines of battle in hand to
hand combat against the Nazis? No.
Featuring
women on the promo posters and showing them predominantly in the game
for me, is an insult to both the men who actually served on the
front, but also, the women who contributed to the war effort, many
dying in the process.
Have
we reached a place where inclusivity prevails over historical
accuracy?
Now
in 2019 women can serve in any branch of the military as a man.
If you can pass the same physical tests that men undergo, there
is no reason to stop a woman who wishes to serve her country and be
at the front line of battle. Women are already doing this now
and have died doing so.
But
in WW2 this was not on the case. Not in battle. This is
where EA DICE have fundamentally screwed up. Including women in
this game is completely historically incorrect and to me, is so
wrong.
While
women were not subject to the draft and were not called to the front,
women did contribute to the war effort, some sacrificing their lives
in the process. They worked in munition factories. They
drove ambulances. Ferried planes. Nurses joined the war
effort in their thousands, stationed close to the front and helping
wounded soldiers. Some died in the process.
Women
were recruited for and joined the resistance, became spies and
operatives; risking their lives to share information and derail the
Nazis. They fought. They shot and just like the men who
they fought along side, some were captured, tortured and died.
Women
like Irena Sendler, a Polish social worker who saved over 2500 Jewish
children from the Nazis in Warsaw. She was captured, tortured
to the extent that her legs and feet were broken, yet she refused to
provide information.
American
Virginia Hall, called "the most dangerous of the Allied spies"
by the Nazis. Despite only having one leg, she helped to train
the French resistance and caused chaos for the Nazis with cutting
supply lines and gathering vital information, all the while being
hunted by the SS/
New
Zealander Nancy Wake aka "the white mouse" as she was
called by the Germans who on occasion, killed Nazis with her bare
hands.
Violette
Szabo, who worked as a British operative and resistance fighter and
fought against the Nazis. She was ultimately captured and
despite several escape attempts from the concentration camp, was
ultimately executed. She was the second woman to ever be
awarded posthumously the George Cross.
There
are so many more.
My
point? EA DICE did not need to pander to inclusivity by
including women in the game, featured in places where they did not
fight. Because although not at the front lines, women served
their countries in many ways, dying in the process.
You
want to include women in WW2 in a game? Make a game about the
resistance, about spies in WW2, where women served alongside men.
Don't just include them in a game to appease gender equality.
Women played their own, active and vital part too.
Celebrate that. Don't put women where they were not and do not insult in the process the war heroes who fought on the front lines and died for our country. Both men and women deserve better than this.
