Girls like sparkly stuff. Boys like internal combustion engines. That's the way it's always been and always will be. Right? Well, yes, it will be unless censors grow a pair of proper man-sized bollocks and stop acting like a bunch of women when it comes to rating evil games that influence children into following a preordained, socially-accepted gender path.
Take Smart Boy's Gameroom (aka I Did It Mum! (Boy)) and Smart Girl's Playhouse (aka I Did It Mum! (Girl)) on DS, for example. The following oppressive extractment of conventional gender stereotyping is taken directly from the I Did It Mum! press release:
"There are two versions of the game - one for boys and one for girls. The two versions have a different selection of mini-games designed to appeal to sons and daughters alike, with the boy version featuring games like 'toy train' or 'drive the car,' and the girl version offering games like 'colour the animals' or 'little kitchen'."
Little bloody kitchen!? If we were women we'd be PMT furious. It's institutionalised sexism. But, according to the censors, there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. If we weren't incredibly busy looking at tits and sport and cars on the internet all day, we'd probably start a petition rallying against this subversive proliferation of sex-based pigeonholing. Maybe some women might fight the cause for us. We know they're happiest when they're having a moan.
