Powerful Ally: This Man Will Frown And Look Away When Death Stranding Does Some Fucked-Up Shit To Women

Local ally and male feminist Jerome Bowdler is just one of the many male gamers who are taking the pledge to stand up for the women in their life, by looking away and refusing to watch any of the cutscenes in Death Stranding which feature gross, fucked-up misogynistic shit.

The pledge, organised by a group calling themselves ‘Reluctant Day One Purchasers’, or the ‘Death Stan-ers’, is pushing back against the old stereotype of gamers as women-and-minority-hating basement dwellers. By making this pledge, a new generation of gamers is showing that they refuse to sit idly by and watch women be treated as weird vehicles for bizarre male fantasies when they could, in fact, not watch at all.

In his Facebook post announcing that he had taken the pledge and urging all of his male friends to both do the same and to share his post as widely as possible, Bowdler explained that the best way to stand up against the kind of “artistic eccentricity” that game director Hideo Kojima was famous for, was to “turn 90 degrees away from the screen, frown extremely hard, and think about other things, like what your wife or mother is making for dinner.”

“Together we can send a powerful message to Sony – we may be paying full price for the game, but you’re not paying full price for our principles,” Bowdler continued. “Which are also not for sale! Respect women.”

Although Bowdler’s public display of allyship has drawn criticism from some unappreciative women on the grounds that it’s “fucking stupid” and “giving off a weird vibe,” this gamer is sticking to his guns.

“There are so many wonderful and diverse creators out there and it’s up to us to seek out and enjoy more media from queer people, trans people, people of colour, to really bring those perspectives into the mainstream and stop dealing with the same old problematic shit over and over again,” he told Point & Clickbait.

“And right after I’ve finished putting 100 hours into Death Stranding, I’ll be sure to learn the names of some of those people. In the meantime, with my wife’s permission, I am available to give tips on feminism to any women who will let me DM them.”