"It's not historically accurate!"

[Administrator]

Recently I wrote about the realisation that I am sexist and how I'm trying to change. The response was fascinating. OK, a few people were so upset that I want to respect other people's humanity that they threatened to leave the site forever, but I also received lots of thoughtful messages, in comments and by email, leaving me with lots more to think about.
One of the ones that stuck out came from a reader called Juliane, who told me about something that always irks her when this subject comes up. It's the old argument that female protagonists don't make sense in a lot of games (or books or movies or comics or whatever) because their presence isn't historically accurate.
Juliane had a good point to make about this, but before we get into it, let's first take the opportunity to consider how selective the "it's not historically accurate" defence is whenever it's levelled at people who advocate for the addition of female characters to video games (or indeed any character that isn't white, straight, male, vest-owning).
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