The Gender Games: The Problem With Men and Women, From Someone Who Has Been Both

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I read this book in less than 24 hours, mainly because it's easy to digest, short and also because I ended up skipping the boring bits (I do this a lot with books - anything that's irrelevant to the storyline, you bet I'll skim right over). That's not to say this book wasn't somewhat entertaining - I did enjoy it to a point but I believe it has too many flaws and is too un-polished to receive any more than 2.5 stars. No Thank You!! recommended by James for catering to the gay male gaze and yaoi lovers, a genre of fiction popularized in Japan focused on homoerotic relationships that many heterosexual women enjoy. Can she find her brother and make sure that he is okay, or is it a forever lost cause? You are going to have to read the first book in the Gender Games series to find out!

in the gender game we have one seriously dystopian society. the world is divided in two according to gender, and neither society is all that wonderful. violet grew up in matrus, and while she has been raised to believe that matrian society is the ideal, she has also been ill-treated by it. her brother was taken at the age of 8 when it was decided that his personality traits were not ideal. a series of incidents that led to her accidentally killing fellow prisoners mean that she is marked for euthanasia. Violet is rebellious in all of the right ways and is about to use her bold side to fight the power. She’s not necessarily into the patriarchy any more than she is the women ruling, but if she wants to stay alive then she is going to have to make a forced effort to not break their rules. However, going by the set rules has never been her strong area.The same creators are also responsible for Corruption of Champions and its sequel, which are the same thing but in a fantasy setting. The Dragon Age to its Mass Effect, if you will. While a lot of saucy visual novels cast their protagonists as arrogant jerks or desperate losers, Ladykiller in a Bind puts you in the role of a suave lesbian womanizer who is confident and cool. Even if inhabiting that character isn't your fantasy, it's a fun space to explore and one that no other game does. When Violet gets in trouble, she is offered a choice : either face the penalty for her actions, or travel to Patrus as a spy (but disguised as a newlywed housewife). Along the way, Violet realizes that not all Patrians are machos and mysoginist, some are even respectful and kind to women. We chose games to review through lists of the top NSFW games on Itch.io, Patreon, and Steam. We also asked for recommendations from experts in the field, like Daily Dot reporter Ana Valens, former Kotaku sex games columnist Kate Gray, sex tech software engineer Kyle Machulis, Robert Yang, and Zsuzsa James. I’m not sure if I had any favorites in the book. There are three players in this book, Violet, Viggo and Lee.

Skyrim Romance Mod, recommended by James for catering to the straight female gaze: "While the primary purpose of this is [having] relationships, it has some steamy explicit sex scenes." The story starts out strong. Our hot-tempered heroine, Violet, is (of course) an orphan whose little brother was taken away years ago by the police because of his "domineering" character, and she has grown up in a series of detention facilities learning to fend for herself. After she gets into a fight with a bully, resulting in (accidental) womanslaughter, she is sentenced to death. However, she is offered a pardon from her crimes on the condition that she serves as an undercover agent to retrieve something in Patrus which has been stolen from Matrus's biology lab. Clearly, the government needs someone expendable. And clearly Vi has no choice. Bella Forrest is a lover of fantasy, romance, action, and mystery infused stories with twists you don’t see coming. She has sold over fifteen million books since her first novel was published in 2012. I would highly recommend this book to readers of dystopian fiction. There is a little romance in this book, but none of it is cheesy, everything is quite organic. The plot is unique and the world is definitely fun to read about....definitely different from anything I have read in a long while. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this.The beginning was good- no spoilers but the introduction to Violet's brother was a very strong starting point. Maybe I took this too far with my search for symbolism and meaning, but, let’s see, women vs men, a toxic river dividing them, deceit in its worst form, and the hidden quests for power and control with hopes of destroying all who oppose them, all while actually needing each other for the strengths each other side possesses. I liked the story, I liked the heroine and I liked the relationship she was developing with “the enemy.” The setting needed more attention. For example, each city is ruled by a monarch who lives in a palace and has courtiers, but everything works more like a democracy. And it was difficult to place it in a time period - it could've been futuristic, or an alternate modern America, but it had echoes of the 1950s in terms of fashion, and a medieval twist with the whole monarchy/sexist themes. I wanted to know how these societies came to this point. What caused the final break. How it could be decided at a government level that something as big as a national gender division should take place. I wanted to see how the mindset of the people was different. The effects of male-chauvinism on men. The effects of feminism on women. How it would isolate them from each other. The resulting disillusion and strain. How it would effect different occupations. Education. Science. Art. The political and economic situation. But none of these issues were examined. So here goes. You know I loved the book, so let me talk to you about the things that I didn't like, the things that this book had to make up for to reach the five-star rating that I've given it.

The heroine of this novel, Violet, is a strong and spirited young Matrian girl who committed crimes for which she had been thrust into detention in Matrus, commissioned by the Court to embark on a mission in Patrus to retrieve a silver egg which had been stolen from Matrus. She must complete her task without detection and without Patrus suspecting Matrus of the crime, which would result in a war between the two nations. She's a strong lead with a lot of spirit, but without the boring "girl power" that one might expect from a book in which people are divided by their gender. Her romantic interest grows throughout the novel, and their relationship is not a sudden surprise to the reader. She has always had an interest in creative writing, as it was her best subject. Now she is in the habit of using the free time that she finds herself with sitting down and jotting something down on the notepad. These days, she has not found that things have changed all that much. She will admit that she does have a bit of a vampire composition lifestyle as her new day of writing starts at one in the morning.

As a child, Violet fought to save her brother from the cruelty of Matrus in a thwarted attempt to smuggle him across the river to Patrus. Her punishment, a prison type environment that will leave her hardened, bitter and yearning for a sense of freedom neither side can provide. Her latest crime will leave her scheduled for death until she is offered the opportunity to play spy as the wife of a Matrus sympathizer in Patrus. All is not as it seems as she navigates the stifling world of Patrus and the one man she should fear the most is the one man who steals her heart, and yet, she must betray him, but for what? I liked the character of Viggo. He seemed very developed and actually acted in a way that seemed true to his character. I dislike the name though...! I had assumed Violet would overthrow the patriarchy and make them reassess the female sex with her feisty independence. Instead, she just kissed some boys, fell in 'love', ruined her undercover mission and completely failed to grasp what the word 'covert' even meant. I found her an infuriating protagonist and she seemed to dislike and yet acquiesce to the sexism she was subjected to.

The patriarchal-ruled society treated women as objects, to be seen and not heard, to live predominately in the indoor sphere, and always escorted by their spouse when in any public place. This futuristic society seemed to have devolved a few hundred years and this could almost be a classic Gothic novel, in some parts, if not for the science-fiction elements. Your parents are out, and the dial-up internet is waiting. A screechy modem is the gateway that connects you to AOL and all the slow-loading bitmaps of naked people you could want. You Must Be 18 or Older to Enter reimagines what it was like to be young in the 1990s when the internet was new, confusing, and kind of frightening. Then it casts you as a kid for whom sex is also new, confusing, and kind of frightening.That is how the lands of Patrus and Matrus were created and they give each gender the chance to run their own region without interference. Violet never thought that the world could run any different, but now she is finding that her old beliefs may have to be challenged. Like really really really slow. I don’t find this a bad thing because I know with each book it will get better and better. This book is the starter course you know? You are getting your feet wet and you are kind of feeling out the rest of the meal. Oh my gosh, Bibliobuzzers. I was so excited when I started reading Gender Game by Bella Forrest. I seriously was. Though the blurb was different than most, it tends to be the case that every YA book ends up being the same book with a different cover. It’s dystopic, which means it will either be all Hunger Games or Selection series, right?