“The Boyfriend Trainer” app: Teaching Youth To Abuse

by a Mumbai-based company Games2win India

We all love games.  But there is a degree of tolerance that we all have for say nudity and violence.  Even Apple has banned apps due to nudity and violence against women.  So, WHY is this app being allowed in the Apple itunes store and the Android app store for downloading?!?!  Is Intimate Partner Violence only men hurting women??  Of course not!!  There are many, many women who are violent to their boyfriends.  And yes, this is also Intimate Partner Violence.  So why are these companies allowing this as though it is okay?  They will not comment.  At least not yet.

The description of the game is “Crack that whip and teach your guy a thing or two about being the Perfect Boyfriend!  When scolding doesn’t work, just zap him, whack him and train him to be your ideal man!”   Each level has a lesson that the girlfriend will teach the boyfriend through violence.  This will in turn change him to be the way that she wants him to be.  What does this teach our youth?  It teaches them that through violence you can change your partner, or at least try to.  This is not a healthy relationship.  If it were, they would respect each others differences and accept and love them for who they are.

It begins that you are instructed to slap the boyfriend every time he looks at another girl, leaving a big red welt on his face every time she slaps it.  You have to abuse the boyfriend in order to move on to the next level.

Lesson two is not only abusive but sexist as well.  It insinuates that females are supposed to clean up after males.  However, if this boyfriend doesn’t clean up after himself, he will get tasered.  It goes on to teach the boyfriend not to drink your drink, turn up the radio, flex his muscles with girls around, ignore you, fall asleep at a movie, speed, play around when they should be doing chores and to stay with and near you when you shop for clothes.  All of these are punishable by physical abuse: getting hit on the head with a tennis racket, getting a shovel of sand in the face, having weights dropped on his foot, getting maced at the Prom with friends looking on and laughing, and getting strangled by a leash in the car, at which one point he struggles back!  After each level, you receive encouragement.   At the end of ten horrifying scenes of violence, you are finally “rewarded’ with the “Perfect Boyfriend”, the “Ideal Mate”, who is not really himself at all!

Personally, I am surprised that we are just now hearing about this since it has been out there for at least a few months now.  Then again, I am not so surprised, because violence against men aren’t taken as seriously as against women.  We need to strip away our gender stereotypes and realize that we are all just people and ANYONE can get hurt and controlled…BY ANYONE!!  They don’t have to be six foot five and three hundred pounds to be considered a believable abuser!  People are savvy in the way in which they gain their control.  So, whether it’s men against women, women against men, men against men or women against women… Intimate Partner Violence is all about violence between people who are intimate, no matter what their gender.

So, let’s click onto Games2win or their supporters out there, Apple and Android, and let them know what we really think of this app!  It’s abusive, demeaning and a terrible game for their target audience (or any audience)…ages 4 and up!!!  What kind of example would this be for a four year old!  Their little personalities are still forming!

And remember…

In real life, she would have been arrested in lesson 1.

Go out and make a difference!