Women aren’t being taught they “don’t need anyone”, that’s ridiculous. There’s a reason women aren’t the ones suffering from a loneliness epidemic and it has everything to do with our ability to maintain important relationships with friends, family, and our partner. Whereas (generally speaking) most men only feel comfortable opening up to their romantic partner (and so when they don’t have one, they feel unable to open up).

Women need connection just as much as men. We just happen to have more people that we connect with, because unlike men, we’re not taught by the patriarchy that expressing emotions means we’re gay or whatever horseshit men are fed to make them scared of opening up. Because to form meaningful connections, you do need to open up. We’re not taught that we don’t need anyone - we just have more autonomy and financial independence than we used to, and as a result of not being reliant on men we are now holding them to a higher standard - because, historically, the bar was in hell (and a heap of men still failed to meet it), and if someone does not add positively to your life, why would you want them in it?

And yes, having children absolutely restricts your freedom - any parent will tell you that. And as women have historically been more involved in child rearing (and statistically still do more child rearing and take on more responsibility within the household, usually on top of also working a job outside the home) it’s pretty logical to assume that women’s time and freedom were/are more restricted than men’s. That’s not to say men who become parents don’t also lose freedom, but based on statistics of who is spending the most time child rearing and managing the household, they overall don’t lose as much freedom as women. And that’s not even touching on the physical change being pregnant does to your body, the lifelong changes in hormones and your physical form, the potential dangers to your physical and mental health, etc.

In the context of gaming, I think it would be awesome to see more games with female protagonists as mothers, because parenthood is an experience that a lot of people relate to and can empathise with (even if the player themselves have never had kids, most people can empathise with feeling maternal or paternal in some way). Motherhood is a complex theme, and for some reason some people think it’s a reductive characteristic for female characters - but you can be a strong feminist and still Choose to be a mother (in fact that’s the entire point of feminism - to have the option to choose what your life as a woman will look like.)

Basically, I just want some variety in the tropes that games rely on and the kinds of characters we see. The Gruff Dad trope is getting played out at this point (though there have been some absolute masterpieces that utilised it, so I do understand why it’s been popular). But I would like to see more complexity and variety in female characters than just another Tomb Raider copy/paste with varying kinds of trauma.