Recasting the professional communication classroom to consider gender identity

While gender identity has recently begun to receive attention within academia, the topics of diverse sexualities and gendered identities in video games and apps have received little scholarly consideration. With the recent cultural shift in the United States towards acceptance of same-sex marriages and inclusion of GLBT individuals in American society as a whole, we should see more widespread representation of this historically marginalized population in video games and apps as well. The purpose of this work in progress is to start and to advance a conversation among engineering educators of how the social construction of gender and the representation of GLBT characters in the video games and apps may be included in the curricular design of technical communication courses serving primarily engineering students.