Like many other self-professed “gamers” I greedily snatched up The Orange Box, a compilation of five different games and one of the best offers of the year, when it came out early in October. After all, it is five games for the price of one, so I simply could not resist. I quickly played through one of the five games, Portal, as fast as I could.

In the game you play as a female character named Chell who must pass a series of tests using a gun that shoots inter-dimensional portals that allow her to travel from place to place. Eventually she must use these portals to escape from the facility she is being tested in by a crazy robot named GLaDOS. (Um, spoilers.) I found myself playing it over and over again; it was the most addictive and trippy game I’d ever played. Life was good.

Everything changed when I went online a few days later and stumbled upon an article on a blog written by Bonnie “Heroine Sheik” Ruberg. Bonnie felt the need to read deeply into the game, much like my English teachers, and eventually came to the conclusion that “Portal Is for Lesbians.” I did a double take when I read the headline, after-all, there were certainly no overt homosexual overtones in the game.

Bonnie rests her entire argument on just two pieces of evidence. The first is that every character in the game is female. Now that may sound like a convincing argument, but there are only two characters in the game.

And one is a robot.

Bonnie’s other argument does provide a bit more insight into her claim that “Portal is for Lesbians.” I can’t say it better than Bonnie herself: “We’ve talked before about how the guns in first-person shooters act as phallic avatars–that is, as penises. But in a world of women, this gun doesn’t shoot bullets. It shoots orifices. Openings. Fine, vaginas. Vaginas you, a female character, have to enter/exit to solve puzzles. I don’t say this often, and almost never with so much support and enthusiasm, but that is so gay.”

Yes, you read that right. Apparently Portal is a game in which you travel between vaginas to escape an evil robot woman. Gay isn’t exactly the first word that pops into my head after that description, but we’ll give Bonnie the benefit of the doubt here.

This article was then linked all over the internet, where other gaming blogs including “Rock, Paper, Shotgun” invite their readers to debate the topic. Following a quick Google search I was able to find over a million extremely convincing counter-arguments.

Angry_customer argues, “I just read your article. Now I want my IQ back.”

Evilduck agrees, saying, “...and that, people, is a perfect example of too much time and drugs. Thank you for visiting this class and remember to stay off the interwebs when you’re high!”

I’m glad such a broad variety of opinions are being shared on these comment threads. Maybe next the posters will head on over to “Ain’t It Cool News’” quick-witted talk-back section and complain that “gEorge lucas R gaY 4 jar jar beenks.”

After literally hours of searching I finally came across a halfway intelligent post – one that didn’t simply dismiss the homosexual theme of the game, but actually took the metaphor one step further.

I happened upon a post by Sir_Doom that claims, “By your logic (which I totally agree with), this is not a game about lesbians at all. This is a game about female masturbation. You have a portal and you play with it … You even get your own special tool to open *cough*stimulate*cough* your portal.”

Um, okay....

I think the answer is simple. Portal is for lesbians.  Just as every game where you shoot bullets is about gay men/masturbation/penetrating other people with your penis.  Actually, why relegate this metaphor just to first-person shooters.  Every time I take a drink from a water bottle I am clearly sucking a cock, when I play tennis I am stroking balls with a friend, and when I stick my key into the lock on my door to unlock it I am obviously using the key as an analogy for my desire to fuck my door.  It all makes sense now!

Sigmund Freud would certainly agree with these analyses. In Freud’s phallocentric psychoanalysis everything could be related to male genitalia. Ronald Veenker, a professor at Western Kentucky University, talks about how these sexual metaphors are present even in the Bible as fruit and the Garden of Eden. It is only natural that in this time of equality between the sexes we would encounter a bit of psychology in which female genitalia takes center stage.