In one of my English classes, we’re making up a fictional publishing house, and one of my group’s books is an anthology written by gamer women, on gamer identity and forging a woman-friendly gamer identity.
If only this were a real anthology! I’ll just have to pretend that you all are contributors.
Anyone have any name suggestions? I’m trying to think of something a little more grown-up sounding than “Girls on Games.”
Valkyrie of the Frag Dolls posted a fun list on her blog: The Top 10 Most UNORIGINAL Things You Can Say to a Girl Gamer. Why do I love her list so much? I’ve heard most of these lines more than once, and usually the man or boy saying it is beside himself with his supposed cleverness.
3. Get back into the kitchen and make me a … (sandwich, turkey pot pie, etc.)
We know you’re lazy-ass gamers, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t the same. Go make your own damn food.
This one stings. When I played Final Fantasy XI back in the day, a friend and I tried to start a linkshell for women. When recruiting outside the auction house, where avatars often make food, some wanker told me to shut up and synth him a pie. Hardy har. Apparently in his manly wisdom he was able to determine that there was no need for a women’s space in FFXI.
4. You must be fat and ugly.
Yep, 300 pounds with warts all over. Gimme a break… do you really think you can hurt our feelings with this one? We all get together and have sleepovers laughing about this one.
Female gamers are accused of being one extreme or another: hot or “fat and ugly.” Fat people are hot, too, yo. And people. Don’t forget that!
5. Girls don’t play! / I didn’t know girls played games. / You’re not a girl!
Most of these comments aren’t even intentionally harmful, but this is about as stupid as it gets. I’m sorry your world has yet to expose you to the unicorn myth of girl gaming but, please, this is as insulting as it can get because it is not based on being mean. It is based on stupidity.
Valkyrie is right. This is a myth–and one I believed for years! Spreading this idea really isolates geeky women from one another. I could have been friends with so many awesome gaming girls when I was a teenager if I hadn’t believed I was the only one.
My advise to the people who spout these lines is a bit different than Valkyrie’s. Instead of challenging yourself to come up with better insults and pick-ups, how about treating women like humans instead? How about acknowledging your privilege, the power you have in geek culture, and use it to make the environment more inclusive for the rest of us?
Via Jade Reporting. Did I ever mention I’m an editor there? JR is awesome–we compile links to anything related to gender and gaming.
Yes, I’m still around! I’m stuck in Twilight Princess and Final Fantasy III. Not that I’ve had time to play Wii lately or even haul my DS around–I’m doing my first-ever performance piece this week in a show called Vagina Memoirs. My guest-blogger Meghann is in the show too! I hope that those of you who live in Bellingham will come see it. This is my debut as far as sharing my writing.
This is Meghann posting. If you need to be refreshed, I posted one other time on here about being a cheerleader (or more formally, a “navigator”) in the horror gaming world. My fear and love of horror games usually leaves me happily on the side lines. With the introduction of the Wii and games like wario ware (which I love on gamecube) and the ever popular Wii Sports, I’ve crawled out of hiding and been participating a lot more.
It seems people I know are acquiring Nintendo Wii’s left and right. Fortunately, this means I don’t have to dig into my pocket to purchase my OWN Wii when I have a large pool of people to mooch off of. Is this morally right? I think so.
The bloggers of Kotaku posted a picture of themselves. Notice what types of people are missing? Maybe that has something to do with their irresponsibility and wankery.
Remember when I was on the college radio station a few weeks back talking about MMORPGs and gender in virtual spaces? The show was nationally syndicated! You can listen here. I’m towards the beginning of the program–don’t forget now, Ariel Wetzel is my real name! My bud Alex is also on the show talking about internet privacy–she is awesome!
I’m stuck on the water temple, again.
Last time, I was 15 or 16, and it was when I played Ocarina of Time at my lil’ high school boyfriend’s house. Instead of helping me, he probably made fun of me for not being able to figure out what to do on my own.
Now I’m stuck again on the Lakebed Temple in Twilight Princess. I heard the temple was hard, but I’m embarassingly early in–the first big round room, and I can’t figure out how to pull the handles hanging from the ceiling.
I don’t want to give up on this game! I have this thing where I put off figuring out what to do for six months, and by then I’m even doubly lost because so much time has gone by I forgot what was going on in the game and specifically how I was stuck.
My real-life friends: come over and play through this temple with me! We can print a walkthrough and make popcorn. Plus, I’m not friends with people who make fun of me instead of helping me be successful anymore.
The Tenth Carnival of Feminist Science Fiction and Fantasy at Adventures in Lame. Linked posts on Cassandra Cain/Batgirl, Mary Sues, Children of Men (which I need to blog about), Supergirl, women in Spider-Man, and of course lots of posts on comics, video games, and film and tivi.
I recently discovered the blog Token Minorities. As far as I know, it’s the first video game blog focusing primarily on race. (It’s been around a few months, too! How’d I miss it so long?) Check out blogger Pat Miller’s mission statement:
Token Minorities is a blog devoted to discussing issues of race and racism in video games. Race is a touchy subject that doesn’t get a lot of airtime or word count in the video gaming media, but it’s certainly not for lack of content. As the gaming medium grows, its capacity to handle increasingly mature themes grows as well. Token Minorities was created out of the growing worry that the greater video gaming community is blissfully ignorant of the racialized content that is becoming more and more prevalent in modern video games, and more importantly, the potential impact that content has on our racial common sense – both the good and the bad.
Pat’s posts includes antiracist critiques of games, media watches, and links to calls for papers.
Racism and sexism are very deeply intertwined, and very present in video games and gamer culture. I hope Token Minorities will remind me to discuss race more often in my own blogging.