At Blizzcon 2010 I was really impressed by the Female Monk preview for Diablo III. The male and female character drawings were displayed side by side, and they both looked dressed to fight in reasonable armor, fierce and tough. The female monk wasn’t even smiling. She was just badass. Not only that, she had short […]
Most online discussion of women’s issues, even coming from self declared feminists, doesn’t go deep enough. People are always trying to say in some way “well it’s not so bad”. The tendency to make excuses for the poor behavior of men we play with is endemic among women gamers(self sadly included). There’s reasons to pretend […]
Cracked.com, second only to the New York Post in their propensity for somewhat inaccurate attention grabbing headlines, published an article last week called 5 Ways to Tell You’re Getting Too Old for Video Games. The article is more about things that are wrong with video game design and an advertisement against having three children if […]
Gamer should be a neutral term, including all kinds of humans who game: women and men; humans of various races; able bodied and disabled; gay, straight, bi, other; cis and trans; young, old and in between; and much more. It should mean that but it doesn’t. Analyze the ways games are designed and marketed, examine […]
Infantalization is an oldie but baddie in the rich pageant of misogyny’s offerings. First you require women to act in immature ways in order to be considered properly feminine, and then you make fun of them for being immature. As a bonus, you then get to sexualize actual children since there’s no distinction between a […]
A woman gamer admits on reddit that she pretended to be male for 6 years after she had some seriously fucking creepy experiences due to her awful crime of gaming while female. “Discussion” ensues. One sympathetic commenter responds There’s so much I want to ask, but for right now, I’ll just ask the one thing: […]
Let me draw you a picture of the “girl gamer”. You know her. She comes on vent and cracks dirty jokes and all the boys fall over themselves. She’s just as good as any guy. She’s the exception. She’s the token gamer girl. She posts pictures of her boobs on the guild forum. You heard […]
In a nominally egalitarian society the ideal situation (socially speaking) is one in which the members of the “wrong” groups have the freedom to engage in literature (or equally significant activities) and yet do not do so, thus proving that they can’t. But, alas, give them the least real freedom and they will do it. […]
The argument goes, if you don’t like the sexism in games or the gaming community then leave. But leave to go where exactly? It’s not like there’s some radical separatist game company and related gaming community where women can go and have a dude and sexism free gaming existence. Even if there were, women aren’t […]
Xenosaga is a game about an engineer and her (sexy) robot (alter-ego) saving the world from dangerous philosophical concepts. My first computer was an Atari 800xe, and that’s the clear beginning of my life as a gamer. There was a time in my 20s when I thought I had grown out of video games, and […]
