Month: March 2006

What kind of "Gamer Girl" I'm NOT

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Which Type of Gamer Girl are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Apparently supposed to be me.
Sports Gamer.
Football, basketball, baseball… No matter what the sport, you’ll dominate when you bring your best game.

Leave it to someone who thinks it’s appropriate to represent “kinds” of female gamers with large-breasted and scantily clad avatars (“girl power”, anyone?) to create a quiz that would tell me I’m a sports gamer. Not just a sports gamer, though, but one who walks around in a cutoff longsleeved tee and panties! Hut-hut, indeed.

Via New Game Plus.

To my fellow sisters-in-arms:

tekanji

Stop it. Stop invalidating me because of my reproductive choices. Stop telling me what is and is not worthy of discussion. Stop calling me names because I have a different sexual expression than you. Stop discriminating against our sisters just because they don’t have the same naughty bits as you. Stop telling women that they should not be allowed to choose their life’s path. And, for the love of little green apples, stop trying to make the only valid path in life the one you want to take.

That’s what the patriarchy does, not us. Get it?

So, stop it. Just fucking STOP IT.

No more token women!

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Whether we recognize it or not, we all know about The Girl. Sometimes the Love Interest, or the Sidekick, or the Little Sister, or what have you, she has existed in literature and popular culture from time immemorial. Those of you who are of my generation may be thinking of Smurfette, who was literally defined in both name and action as being the (only) female smurf while all the male smurfs were defined by their actions. Later on, some female smurf kids were added, but kids tend to fit more into a “gender neutral” category than adults in our society.

Enter And Then There’s the Girl: “Women Characters” vs. “Characters that are Women”, a Blog Against Sexism post from a couple days ago that I missed highlighting. The author, kalinara, uses Cheetara (do you notice a trend in taking a word and “feminizing” it for the token women?) to represent the phenomenon of The Girl.

After her introduciton, she illustrates exactly what it means to be The Girl (or, in this case, Woman) instead of simply a woman:

You have one old ghost guy who’s the elderly mentor/grandfather figure in Jaga. You have one architect/intellectual/wise older brother figure in Tygra. You have one young, brash, heroic but kind of dim main character in Lion-O. You have the token black guy as the strong gruff mechanic in Panthro. And you have the two cheerful “Thunderkittens” in the kids, Wiley-Kit and Wiley-Kat.

And then you have Cheetara. What the hell was Cheetara’s purpose? To be the woman and look hot in the leotard while being vaguely maternal? She could run fast and was dimly, conveniently psychic. But where the male characters at least had some stereotypical, shallow quality to serve as their personality (grandpa/big brother/brash hero/gruff strongman/playful kids), she had *nothing* but feminity to define her.

“Today is not the 80’s,” you may say. “We’re much more enlightened now.” In some ways, that is true. Today isn’t the 80’s and shows have evolved to give women more active roles (some of which come with their own sets of problems). However, the attitude that kalinara describes is not dead, nor limited to cartoons of my childhood.

In fact, what she says puts into better words a complaint I made in my open letter to geeky guys. It was regarding a recent publication of the gaming magazine The Escapist (which consistently puts out subpar, and often sexist, articles about women). In it, the author was trying to discuss why he preferred playing “a girl” in online games.

He gives his potential male characters a wide variety of personalities: “Am I the noble hero?” he asks himself, “A backstabbing thief? An insecure wisecracker?… [A]n alpha male…?” So, what does he say of his female characters? “[P]laying a girl puts me in far more neutral territory.” As the default for human, the man gets to choose from a range of archetypes that come easily to Dahlen’s mind. The woman, as Other, doesn’t get to do any of that “normal” stuff; she gets to be “neutral territory.” I’d also like to point out that it falls into mandatory gender roles: the active male versus the passive (neutral) female.

When I talk about women as the Other in this context, it is the same kind of tokenization/relegation of woman to The Woman. Men are normal; they are not defined by their gender but rather the roles in which they are placed – whether it be elderly mentor or noble hero. Sometimes women get these roles, too, but even then their “femininity” is often seen as a paramount feature of their character.

How, then, do we move away from this tokenization? Well, I suggest reading kalinara’s post and the comments on it for starters. Only when we understand why an issue occurs can we truly begin to correct it. So, go, read, and think about the women you see portrayed in the media you engage in – whether it be cartoons, video games, books, or anything else.

Via When Fangirls Attack.

¡Viva la Campesina! Women Fighting Back

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Searching for Activism

My feminist activism is far from isolating. I meet and connect with great women and men who are my peers on campus or online in the blog network. But I sometimes feel disconnected from the people beyond my immediate circle; I feel that the ways in which I’m a participant in a global world are invisible to me. In my Global Women class this quarter, my classmates and I tried to see some of those connections. As university students in the United States, we are privileged to ignore them. For my own term project, I chose look to into who grows the organic, local produce I enjoy so much. I wanted to know: who grows it, and why didn’t I know already?

I live in Bellingham, a city along the Puget Sound between Vancouver and Seattle. I seldom adventure beyond walking distance of my campus and apartment, so I see little of farms and most of that is from a distance on the highway. In spring and summer, I walk downtown to purchase local produce at the Saturday Farmer’s Market. The people selling the produce usually look like me, and I don’t give much thought beyond the cooking I will do when I get home.

My project led me to a local group called Community to Community Development, “a place-based, grassroots organization committed to creating alliances in order to strengthen local and global movements towards social, economic and environmental justice.”

¡Viva la Campesina!

How does this mission statement translate into practice? The panel I attended on Tuesday, February 28, 2006 is a good example; I’ll do my best to recount it. Pardon my slipping into pseudo-objective report mode, it’s not my usual writing style but I’m also turning this in for my class. I’m not sure how “accurate” this account is, but this is what I interpreted from what was said.

Organization director Rosalinda Guillen led the three panelists through sharing their experiences as farmworkers in my own Whatcom County and the adjacent Skagit County. The dialogue was held at Western Washington University and attended by both students and community members. I’m using fictional names of the panelists to preserve their privacy.

The presentation was bilingual, which challenged the pervasive English norm that surrounds me. Most of the farmworkers in the area are Hispanic. Language was used that the panelists were comfortable with, and the latter two speakers chose to talk to us in Spanish.

Anna

A woman named Anna was the first panelist to speak. She began with sharing her situation: fifty years old, in her thirty-first year of marriage, a mother of three, and grandmother of three. Originally from Texas, Anna’s family moved to the Skagit Valley when she was a young child and lived in labor camps for farmworkers. She began working in the labor camp at age five, and the fields at eight. When her family and their colleagues were able to find work, they were at it from dawn until dusk, seven days a week with no holidays. The labor camps were crowded–she recalled that the individual houses had bathrooms, but the camp shared communal showers. Labor camps are worse now than they were then, she said, because the same structures are used and are decaying with little or no maintenance.

Because farm work is seasonal, Anna’s parents often couldn’t find work and therefor relied on government assistance and help from relatives. It was a stressful time for her parents, Anna said, so she learned to be quiet and cooperative to avoid being a target. She didn’t want her dad to strike her. Anna pointed out that this was a tool for survival for people in powerless situations. “I want to help people in similar situations,” she said. She now works at Group Health so she can help people from her community.

Isabela

Isabela was the second panelist to speak. She moved to Yakima–a city in Eastern Washington–from Jalisco, Mexico in 1990 and sorted and packed apples, cherries, and pears. Eventually she moved to Bellingham. She is thirty-five and the mother of a young daughter; Isabela is currently unemployed and is looking for farmwork to support her family.

Isabela’s father was a bracero who, when she was a girl, traveled seasonally to the United States to find work. He lived in barracks-like with bunk-beds that housed several men to a room, and hundreds of men in each camp. Jobs typically were, she described, dawn to dusk with no holidays. Isabela’s father earned American dollars, which was more valuable than pesos, to send home to his family. Isabela feels that this little bit of extra income didn’t make up for the time he missed with his family.

Isabela’s father warned her not to travel to the United States because she’d be treated so poorly as a farmworker. She pointed out that now there are more considerations being made for farmworkers, including an hourly wages being at minimum wage, which is currently $7.63 in Washington (the highest in the country). But it still isn’t enough to get by, Isabela said.

Alessandra

Alessandra was the third and last person to speak on the panel. She moved to Bellingham, from Mexico, in 1996. She shared that she was a mother of three children–the youngest, and infant, with her at the panel. She primarily worked at a local organic farm. Crops there included peppers, eggplant, corn, carrot, broccoli, and cauliflower. She described the work as physically hard, including moving soil with wheelbarrows and transferring plants from flats into soil. One crop was harvested right after another. “One must present quality work so he can get paid,” she said.

Alessandra said she was happy at the organic farm because she was allowed breaks and the owner was respectful in that she let Alessandra spend the time she needed being a mother, getting her children to and from school.

Alessandra was recently let go from another farm she had worked for because some of her documentation was invalid. “If they only give work to people with proper documentation,” she said. “There’d be no one to do the work.”

After the three women introduced themselves, the panel was open to questions from the audience. Some of the topics discussed included:

Housing

Workers are known by what labor camp they’re from, and people still live in the same deteriorating camps. This reminded me of well off, white family friends from Pasco who blame the “Mexicans” for ripping apart the houses the farmers are kind enough to provide. These friends don’t work in agriculture. What the women told is a very different story, and I believe them.

Pesticides

Isabela told a story of an incident that occurred when she worked in Yakima. Apples were being sprayed outside of her packing plant when fumes came inside and made the workers feel dizzy and sick. Many had to go home sick, and others were afraid to leave. Alessandra went home sick but had to be back the next day. No incident report was filed, no doctor’s visit was provided. Alessandra said she was kept ignorant of her rights.

Anna only recalled being near the planes that sprayed pesticides on fields adjacent to ones she and her coworkers were working in. She reiterated that they weren’t allowed to be sick.

Raspberries as are a big crop in the area, and Alessandra reported that the roots of the plants are covered in a dust she suspects is a pesticide. Workers are provided with no masks and only cloth gloves. The dust they inhale makes the workers feel sick with constant flu-like symptoms. Alessandra used doubtful language–who knew what was going on?–but I argue that it doesn’t matter if it’s pesticides or not the workers are getting sick from: they should have to tolerate constant illness at work.

Children

Supporting a family as a farmworker was tough. The children of the farmworkers no longer performed labor like they used to, according to the panelists, but many still come with their parents to the fields. This is technically prohibited, but done out of necessity, said Alessandra. When she worked on at “conventional” (non-organic) farms, her children were exposed to pesticides. Although none of the women had observed pesticides harming their children, the host Rosalinda pointed out that it still may be happening even if they can’t see the immediate damage.

The women reported facing discrimination against their children. Alessandra couldn’t find an apartment for her three energetic children, the owners of the farms she worked at refused to help her. One said his empty house needed to be remodeled, the others outright said no. Anna recalled that as a girl, public school didn’t want to spend time on her because children of the farm workers are barely there. She said that was true today.

Alessandra said her children were told they had to speak English while at school. (Washington State does have an English Language Learners program.) She confronted teachers and principal. They apologized but Alessandra did not think things would change.

No daycare was provided for the farmworkers children, but the women did rely on each other for support in caring for children.

Gender

It was asked: why all women on the panel? Rosalinda replied that usually we think of workers as men. Women have different concerns that are often ignored. They bring a different perspective than the one we usually hear. The women farmworkers keep the family together, and must work full time and care for the children.

Moving Forward

The panel ended with a discussion of the future. Alessandra said that “hope is good” but she didn’t see how things were going to change as the rate of living rises faster than the minimum wage that traps people in poverty.

But by being there, we were moving towards change. The audience was asked to leave considering how their purchases affected the women they met that night.

“We’re here and we want to talk to you!”

Community to Community Development, by presenting such panels that open dialogues between the consumer community and farmworker community, want to educate the consumers so they will be allies when the farmworkers are ready to demand changes. The organization also wants local, family owned and sustainable systems that hold farm owners accountable.

Things to Come

The following day, I met with Rosalinda in her office. We reflected on the presentation. I shared how I’d just seen something I was oblivious to but realized I’d always know was there, and I thanked her for putting on a presentation that literally opened my eyes. I asked what was next. What activism was going on? What was to come?

In addition to the presentation I attended, Community to Community Development is working with farm owners to improve wages and working conditions. Beyond that, not much has been done yet. If more isn’t done, things may be grim. She shared stories of racism and hate crimes–such as cross burnings–the farmworkers have faced and continue to face. The Minutemen are the latest threat–these (white, as far as I saw on their website) men want to “help” border patrol keep aliens out. Rosalinda hopes that by establishing connections between the communities, we’ll remember meeting Alessandra and be ready will be prepared to stand up for immigrant rights. I’m listening and ready to be an ally.

Highlights from Blog Against Sexism Day

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So, yesterday was Blog Against Sexism Day. I blogged. You blogged (or should have, you bad, bad person!). We all blogged. Today, I want to highlight some of the ones that I particuarly liked. Now there are 260 posts, and I obviously haven’t read them all, so if you have a favourite post (even if it’s your own!) please feel free to plug it in the comments.

bla(k)ademic (who I’ve been meaning to blogroll for ages) contributes the post complicit sexism, which talks about the intersection between oppressions, and how it is disappointing that many black “leaders” and scholars fail to acknowledge that.

Highlight:

many blacks who oppose gays/lesbians/trannies/sgl’s, have failed to acknowledge that racism cannot be combated if we continue to support white ideals of morality and family values. which, only pushes a conservative agenda that condemns any deviation from the nuclear family that doesn’t uphold strict gender roles. the limiting idea of the black patriarch who rules over the subsurvient wife and children, only furthers blacks complicit relationship with our own race and gender exploitation. this myth has prohibited an alternative view of of a queer black family comprised of sgl/gay/lesbian families parents. and, i think, that it is sexist for us to continue to believe that the definition of a heteronormative family is going to save us from oppression.

Over at New Game Plus, our very own Ariel writes a short post on the problematic nature of a new “realistic” redesign of one of video game’s most famous vixens in A Lara Croft I Can Be.

Highlight:

As a gaming woman, I don’t find Lara Croft’s new proportions especially empowering or representative of me. It’s another message of how I ought to look so I can be sexy, confident, and poised. The consensus was that Croft was ridiculous, even from those who found her aesthetically pleasing. Now, she’s “realistic.” I could, theoretically, look like the new Lara Croft; she’s become within the realm of possibility existing. I’ve already “won” genetic lottery—I’m white, brunette, not fat—and now I just need to get breast implants, work out more, and stop eating.

The one who started it all, vegankid, contributed the post don’t kid yourself, which does some reflecting on the internalized, and often invisible, sexism that exists in the trans community.

Highlight:

Its easy as transgendered and genderQueer people to believe that we are beyond or outside of gender politics as usual. As those who live on the margins, its only natural to focus on ourselves as oppressed beings – victims of a transphobic society. But something i’ve had to come to terms with is my own socialized sexism as a trans persyn.

From Amateurverbs, a new blog to keep your eye on, comes a poignant critique on the culture of female competition entitled Good girls and bad girls.

Highlight:

But the bad girls – oh, you know what I’m talking about. The ones who disagree with me! The sluts who talked behind my back, who did stupid, stupid things and whose heads are filled with air. The Barbie-doll bitches and holier-than-thou dainty princesses who’d rather die than get their dresses dirty.

Only the bad girls are the ones that make me feel good inside. I can point at them and say, “Look! I’m not like her! I’m not a whore, I’m not a ditz, I’ve got a brain! But I’m pretty!”

A personal story given political implications at Weber’s Polar Night, Blog against sexism is the tale of one man’s journey as a go-between for his girlfriend when some random men find themselves with some car troubles.

Highlight:

Sexism is, of course, many things but at that moment it was a very small thing: an exchange of information, relayed via a man, because the woman who actually knew what to do felt constrained and the men in need of help were, she correctly assessed, unprepared to listen.

Feminist Law Professors are also interested in Blogging Against Sexism, this time about women’s internalized sexism and how relying on men for approval is a double-edged sword.

Highlight:

When I read or hear a woman criticize another woman for her clothing, or hair, or body size, or general lack of femininity or sex appeal because it helps her curry favor with powerful men, I always think, if things go a certain way, she is going to find out that she isn’t as much “one of the guys” as she thinks she is. The men may laugh with her when she amusingly derides her sisters, but they will not trust her any more than the women she mocks will.

What it feels like for a geek girl, brought to us by Radioactive Banana relates the mixed signals that women who want to enter traditonally male dominated fields receive from their family, friends, and the world at large.

Highlight:

Finally in junior high I was set on mastering math and science, just like my mother had prodded me because she thought those were secure jobs—but now her efforts were directed at turning me into a properly socialized young woman, which seemed to mean dialing my competitiveness down a couple notches. Yes, I was cocky and full of myself—but so was [my gifted math class carpooling partner] Jon! Did he ever have to hear that it threw off the family dynamic for a girl to be more mathematically gifted than her older brother? Because that’s what my mother told me.

From the mind of Bitch|Lab comes an excellent essay on Oppression: what it is, what it means, and how it can be used against the oppressed.

Highlight:

The statement that women are oppressed is frequently met with the claim that men are oppressed too. We hear that oppressing is oppressive to those who oppress as well as those they oppress. Some men cite as evidence of their oppression their much-advertised inability to cry. It is tough, we are told, to be masculine. When the stresses and frustrations of being a man are cited as evidence that oppressors are oppressed by their oppressing, the word “oppression” is being stretched to meaninglessness; it is treated as though its scope includes any and all human experience of limitation or suffering, no matter the cause, degree or consequence. Once such usage has been put over on us, then if ever we deny that any person or group is oppressed, we seem to imply that we think they never suffer and have no feelings. We are accused of insensitivity; even of bigotry. For women, such accusation is particularly intimidating, since sensitivity is on eof the few virtues that has been assigned to us. If we are found insensitive, we may fear we have no redeeming traits at all and perhaps are not real women. Thus are we silenced before we begin: the name of our situation drained of meaning and our guilt mechanisms tripped.

gendergeek wanted in on the action of Blogging Against Sexism, this time choosing to highlight the sexism of reproductive politics.

Highlight:

As far as I’m concerned, women will never be able to achieve equality with men while our very right to physical autonomy is being denied us. The battle for women’s bodies has shaped each wave of feminism, and, in 2006, we are still being forced to state and re-state our demands for access to birth control, abortion, appropriate medical treatments, and freedom from gender-based violence.

And last on my list, but not last in excellence by any stretch of the word, is Mind the Gap‘s post on (Trying) to blog against sexism. It addresses everything from the myth that sexism is a thing of third-world (aka. “backwards”, aka. “not as good as us”) nations to the fact that women’s looks are still considered our paramount attribute, no matter the context.

Highlight:

First, we hate that so many people in the rich west insist that sexism is no longer an issue or is, at most, a minimal issue. We’ve met supposedly, liberal, enlightened people, men and women, who claim that since we have all this legislation in place, there’s no longer a problem. As Siberian Falls observed, the situation has changed, but sexism has become more insidious rather than disappeared. Even more worryingly, the anti-political correctness backlash has managed to bestow certain “coolness” upon sexist attitudes. Siberian Falls told us the story of the consultant who refers to female colleagues as “chickie.” He knows he’s being offensive because he’s quick to say “It’s harmless,” “It’s just a bit of fun.” “Just a bit of fun.” Haven’t we all come to shudder at that phrase which has become the excuse for all manner of appalling behaviors. I’m sure it’s true that sexism is enormous fun for sexists, but not for the rest of us.

See the rest of the pinbacked and trackbacked links here (you may have to click the “show comments” link and then reload the page).

"Check my what?" On privilege and what we can do about it

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Stop!
Please do not reproduce this article in full on any other site!

This list is modified every so often to fix broken links, add new points, and otherwise update the material. While I appreciate readers’ support in spreading this through the internet, I request that you post no more than an excerpt onto your own site, and that you include a link back to this specific page so that everyone may have the benefit of seeing the most recent material.
"Check my what?" On privilege and what we can do about it
[What is Privilege?] [Accept Your Privilege] [Understanding Your Privilege] [Adopt a Language of Respect and Equality] [How to Approach Minority Spaces] [Treat Us Like Humans, Not ‘The Other’] [If You’re Not the Problem, Then You’re Not the Problem]

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Carnies and Veggies

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The second edition of the Radical Woman of Color Carnival is out at Brownfemipower’s Woman of Color Blog. Topics include identity issues, voice, mamihood, and a section for allies so us white folks don’t feel left out.

I do say that with tongue in cheek–a few days ago in my Global Women class we were discussing a women of color week event called Woman of Color Fashion Show: Undressing the Other. The show kicked all kinds of ass. All types of people dressed up as a stereotype and performed to exemplify how others see them. In the second act the performers told their real stories.

In class, one critique of the show brought up was that some white women felt left out (a good third of the performers were white). In turn, we analyzed why those women felt that way, but a few classmates were sympathetic. They didn’t feel the need to make an issue of race when we discussed the necessity of our university’s anti-racist white student union. I attempted to articulate (much less eloquent on the fly) that being able to say race doesn’t matter was white privilege because our race is portrayed as the neutral norm–a nonrace, that race is something other people have but not us. I raised a few ires because white people can be discriminated against too. Well, sure. I’m oppressed for my gender, but not my race. Whites can even be on the receiving end of racial prejudice in my country, but that isn’t racism because someone isn’t having power over them based on their skin color.

Coming back to carnivals: Call for Submissions for the Second Big Fat Carnival and for Carnival of Empty Cages. I’m really excited about the latter carnival, which vegankid is starting, because I want to start blogging more about my veganism. I recently realized animal liberation prepared me for feminism and am pumped to share.

Semi-hiatus for March & April

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I’m sure y’all have noticed that my posting has slowed way down (even for me) in the past few weeks. Well, it’s only going to get worse for the next two months. You see, I’m about to be off to Japan to attend language school in April, so I get to do the oh-so-fun jobs of packing, unpacking, and settling into classes. If I’m lucky, I’ll be able to at least finish some of the posts sitting in my draft box. If not, well, there’s always May.

To make up for my shortcomings, however, Ariel has agreed to do more posting over here and Sour Duck will be guestblogging for the duration. She should have an intro post up sometime in the near future.

Wish me luck at school and I’ll be backed to my regularly scheduled programming in May!