Is November “National Blame The Victim Month” or something? No, I mean seriously. First it was Nick Kiddle’s post on hir near-rape experience and the discussions that followed it, then there was the McDonalds thing, and the British poll, and now some idiot who I’ve never heard of before now (Vox Day) believes that rape is a man’s right because women are his property. No joke.

Shit like this makes me lose what little faith I had left in humanity.

Update for all the Vox Day supporters: I don’t know what, exactly, drew you lot to my blog, since I was careful not to link the original post and I didn’t have my pingback notification on, but if you’re going to comment please be advised that while there are many kinds of comments I tolerate on this blog, flames, personal attacks, and victim blaming are not acceptable and are grounds for editing or deletion of your comments. And please don’t bother to point out that my policy is hypocritical because I have no problem calling the victim blamers “idiots” or telling them to fuck off. It’s my blog; you don’t like it, don’t post here.

It’s time to end all the ignorance about women gamers and our motives. So listen up:

I am a female. I am a gamer. I am not a gamer because I am boy-hunting. I am not a gamer for you.

I am not a gamer for you.

I happen to be a gamer because I like gaming. I am actually interested in this kind of stuff, and I’m actually good at some of it. Someday I want to be a video game designer, and my job choice’s aim is not to find a husband.

Where the hell do people get off? Where the hell do people get off?!

Just because the video gaming industry is stereotyped as a male-industry doesn’t mean that there aren’t women who are interested as well. And not in the males. Just because it is “techy” or “nerdy” doesn’t mean that it will be shunned be the entire female gender.

I like gaming, I like strategy, I like roleplay. It is the way I am… [a]nd I resent your idea that I couldn’t actually be interested in gaming. Because I am.

[From The Rise of the Woman-Nerd by pearl_gemstone]

Remember that the next time you want to give your opinion on women gamers. Remember this, as well: We are not gamers (or geeks) because we want to date you. We are not gamers because “that’s hawt”. We are gamers because we like to game.

More ranting via midlife mama. Libby critiqued an article from the American Prospect Online and asked for opinions. I was foolish enough to think that I could contain my opinion in one little comment. I know, I know, I should be used to the Attack of the 50-line Comment by now. So, I decided to turn my rant/fisk into its own post.

First off, I’m going to steal Libby’s summary of the article:

It’s an article in American Prospect Online that takes all those “opt out” articles seriously. The author, Linda R. Hirshman, a feminist professor, is working on a book about “marriage after feminism.” She interviewed 30 some-odd women whose weddings were announced in the Sunday NY Times over three Sundays in 1996. Most of them, she says, were staying home with their kids 7 or 8 years later. (Actually, 50% were no longer working for pay, and a third were working part time.) : Conservatives contend that the dropouts prove that feminism “failed” because it was too radical, because women didn’t want what feminism had to offer. In fact, if half or more of feminism’s heirs (85 percent of the women in my Times sample), are not working seriously, it’s because feminism wasn’t radical enough: It changed the workplace but it didn’t change men, and, more importantly, it didn’t fundamentally change how women related to men.

[From More on the whole opt-out thing by Libby]

Just because I can, I’m going to use the same style of breakdowns as Hirshman uses in her article. Well, also I want to mock her section heads. And we all know I love mocking people and things. Also, all further quotes (unless otherwise noted) come from the article itself.

Read the rest…

Feministe has just reinforced how much I never want ads on my blog. I had the dubious pleasure of seeing this ad on the side of the blog; one of the three from blogads that Feministe runs. Normally I don’t pay attention to them, but this one caught my eye (it’s a moving gif) and I had to say I was angry and disappointed when I read the text.

Can someone tell me how buying into the beauty myth and mandatory makeup culture is empowering in any way, shape, or form? Thanks.

Drawn by the Carnival of Feminists, I visited midlife mama’s article, Second Wave Feminism, Beauvoir, and me, and got into a small conversation about second-wave and third-wave feminism. In her reply, Libby discusses her experiences with the “women are equal already” sentiment that many young people (and some older ones too) hold. I, in my typical fashion, went off on a rant about how much I hate that. And, again in my typical fashion, I want to take the opportunity to elaborate on my point. Disclaimer: This post is Western-centric, with a focus on America/Canada, because that’s where most of my practical experience comes from.

So, without further ado, I present you with some food for thought on equality.

Read the rest…

Apparently there’s been a lot of discussion on Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pigs in the blogsphere, but I’m not really here to discuss that. What I want to talk about is Amanda’s post, Getting approval (which discusses the girls-kissing-girls part of the raunch culture), and my own experiences with it.

First things first: I am bisexual (or pansexual, more accurately). For years and years and years various things kept me closeted to myself and to those around me, but I finally came out sometime in 2003/2004. It was hard for me, especially since I was met with some scepticism from loved ones. My mother believed that people were “gay, straight, or lying” (to borrow from that hideously stupid study done a while back) and a friend said that I had to be mistaken, that I was confusing love/lust for “appreciation” of the female body. It didn’t help matters that I’ve only had one real sexual experience with a girl, especially since neither of us had any interest in pursuing anything outside of that one encounter.

So what does my personal story have to do with the pressure for straight girls to kiss each other? More than I care to admit, but admit I will.

Read the rest…

In my first installment of my Girls & Game Ads series, I commented on a disturbing phenomenon in the portrayal of men versus women:

Another thing evident in this particular line-up is something I’ve noticed as another feature of video game advertising: images of women tend to have the large boobs as a focus (either by showing lots of skin or by having skin-tight costumes), while images of men tend to focus on the face, or show a heavily armoured (or clothed) man. While there are obviously exceptions to this (armoured/small breasted women, scantily-clothed men, etc), I posit that this dichotomy is one that is typical in advertisements for the gaming industry.

Enter GQ and its “Man of the Year” winners. With AOL News’ tagline Aniston Joins the Guys one would expect the cover to show a confident, strong Aniston with a focus on her head/face. But GQ, unfortunately, has chosen to take the same approach to the portrayal of men and women as I described above.

Read the rest…

November’s article, Silent Treatment is a short story and commentary on popular culture, the entertainment industry, and women’s place in all this.

Wanted immediately:

Hot [must be hot!] woman [must be female!] between 5′3″ and 5′10″ [must not be taller than 5′10″!] to play a role in upcoming police drama on a major network. Character is in coma - at no point will she ever awaken from her deep slumber. Other characters (men) will interact with her, but she will generally be non-responsive. Scenes may sometimes involve physical interactions, but generally she will be non-responsive during such interactions. When responsive, other characters will keep her in check by telling her to stop being a bitch and that if they wanted to hear a lecture, they would’ve gone to college.
Call 582-284-2949. Ask for Cindy.

Kristy over at kblog tagged me for some meme. For the record, kristy, I hate you. ^_^

The instructions are as follows:

1. Go into your archive.
2. Find your 23rd post.
3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
5. Tag five other people to do the same.

… and my 23 post is really not that interesting. It was Shrub.com Article for August (which reminds me that I need to get the November article up), and the fifth sentence would be this:

I drive.

W00t.

So, uh, tagging…. Well, I guess I’ll go for Jenn, James, LegendaryMonkey, and also everyone’s favourite Shrub.com member who doesn’t blog over here, John! I know that’s only four, but sue me, I don’t really have all that many blog friends or even bloggers who read my blog x.x And no, y’all don’t have any obligation to actually do this if you don’t want to.

I came across this untitled post in the feminist_rage LJ about anti-feminist misconceptions about feminism (the OP specifically addresses a white, heterosexual male that she is aquainted with for her rage). One commenter’s words just sort of jumped out at me as interesting [emphasis mine]:

“All feminists really want to do these days is make women into men.”

Oh, wow, that’s hilarious! They just don’t get it, do they? Feminism is about making it okay to NOT be a man. It’s about saying, ‘oh, you’re not a man? Well that’s okay, because you’re still a person.’

[From a post in feminist_rage, comment by nonahs]

I’ve looked at the gender democracy angle from several points of view, but this kind was fresh to me. I’m not sure it would be a useful discourse against an actual anti-feminist, but it’s something to think about at the very least.

Via feminist LJ.

A looooong time ago, Sour Duck did her first post on inhibited writing, in which she reveals some of her own concerns about criticizing Kameron Hurley:

In other words, I became concerned that if I disagreed with her, she might come on over to my blog and leave a hostile or semi-hostile comment, or post one at her blog. This concern/fear/anxiety, as you can imagine, greatly inhibits your writing.

Now, I’m the kind of person who speaks her mind and damn the consequences. Sometimes that means that I find myself needing to apologize for unintentionally hurting someone. When that happens, I apologize for what needs apologizing and move on. I am an angry blogger. This is not going to change any time soon; there’s too much in this world to be angry about. I try to be an intelligent blogger (although I’m not above making a couple crap posts here and there when I feel like it). I try to live up to my own standards when it comes to eradicating divisive discourse. I don’t always succeed. But I’m only human here!

Anyway, one thing I’ve been finding is that the reaction to me criticizing a group or an individual is a lot different to the reaction of any number of my other angry posts. I can blog in generalities and only my fans care enough to comment on it. The moment I go into specifics - whether it be American Apparel, Suicide Girls, or referencing an article by Charlotte Croson in a post berating transphobic feminists - suddenly random surfers have a vested interest in me.

Now, don’t get me wrong! I’m not against people coming on here and voicing dissenting opinions. It’s part of what makes blogging interesting. And, let’s face it, if the whole world agreed with my opinions then I wouldn’t have anything to blog about. I just think that it’s interesting that my anger doesn’t merit discussion until I, to steal from Sour Duck, step on some toes.

For all my talk about not tarring and feathering those feminists (you know, the ones not like us), I must confess that there is one type of feminist that constantly gets under my skin. The transphobic one. Ye gods I wish I could go to all those who think that transgendered people don’t deserve a place in feminism because they aren’t “real women” (whatever that means) and say to them, “You! Out of my feminism!” I guess a part of it is because in order to believe what they do about the transgendered population, they must first believe in gender essentialism – an ideal not compatible with liberation, as one poster on the feminist LJ pointed out.

But are my exclusionary tactics any different than those who try to tar “radical” feminists with the same brush? Who cry to their critics, “I’m not that kind of feminist, don’t blame me!”? I’m not sure. The so-called “radical” feminists’ biggest problem is that the media has chosen them to caricature, while the transphobic feminists try to exclude transwomen (and transmen) in a very real way. Of course, I have said in the past that not all feminists hold 100% feminist values. I know that, despite my best efforts, I still hold some anti-feminist values.

Read the rest…