Via Fanthropology, LJ user Schemingreader has written a great two-parter on Something Good About Fandom and Women Writing Slash: An Idiosyncratically Feminist Meditation.

In her first essay, Schemingreader discusses “challenging mass media hegemonic discourse” and passive viewing through fandom. She also talks about fandom celebrating women’s creativity. My favorite part of her essay:

Though we don’t all agree about what it should look like, fandom provides a model for pro-sex feminism, for women reclaiming control over their sexuality, minds first. I really love the model of having people post warnings at the tops of their stories. It shows we have figured out, at least to some small degree, that we don’t all feel sexuality the same way. We get that everyone is different, and can encourage more than one view of sexuality. Our whole vocabulary of kinks and squicks is a sophisticated acknowledgement of the varieties of human sexual experience.

Fandom is one area where women’s sexualities are embraced and explored as positives and valued for their diversity. (Even asexuality is welcomed, something I’d like to see portrayed more positively across the board, especially in pro-sex paradigms.) I hope the multifariousness Schemingreader describes will spiral beyond fandom.

First off, I’d like to give a fangirl squee to Feministe’s newest blogger, piny. I have loved piny ever since I came across him in comments on Alas and Feministe, and I considered asking him to blog here more than once (if I had gotten to know him better, I may have snapped him up before Feministe did). I still may see if I can convince him to guest blog on occasion. So, from one of your fans, congrats on the new position, piny!

Today I found an article where he fisks a transphobic letter to the editor from a San Fran magazine. He said read the article, so I did. Then I read the letter responding to it. Between my hacking and sputtering, I found myself making connections between one issue addressed in the article and the subtext of the letter: the link between transphobia and sexism.

Read the rest…

I can’t speak for any other ’sex-positive’ feminist (versus ‘anti-porn’ feminists, who are in no way required to be ’sex-negative’), but I can speak for myself and my values. Vociferate’s Andrea wrote what I consider to be a very disappointing rant on sex-positive feminism. I don’t know who she’s reading, but categorizing all of us as (basically) patriarchy-apologists is as bad as if I decided to label all radical feminists as transphobes based on commenters like funnie. I don’t have a chance to reply to her post on her blog, as she only allows blogger members to comment, but it probably would have been a case of Attack of the 50-line Comment anyway.

What I got from her post is that, in a nutshell, Andrea believes that (all?) sex-positive feminists:

1. Dismiss the potential harm of porn.
2. Perpetuate the ‘myth’ of rape fantasies because it’s what men want to hear.
3. Believe that radical feminists, or any non-’sex-positive’ feminists, are anti-sex.
4. Use the label to be a constant reminder that they like sex.
5. Are defined solely by their one label as ’sex-positive’.
6. Must, by nature, be seeking a ‘compromise’ with male sexual entitelment.

Please, Andrea, don’t speak for me; you have neither the knowledge, nor the right. Engage with the argument, engage with the issues, but do not label us all by what you have seen in your limited research. That is no better than the kind of stereotyping all feminsits get from anti/non-feminists. Like the feminist movement as a whole, sex-positive feminists are not one trick ponies. We have different takes, and different interpretations, on pornography and sexuality. Taking the main points from Andrea’s post that I outlined above, I will present a different, but most assuredly sex-positive, take on that branch of feminism.

Read the rest…

A December 2005 survey of Gamers in the UK revealed some interesting (though not unexpected, to me, anyway) information about the breakdown (age/gender/etc) of people who play games.

Of particular note was their conclusion about gender based on the survey results:

The Gender Split

Contrary to popular belief, the gender split between gamers is fairly even across all age groups. Although female gamers never overtake their male counterpart, the figures are particularly even in the youngest and oldest gaming groups. Between the ages of 16-35 the ratio of males ot females is slightly higher, but the stereotype of a larger gender gap in gamers – in any age group – is untrue.

Females and males do hoewver display some different preferences in gaming categories. Simulations and MMOGs perform equally well with males and females, while RPGs and Strategy fare only marginally better with males. Females then show strong approval for Music/Dance, Puzzles/Board/Quiz, and Classic games. Males show strong approval for Action-Adventure, Racing, Sports, and First Person Shooters. Simuolations and MMOGs seem to be be key to attracting audiences of both genders equally: Sports and Shooting category games generally hold the lowest appeal for females, although it should be noted that this doesn’t mean they have no appeal: 12% of females play First Person Shooters.

I wonder if a comprehensive survey in the US would corroborate these findings, or show significant differences. After hearing so many people talk about how women are in a vast minoritiy in MMOs (a statement I’ve only found to be true in World of Warcraft, at least on the PvP server my main was on), I have to say it pleases me to see that in the UK, and perhaps elsewhere, the statement is indeed a fallacy.

ESA has decided to actually enforce E3’s policy on sexually explicit material and ban Booth Babes (IGN says: Companies may have to rely on actual games to grab our attention.). The response I’ve been seeing is not nearly as bad I would have thought. Amid cries of “Without Booth Babes in tiny leather pants or bikinis, is there any reason at all to go to E3?” (dur, if you have no interest in checking out new games, plz send me in your stead) and WTF!!!!, there is a surprising apathy with people more concerned about the underage attendees. There’s even *gasp* some happy people.

But, beyond the varied response is the reasoning behind the choice. ESA claims that they did it to create a more professional business environment. Their timing, however, is suspect, especially given that they have had these policies on the books for some time. Well, better late than never, right? Taking the focus off T&A and putting it where it belongs, on the games, is a good thing in my book. I’m just not feeling good at the way ESA chose to do it.

Read the rest…

There is a post on feminist_rage today on a topic I haven’t read about before: the intersection of ablism, sexism, and attractiveness. LiveJournal user mahlia miles writes about being a conventionally attractive woman using a wheelchair, faced with chivalry and masculine entitlement:

I hate feeling like a side show. As a pretty woman in a wheelchair, boy, I am quite the novelty in people’s day.

I sometimes see ablism–power and prejudice over those perceived as having a disability–included in lists of forms of oppression. But it’s still to easy to forget how having a disability can intersect with other the other -isms because people with disabilities are all too often rendered invisible by the rest of society.

I fucking HATE the fact that men have used my disability and “need for help” to get close to me. The next fucker who puts his hands on my chair, trying to get his good-citizen jollies and maybe a phone number, is going to get yelled at publicly on a city bus. I hate the feeling of looking over and realizing that the guy who’s been staring at me for the past fifteen minutes, trying to get my attention, is now three inches away from my face because he’s “trying to help” get the buckles off my chair. HE’S TOUCHING MY CHAIR, which is a hell of a lot like TOUCHING ME.

Shout back! Challenge the stereotypes marginalized people are expected to fill. And to that “nice guy”: using a wheelchair is not an invitation to invade someone else’s space. Helping someone, when asked, is polite. Being polite is fine, but it does not entitle you to anything, including touching someone without her invitation.

Artemis of the new (or, at the very least, new to me) blog One Woman Army has an excellent post on A woman’s right to choose in Canada.

Highlights include [emphasis mine]:

Today is the 33rd anniversary of Roe vs. Wade in the U.S. In Canada abortion is decriminalized – ie. not legal but not illegal.

As a woman, I walk around every day of my life knowing that I am a second-class citizen. I feel it when my brother talks to me, when I go to work, when I go to school. I feel it when my opportunities are limited because of my sex. I feel it when my right to choice may be limited.

Right now it’s not. In Canada there is access to abortion (although sometimes limited). If you live in a rural area, your access to abortion might be limited. You might not have the money or transportation to drive eight hours to a clinic where a doctor will perform an abortion. In some provinces, healthcare will not cover abortion. Thanksfully, in Newfoundland and Labrador, the province covers all abortion costs, but if you live in a remote area of the province, such as Goosebay or Nain, you probably won’t be able to get an abortion.

[...]

My access to abortion depends on where I live in Canada – but despite that, I know that if I need or want one, I have the choice.

That choice is essential to my right as a woman, as a person – to making me more than just a second-class citizen. It’s essential to my equality in this world.

Tomorrow is Election Day. If the Conservative party forms government, I’m terrified of what will happen to that choice.

To all my Canadian readers of voting age, I hope you’ll pay heed to her call to arms:

If you care at all about women – about your sisters, aunts, friends, cousins, mothers, grandmothers – for all the women in Canada – about women’s equality – then do not mark an x next to the Conservative party on Monday January 23rd.

Our rights depend on it.

It’s been almost a week now since Tekanji invited me to blog here, so I figure I’ve kept you all in suspense long enough.

My name is Ariel Wetzel, although I usually go by Lake Desire online. The alias refers to the lake I grew up near. I’m a 21 year old senior at Western Washington University. I designed my BA major through a smaller college, Fairhaven, within the university. The title? Speculative Visions: Gender and Imaginative Composition. Basically, it’s an intersection of creative writing, gender studies, and the speculative fiction umbrella (scifi, fantasy, dystopias, and the like).

I keep a blog called New Game Plus on primarily gender and my geeky interests like gaming and scifi. I also enjoy writing fiction, vegan cooking (I’m an animal rights activist and accordingly an herbivore), reading young adult literature, activism, and the outdoors.

Any questions?

Lauren of feministe has just put up issue 7 of the Feminist carnival. Topics include: Abortion, Art, Beauty, Being, Blogging, Burlesque, Celebrity Gossip, Comics, Consumer Culture, Dating, Games, Humor, Media, Movies, Poetry, Pregnancy and Parenthood, Science, Sex, Sexual Assault, Television, and Video Games.

I just upgraded to WP 2.0 and migrated the database/FTP user. All seems to be working well, but if you have a problem post it here.

Andrea of Vociferate has written a post, Bring on the trolls, on the harm that ignoring male participation in the patriarchy can bring. I don’t agree with everything she says (I think there is, and needs to be, a place for men/men’s issues in feminism, and that sometimes it’s okay to step off a point in order to speak on a level that others can understand), but I’m 100% there with her underlying point. We can’t ignore, or downplay, male responsibility for hurtful acts just because we’ll be labelled “man-haters” or “offensive.” Guess, what? As long as we continue to fight for equal rights, we’ll be labelled that no matter what we say.

She said a lot of good things in her post, but these two paragraphs resonated deeply with me [emphasis mine]:

Sure, they live in a society which tells them it’s acceptable, good, fun, what they’re supposed to do, but the choice to do it is still their own. If we excuse the men who do these things, we must excuse anyone who commits an atrocity in a society which tells them it’s OK. Nazism must be OK, slavery must be OK, since nobody can resist what society tells them, can they?

But they can, every man who looks at porn and laughs at the retching girl deepthroating someone, every man who raises his hand to a woman, every man who rapes, every man who is disrespectful towards women and regards them as less than himself has chosen himself to do so.

So I do blame men, I blame men for what they are responsible for, and I blame them for what they allow other men to get away with.

I think that it’s useful to understand why the men in question do what they do. I think it’s useful not ony for feminists, because understanding the principles of oppression is the first step to finding ways to fight it, but also for all men – whether or not they subscribe to whatever action is under question – because ignorance is one of the most effective tools of privilege. If they can’t see the harm they do, then they can continue beliving that they do no harm.

However, understanding and excusing are different things. Yes, the reasons behind an unacceptable action should be taken under consideration. But that in no way, shape, or form gives a person a “get out of jail free” card for their continued bad behaviour. At some point we become adults and take responsibility for our own lives. And, furthermore, as Andrea said: if we refuse to call people on bad behaviour because society has condoned that behaviour, then we are condoning it as well. I don’t know about you, but I’m a feminist because I’m sick of the unnacceptable being packaged as acceptable. And if that makes me a man-hater, well so be it, because I don’t want to love anyone who doesn’t see and treat me, and my gender, as a worthy equal.

Hat tip: Mind the Gap

I recently watched 10 Things I Hate About You for like the fourth time. A modern remake of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, it is a love story that follows a senior in high school, her younger sister, and the various men who become entangled in their lives. I admit I have a soft spot for cheesy romantic comedies and there’s something about 10 Things that really resonates with me. Maybe it’s because I can relate to Kat, the protagonist.

You see, Kat is a feminist. A staunch one, at that. She’s an intelligent, witty, strong-willed woman who isn’t afraid to speak her mind, even if it gets her tossed out of her English class on a regular basis. And yet, even as I applaud her character, I am troubled by the way she (and her feminism) was represented. As always with these things, I’m putting a spoiler warning up for those who haven’t seen the movie yet.

Read the rest…

I completed the final draft of my submission for She’s Such a Geek (a big thanks to Ariel for alerting me to it) and sent it off just now. If I’m accepted, I should hear from them by February 15. If accepted, it’ll be published in the anthology and I’ll be paid $100 and given two copies of the book. If not, then you’ll be seeing it as a post here sometime in March.

Wish me luck!

I recently convinced Ariel (aka. Lake Desire) to join the dark side and contribute to this blog. She hasn’t decided yet whether or not she wants to be a guest blogger or a full time one, but perhaps if we give her a warm welcome she’ll be here to stay. Not that I’m trying to sway her decision. Nope, no ulterior motives here. *coughs*

I don’t know what it is about tragic things that make them such fodder for sarcastic humour. A defense mechanism, maybe? A way to deal with the horrors of the world without killing oneself? Regardless, it is undoubtedly the form of humour I use the most, probably because I’m awful with jokes (the only set that I can ever remember starts with, “What do you call a cow with two legs?”). I feel like my brand of dark, sarcastic humour gives me a way to purge the taint left on me by the injustices of the world; by speaking it in a humourous context, it can be exposed for the sheer idiocy it is. It becomes something to laugh at, not to be taken seriously. I also like that it turns something that normally brings pain into something that, even briefly, can bring the pleasure of laughter.

In that vein, I was having a totally serious (well, serious except for the interruptions of pictures from Cute Overload) with darth sidhe on Trillian. And she, sharing this brand of humour with me, took my totally innocent comment about not giving away things, and spawned the following sludge-filled bit of humour. Be warned, however, for it’s the traditionalist notion of sexuality that’s under fire and there’s talk of rape in it.

Read the rest…

So, I’ve been reading Elizabeth Kerner’s Song in the Silence series (or maybe it’s better called The Tale of Lanen Kaelar) because I picked up the next (last?) installment of it just recently. Just a warning, I talk in as vague terms as possible, but there are potential spoilers for both Kerner’s series and the manga Marmalade Boy. I’ve made it through the second book and I’m finally starting on the new one, so I’m excited to see how it goes. My main beef with the series, and it’s a small one at that, was that the whole “mating for life” the dragons did and the “ordained by the gods” love that the main characters had always struck me as a bit cheesy.

Fast forward to today, where I’m reading through an LJ post on BDSM spawned by a thread on Alas. What does BDSM have to do with Kerner’s books? Well, not much, although the thought of kinky dragons brings a smile to my lips. In the course of the debate one commenter, skelkins, was talking about the importance of human interaction, and how communication is just as inherent as power dynamics but is not eroticized: “In fact, there’s this weird cliche of romantic fiction that relies for its effect on audience consensus that communication itself is somehow inherently…anti-sexy?” And that got me thinking about the romance in the fiction I’ve read, and the way Kerner has treated it in her series.

Read the rest…

Emma has written a thought-provoking post on her brief foray into fundamentalism.

Although most UK fundamentalists are middle-class their theologies do not appear to be influenced by their access to education. Fundamentalist thinking forces every issue, problem, idea, challenge, ideology, and state into a framework in which things are either good or evil. Complexity, not Satan, is the real enemy. “Secular” sources of information and analysis are viewed with extreme caution, and I have witnessed more than one repentant bonfire of “secular” music.

This black and white thinking is taken into the area of gender. I was involved with a particular church that viewed non gender-stereotyped behaviours and clothing as a sign of spiritual immaturity. One particular women was forbidden by the church hierarchy from using tools around the house (masculine behaviour) until she adopted the modest dress they felt befitted a Christian woman.

Clearly this is batshit crazy, but a gender gap was observable in all of the churches I attended. Men filled the spots within the church leadership, except those posts that related to women and children. Women ran the creche, typed up the church newsletter, and provided and cleared up after refreshments. Men taught, women learned. Men led, women followed. Men protected, women obeyed.

I think the most chilling, though unfortunately not unexpected, part of the post came when she talked about some of her actual experiences with the church. Debates over which tea was more holy were fought with more fervor than that of the plight of domestic violence victims. That, and the emphasis on marriage/childbearing being the only acceptable goal for women, is as good an indicator as any for what kind of “morality” those kinds of institutions teach. I’m sorry, but there’s nothing good, right, or moral about treating human beings the way that Emma describes.

I’ve made the case more than once that Blizzard has made a choice (conscious, I’d say, by the rate that they ignore the opposition voices) to create a sexist environment that’s hostile to women in Word of Warcraft. In doing this, they have lost a portion of women (and continue to lose, as players pass their tolerance levels and decide that quitting is the only answer) for an imaginary gain of men and boys who wouldn’t play their games if not for the ability to masturbate to Night Elves who pole-dance in skimpy outfits. I am not the first woman who has left WoW in disgust, being fed up with having to deal with misogynistic asshats who objectify and degrade women vocally, and I will not be the last.

My mother and her partner still play, although they might be moving on to another game soon (for unrelated reasons). Knowing my stance on Blizzard and their choice, they pointed me to a 30 page thread on the matter entitled Female Armor Art Design (it seems to be part of a larger debate, but I’d rather not seek it out at this point given the size of this one). Ever since I saw a thread where a player wishing to find a GLBT friendly guild on his server was lambasted by 75% of the commenters, I’ve viewed the WoW forums as kin to Barrens chat: a dumping ground for bile, idiocy, and word vomit. A quick skimming of this thread yields much the same, but it’s always a good time to pull together threads that I’ve ranted on in the past.

Read the rest…

The Carnival of Bent Attractions 2nd Ed. is up over at Winter Woods’ blog, Desperate Kingdoms. Topics include: identity, gender, homophobia, religion, marriage, art and film.

Way back when I did the first instalment of this series, I quoted a description of a GameStop commercial that an employee had seen while working in the shop. The long and the short was that it was an ad for trade-ins featuring guys getting hit by women (representing video games) while on their way to trade them in for women who packed a bigger punch. The employee describes the women as “scantily clad” and, thinking of most video game heroines, I don’t think that’s an exaggeration.

These women clearly fit into the idea of “girl power” that’s been floating around the entertainment industry for the past 10+ years. They are valued for their “strength,” as evidenced by how hard they can punch their player being proportional to how valued they are (he trades them in for women who can hit harder). They are women who can, and do kick ass. But, is this “power” that of a true kind or is the phenomenon of women kicking ass a way to co-opt female power and bring it back firmly under men’s control?

Read the rest…