Author: tekanji

Gaming While Female [Gaming Communities, Part 3]

tekanji

I know this installment was supposed to be about the greater “boy’s club” of gaming, but getting a new gaming group here has brought some more personal issues to the forefront. In particular, being “one of the boys” (but not really). You see, I can never be “one of the boys” because, well, I’m not a boy. Or a male. Or so much male identified, although I tend to fit more into “masculine” gender roles than “feminine” ones. I am female, and that’s enough to set me apart because my main gaming group consists of two men.

I know of two women here who like games, but I haven’t had a chance to have them over to play yet (one of them was supposed to come Saturday, but apparently her previous engagement went long, so she didn’t make it). It also doesn’t help that the guys I game with live in my building, whereas the women I want to game with don’t. For reasons that I want to explore, it seems harder for me to form primary gaming communities with women. I could brush it off here as random obstacles — physical distance, language barriers (the men are American, the women are Taiwanese), etc — but, I think it goes deeper than that.

Do the sexes game differently? Is my inability to game “like a woman” what keeps me out of primarily female gaming environments? Is that fundamental difference why I often feel like an interloper in my gaming communities? I don’t know, really, but I want to find out.

I. Do Men and Women Game Differently?

One of the difference I see in male gamers and female ones is that female ones tend to have a bigger life outside of games – we have multiple friend groups that we often go out with, interests outside of geeky culture that we will pursue with the same vigor as our games, and we don’t tend to let our gaming get in the way of our health or other obligations.

Which is not to say that my generalization is a hard and fast rule, but rather that it’s a usual pattern that I’ve observed in most of the gaming communities I’ve been a part of. I, myself, often straddle the line between what I’ve defined here as “male” gaming patterns and “female” ones, so that alone should tell you that it isn’t a truism any more than the idea that more men than women play videogames is a truism.

Take this past week for an example — I’ve thrown studying to the wind and have spent almost every night playing video games with my friends. One of the days I didn’t, I held a dinner party that one of them attended (the other was working). I’ve stayed up much later than I should — which is to say that I’ve gone to bed anywhere between 12am and 5am, depending on whether it was a school night or not. But I haven’t missed school, and I haven’t slacked in my classes.

The boys, however, would either leave my place to go play more video games, or I’d leave theirs because I was falling asleep. Once or twice one of them would leave before I would. But usually not. They will miss school, or stay up all night, or skip meals (okay, I can’t get on their case too much about this one — I’ve been known to do that in the past, too), or what have you. And none of this shocks me, because that is pretty much what would happen in my old gaming group.

The girls I haven’t had a chance to play with don’t, to my knowledge, stay out late. They often have other things going on that will run late. They keep wanting to game, but they never seem to have any time. I can relate because in between gaming I’ve been going out with friends (dinner, lunch, just hanging out) quite a lot. The only reason I have time is because, instead of going to bed after my nights out, I’ll do what my gaming guys do — bid my friends goodnight and then go play video games.

II. Hardcore? Casual? None of the above?

“But wait,” you say, “Doesn’t that just define thel line between hardcore and casual gamers? Doesn’t that just reinforce the idea that women are casual gamers and men are hardcore?” To some extent, yeah, I am kind of postulating that here. But I think that there’s more to being a hardcore gamer than making oneself sick playing games all the time.

I, for instance, heavily identify as a hardcore gamer — when I get a new game I like, I obsess. I will play it whenever I have free time, often to the point of ignoring my friends. But that’s always a temporary state for me; after a while, I’ll go back to keeping a more balanced schedule. Because, well, I like having friends, and friends don’t stick around if you ignore them for too long.

Another issue that I think factors in to whether one is a hardcore or casual gamer would be how much one spends thinking/talking about games when not actually playing them. I personally have this habit of almost always talking about games — to the point where I often lose the person I’m talking with. Just yesterday, I was talking to a classmate about my DS Lite (bought on Friday — be jealous, ye suckers who don’t live in Japan!), and she said to me, “When you talk about games it’s like you’re speaking another language.” And, I mean, it is. Not to mention that it’s slowly becoming the class joke that anytime a question is asked about what I want to do, what I like, my hobby, etc. that I’ll say gaming. And those of you who read my blog regularly will know how often I talk about the intersections between gaming/geekery and other issues (like feminism).

In this sense, are women less likely to be hardcore? I don’t rightly know. I’d argue that the prevalence of gaming blogs and sites by women would say no. But, given the hostile environment (which I will talk about one day, I swear! the post is already half written), it’s hard to truly gauge how many women are “hardcore”.

III. Male Gamers Looking at Women

What about the perception of women, though? Just a few weeks ago, I was in the school bar chatting with another student. As is often the case with me, the discussion turned to games. And this guy called me a casual gamer. You’ll hear this story again whenever I get around to posting about the greater gaming community, because that’s how much it bothered me. Not that I think that it’s necessarily a bad thing to be a casual gamer, but he assumed that I was because I was a woman. I mean, unless it’s become standard fare to give that label to someone who has been shooting the shit with you for like 5 minutes about various different kinds of games. And, come on, this guy didn’t even really play anything besides like PSX/PS2 and PC games. I don’t think he even did emulators. But, you know, I was the casual gamer.

As for my gaming communities, past and present, what did they think? Well, I know my old gaming group knew I identified as hardcore. My cousin and I would rent or buy games to play together — we especially liked playing RPGs together, but we didn’t confine ourselves to that. But I didn’t like games like Smash Bros. or fighting games (way too much baggage attached to those styles of games), which ruled me out of a lot of encounters. And that made it very stressful towards the end of my stint with them.

I can’t honestly say what my new group thinks of me. They’re happy to have me — I think, but I’m going to talk more about that in my next post (this one got too long). They are more than happy to include me in whatever game they’re playing. For instance, one of them just got an XBox 360 (which is not selling at all over here in Japan), and got a soccer game. That we all suck at. But since the XBox is 4 player, I was invited to join, and join I did. They never shirk my turn for Sengoku Musou, and part of the reason I got to be so friendly with these guys in the first place was that when they heard that I had a Gamecube they were smitten (with the console, you perv!).

I don’t think that they’d call me a casual gamer if someone asked, but would they say that I was as hardcore as them? I don’t know. Does it matter? Maybe, maybe not. I’m hoping it’s more towards the not, but given the way my last group imploded, I don’t feel so secure.

IV. Conclusion

This is the first time I’ve really sat down and examined some of the whys behind my expeirences “gaming while female.” I’ve always dealt with feeling excluded, or being the interloper, or what have you, but I’ve never looked at possible reasons why that might be. And, of course, after all this I’m left with no answers, but a lot more to think about and eventually talk about. But, that’s for my next post.

It's not rape if they don't say no (this time)

tekanji

I know I haven’t been around lately, and I’m sorry. I have some posts half finished, but I haven’t had the time lately. I have a big test on Monday (continued on Wednesday), but Golden Week is coming up so maybe when I get back from Nagoya I’ll have some time. But, while you’re waiting with bated breath for more words of wisdom from me, let me point you to a post by regular reader and poster here, Darth Sidhe.

I haven’t actually read the news article that spawned the original discussion that lead to her post, but question asked was thus: If we take it that Editor (woman) brings home Drunk Guy, eventually says no to sex, he goes off elsewhere, then comes back to “her” room. In actuality, it’s Roomate’s room. Roomate is sleeping and he initiates sex with her. She wakes up and, thinking Drunk Guy is her boyfriend, doesn’t resist. She later finds out that Drunk Guy was not, in fact, her boyfriend and is pressing charges. Is Drunk Guy guilty of rape?

In Washington state (the state I identify as my home state), hell yeah he is. While alcohol is one of the factors for removing consent, I’m fairly sure it’s trumped by, you know, having sex with a sleeping person (who hasn’t consented to have sex with you under those conditions). As Darth Sidhe also points out — Editor, the woman Drunk Guy thought he was sleeping with — had already said no.

It seems pretty cut and dried, right? Well, not in the community that Darth Sidhe found the question in. She has this to say on the matter:

I’m still pretty much confused by the reactions. Several comments, disturbingly, assert that since Roommate was sober and Drunk Guy was not, she was raping him, largely ignoring the fact that Drunk Guy initiated sex with an unconscious woman. Does someone who wakes up to being fucked by a drunk person have the legal responsibility to do everything they can to stop sex or else be considered a rapist? That sounds ludicrous, yet could the letter of the law protect such a thing? I imagine that if the conscious, drunk person regretted the sex, they could legally press charges.

Anyway, go read the post and the discussions. I think they say a lot about the way Americans view rape that isn’t violent stranger rape. I’m leaving comments on for the time being, but I’d like to remind any potential posters that victim blaming is not allowed on this blog. Keep the discussion civil or I will delete your comment and ban you without notice. This is non-negotiable.

The other side of… the other side?

tekanji

Apparently someone who can only be bitter about me banning him made the letters of a Salon article. Under the heading, “Are Feminists Necessary?” he writes this multi-paragraph treatise that, frankly, I didn’t read. I sort of thought that his invoking the idea that feminists = Republicans was close enough to invoking Godwin’s Law for me to pass him off at losing at the internet. But I did have to read the paragraph in which I got an honourable mention – no link though, too bad.

The guy, who signed off as Two Sides To The Story (not that you’ll ever learn that) — his aside is ironic, given that unless people find my site they won’t ever actually learn the true context behind what he claims — had this to say:

On one of the links off Carnival Of Feminists (provided in another Boradsheet post) – “Official Shrub” – there’s a rule that says male writers can’t post opinions on the message board that point out that men suffer from discrimination, as well. Preposterously, they actually have a term for it – they call it: “What About The Mens Phallusy?” – which is meant to be satiric and clever, but actually only proves how fascist feminists still are in their thinking, and their desire to completely control the conversation.

Ignoring the fact that this is a, you know, blog and not a message board (a small, but significant difference), let’s just take a gander at what I actually say about men’s issues:

No Hijacking of Threads
Off-topic discussions are tolerated to a certain extent. I understand that threads can, and often do, take a life of their own. However, an attempt to come into a discussion for the express purpose of disrupting the main conversation will be seen as trolling. This includes invoking The “What About the Mens?” Phallusy with arguments like, “but this happens to men, too!” or otherwise trying to shift the focus from an oppressed group onto the individual oppressions a majority group faces. It’s one thing to relate one’s experiences and opinions when appropriate, but bringing up how the poor mens/whites/heterosexuals/etc. have problems, too, when the author’s discussion was about the institutionalized or individual acts of oppression of a minority is not appropriate. Any comment that tries to de-rail a thread is subject to either a warning or deletion, depending on how severe the infraction.

What that means is that if I make a thread that includes a platform for discussion of masculinities, then of course it’s appropriate. But if I’m talking about women, then it’s so fucking rude to come on here and be like, “But [x] happens to men, too!” Okay, great, but that’s not anywhere near my point. If you want to talk about that and feel I don’t give it enough airtime, go elsewhere. I give links. Lots of links. This is my soapbox, you see. Mine. Not yours. And, frankly, if you’re so steeped in your own privilege that you are unable to see the distinction, well, then maybe you deserved whatever ban I gave you for whatever reason.

And remember, ye anti-feminist trolls of jerkitutde, Feminists don’t hate men, we just hate you.

Via reader Darth Sidhe.

I like Chinese, I like their tiny little trees…

tekanji
Gamestop Ad
A Chink in the Armour by White Light Films

Via one of my friends, A Chink in the Armour is a light hearted documentary that explores the stereotypes about Asians (specifically Chinese) in North America (specifically Toronto). There was a lot of fluff in it, but I think it would make a nice segue into talking more about racism against Asians in Western culture. (Hint, hint)

Temporary Hiatus on Commenters

tekanji

I upgraded WP and forgot to update my AuthImage code to match. Subsequently I’ve been getting spam. Lots of spam. I will update it soon, but I’m already late for meeting my friends to go to Nagoya, so I’ve turned off non-registered comments. All features should be back to normal by tomorrow (my tomorrow).

I apologize for any inconvenience this causes.

Update: Okay, it should be fixed now. Sorry for that, folks.

Heads up on a new organization…

tekanji

Ragnell is trying to spread awareness for a new organization called Friends of Lulu. I don’t have the time to write about it myself, so here’s her e-mail instead (formatted for blog):

Hello everyone.

I started http://womenincomics.blogspot.com (and lurking around your sites, actually) because I noticed a sharp increase of social awareness posts in a blogging community where a Feminist is someone who argues that Wonder Woman can beat Superman in a fight (and it was a tie AGAIN last time). A lot of people were thinking about women in comics because a column described a sexual assault at a convention. It didn’t name names, because the legal difficulties were still being ironed out

Anyway, today Ronee (the columnist) did a follow-up story. Taki Soma describes, in her own words, what happened to her which is something that takes a lot in the comics industry. It’s heavily male dominated, which I think is due to being left by the wayside during the women’s movement and a major sense of entitlement among the men who’ve been entrenched in it for a long time. There are a number of sexual harassment horror stories in the archives of WFA and in the columns and blogs of female workers/ex-workers.

In response, the Friends of Lulu, our resident Feminist organization, has put together a fund for fees when a woman in the industry wants to take legal action in sexual harassment/assault cases.

Unfortunately, our community is small, and news travels slowly beyond the main fan-sites. I’m mailing you specifically because I know you all get a lot more traffic than either of my little blogs, and I felt this deserved a wider distribution than I could give it.

If you can, please help spread awareness for Friends of Lulu so that it can continue to effectively fight for the rights of women in the comic book industry.

"Girl" Gamers Not Welcome [Gaming Communities, Part 2]

tekanji

I have been a gamer almost all of my life. I was 4, maybe 5, when a cousin who was staying with us introduced me to Dragon Warrior. I could barely get my character around the world, but I was in love. I played with my mom, I played with my best friend, I got calls from the elder brother of a family friend when he and his friends were stuck in games like Zelda. When I was old enough, I started playing them by myself. I bonded with many of my friends over my Nintendo, or Genesis, and later my SNES.

It wasn’t until high school, though, that I realized I wasn’t quite welcome in the greater gaming community. I would be at a party held by my male gamer friends and they would all gather around the N64 and play Goldeneye or Mario Party and I wouldn’t be welcome. It’s not like they said, “No, Andrea, you can’t play this,” but if I tried, they’d do little things like forget my turn, or gang up on me first, etc. I don’t think they meant to do it, but they still did. So I started just playing games alone. If I got to the parties early enough, I could hog the big TV and play Space Channel Five or whatever, but if not then I was stuck in another room playing whatever PSX game was available. Unless people were in there trying to play Marvel vs. Capcom or Street Fighter or something. Then I just sat around and watched. Which suited everyone just fine. Everyone, except me. Fighting and shooting games are probably the most shitass boring things to watch.

It wasn’t all bad. In university there was a year in which a group of us would head down to an internet cafe every friday and play Counter Strike with each other. I would play games like Resident Evil and Tales of Symphonia with my cousin. Although he was just a casual gamer, John (he was my boyfriend for two years) and I would play things like Half-life and Alice together. During those times, I didn’t feel excluded, or ignored, or not welcome.

Not long after John and I broke up, I brought an acquaintence of mine into the friend group. We had known each other for a while, but for various reasons we would only really see each other in school and at parties. It seemed like a good idea at the time: he liked to game, we liked to game, he was nice, we were nice… he seemed like he would fit in. And, really, he did. He fit in so well that the whole community I had created changed. He liked to play things like Smash Brothers, and he brought in a few (male, of course) friends of his who felt the same. Suddenly it was High School all over again. At first it was just something little, something stupid. He invited my cousin to his birthday party, but not me. I confronted him, he said it was an honest mistake, and things seemed better for a while.

Then the guy and I entered into a “friends with benefits” style relationship, which meant that I saw more of him, and I realized that it hadn’t actually gotten better. They had just gotten better at excluding me without my knowledge. Now, if I wanted to spend Friday nights with my cousin, I’d have to put up with them, too. And they would get vicious when we played games. So vicious it would make me vicious, and I’d end up feeling shitty afterward. It was like playing Carcazzone and getting into Sheep Wars with another friend of mine. It made the game not fun anymore. All of this, plus other personal shit, led to a spectacular blowup between me and this guy. That fed into a blowup with my cousin.

Suddenly I didn’t have a gamer community anymore. I still don’t. I’ve actually met a few geeks since coming to Japan, so I’m hopeful, but all of them are men. And I’m afraid of getting back into the pattern. Afraid that, even if I’m the one creating the group, that ultimately I won’t be welcome because I’m just not like them. I am, after all, a woman.

Introduction [Gaming Communities, Part 1]

tekanji

This is a subject that is very personal for me. So personal, in fact, that my original introduction was too bitter, too angry, and not productive enough to be considered suitable for this blog. I posted it in feminist_gamers instead. The incident that lead to all this, in which some feminist gamers blogged about their disappointment with Oblivion and male gamers got nasty about it, made me think, yet again, about my own experiences in the gaming community. About the arguments about “female gaming” sites. About how “gaming site” is synonymous with “male gaming site”, even if it has female subscribers. And it made me sad. No, worse, it made me sick. This is my life. This is what I put up with day after day.

All I want is to have communities available to me that aren’t exclusively for women. I want to be able to be seen as an equal — not a “gamer-lite”, not a potential date, not a Second Class Geek — in gamer groups that include men in them. I want to be able to talk about the issues I see in a game without male gamers dismissing the concerns as “ridiculous” or making “jokes” about panty fights (what the hell is a panty fight, anyway?) and making dinner and whatever. I want to be taken seriously, as a serious gamer, and a serious human being. And I want to finally have a gaming community that accepts me, not despite of who I am, but because of it.

I have written in the past about gaming communities from the perspective of examining what, exactly, defines a community. In revisiting this subject, I would like to focus on gender issues in the communities. The first post will be on my personal experiences being a woman trying to find gaming communities throughout my life. The second will be on how general gaming communities are “boy’s clubs,” with a look a recent kerfluffle more-or-less started by a popular gaming site, Kotaku. I’m going to leave the series open ended for now, since I may want to write more on it in the future.