Category: Administrative

Happy Birthday to Us!

tekanji

At exactly one year ago today, OS.CB was born. Scant months after the (now defunct) Shrub.com Articles were being written, I realized that I wanted more than just one day every three months to shout from my soapbox. Couple that with my introduction to the feminist blogsphere and… well… here we are. Over the year this blog has grown and changed for the better; we’ve gained a contributor and lost one, crystalized into a site that discusses intersections between feminism and other areas, and become one of the many links in this wonderful community.

I’d like to thank Ariel for her contributions, all of my readers (both commenters and lurkers) for their support, and all of my blog friends who work hand in hand with me while we build our little niches on the net. So, thank you all, and please join with me in wishing our blog a very happy first birthday!

As part of the celebration, I’d like to highlight some of my favourite posts from this year.

On Feminism

June 28, 2005: Feminism is about Choice

Well, I rediscovered this little gem and decided to add it to my Feminism 101 links. It’s basically a rundown on why I think choice is an intrinsic part of feminism. I think this is where I began using my pet terms “cult of masculinity” and “cult of femininity”. Yay.

Highlight:

But, get this, feminism isn’t about hatred, it’s about giving people the choice on how to live their lives. It’s about letting women choose to use power tools, to read romance novels without shame, to work on the same level in the same jobs as men, to be valued for the work done at home and not be seen as “lazy” or “freeloaders” because they don’t earn a wage. It’s about letting men choose to play with Barbies, to watch sports on TV, to be able to enter “caring” professions without being branded a failure, to be able to contribute to the work done at home without being seen as some bumbling man incapable of even the easiest domestic tasks. It’s about seeing those who don’t fit into the binary of “man” and “woman” as people instead of freaks, to allow transsexuals to explore their gender identity without fear of being teased or worse, to stop the barbaric hospital procedures that force the intersexed children who are born with both a penis and a vagina into being “female” by removing their outward male organ, to let those uncomfortable with the implications of male and female exist as they are. It’s about all that, and much, much more.

November 22, 2005: Think women have achieved equality? Think again.

An extensive list of gender inequalities that exist in Western societies. Sadly, for its length it still only manages to touch the tip of the iceberg on the issues of equality (or the lack thereof).

Highlight:

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.

Putting the “Geek” Back Into “Feminist”

April 28, 2005: Games Even Your Girlfriend Can Play!

Tired of all the lists of things that you, as a woman, are supposed to want out of whatever technology being hawked? Yeah, me too. The first of many in a category I later called “for her”, “Games Even Your Girlfriend Can Play!” is a deconstruction of the sexist language employed in an article of similar title.

Highlight:

Marginalization in the gaming industry is nothing new to me. I mean, having boobs and a vagina and identifying as female is obviously enough to exclude me from that Good Ol’ Boys Club™. If I do venture in, it must only be through a boyfriend (since all good boys and girls are heterosexual) who will introduce me to fluffy games, like Bejeweled and Nintendogs, which are not too hardcore for my weak constitution. Do I sound bitter? Well, after spending most of my twenty-two years seeing mainstream magazines, websites, and other gaming publications catering to guys, and only guys, I think I’ve earned a bit of bitterness. I don’t think it’s too much to ask for me to not have to go to a female-oriented gaming site in order to be included.

December 4, 2005: Because sexual harassment is hilarious

Video games are not real life, but they do intersect real life. Using the case study of a fan-made Japanese game, I discuss two intersections here: 1) drawing off of real life phenomena, and 2) sending messages to players.

Highlight:

He starts out really well with the humiliation angle; one of the best tools for control is shame. Humiliating a woman (or girl) by exerting ownership to her body (in this case, the unalienable right to take pictures of her private areas) is one of the oldest tricks in the book. I think this game displays this tactic quite obviously, but in a way that reinforces its ideology. Certainly, the amount of people who didn’t think to comment on its use of women speaks volumes about how invisible this issue is, even in our so-called “equal” Western societies.

December 24, 2005: Top “Geek Girl”-Friendly Rules!

What all those “What Women Want [from technology]” lists are really saying.

Highlight:

Do you want to get your girlfriend or wife into technology, but you’re afraid she’s too feeble minded to be able to appreciate your magnanimous gift? Have you run out of gift guides to scour, but still need a gift for the girl “geek” in your life? Well, fear not, friend! You’ve come to the right place. This list will give you the skills that you need to decide what pieces of technology are and are not appropriate for the little women in your life!

January 2, 2006: All we want for the holidays…

Yet another deconstruction of the Othering of geeks who happen to be women, with the bonus inclusion of another “list for her”!

Highlight:

Why, you may ask, do I have a HUB on me? Do I subscribe to their magazine? Well, no. I was at an electronic’s store with my cousin, picking up some stuff to mod my GC with, and the cover caught my eye. One look at it should tell you why. At first it was just that I wanted to explore the image itself: What was the significance of putting a woman on the magazine’s cover? What about the use of glasses, a white collared shirt, and bound hair to make her a non-sexual nerd? How does this representation compare to the oversexualization of geek women that is becoming a part of the status quo?

Eradicating Divisive Discourse

September 20, 2005: Gender: Making a Caste System Into a Democracy

Caste isn’t just for India anymore. Looking to our own backyard, we can see how it can be a word used to describe the gender essentialist approach. In most Western worlds, we believe that “democracy” is a given, but if we don’t apply the principles to our personal life – letting people have a free choice in how they want to express (or not express) their gender, for instance – then can we really claim to be adhereing to the very system we covet?

Highlight:

Even if you believe in gender essentialism – a belief system yet to be proven, or even strongly supported, by science – then giving people the choice to act in a way that befits them hurts no one. If boys are “naturally” suited to x and girls are “naturally” suited to y, then in a neutral environment they’ll gravitate towards that anyway. If girls don’t like science, then why go through extraordinary measures to keep them out? If all boys are so tough, then why take such extreme measures to shame, and in some cases injure, those who show their feelings or other “weaknesses”?

September 23, 2005: Parents are from Mars, Non-Parents are from Venus

An attempt at bridging the divide between parented feminists and chilfree feminists (with feminsits who aren’t parents yet somewhere in there, too). While I got burned by Dru Blood, the main party I was trying to reach out to, I still think it’s important for us to stop making one’s stance on children (to have or not to have) a deciding factor in who can be in the feminist club or not.

Highlight:

In my studies on the matter as both a feminist and a childfree woman I’ve found that it is the very same parts of the patriarchy working against both sides of the divide: the institutions/social conventions that want to force mothers into some pre-conceived notion of motherhood (and punish them when they don’t fit into them perfectly) also work against childless and childfree women (and, to a lesser extent, they also work against fathers and non-parent men). One glance at the childfree livejournal community shows that, beyond the anti-[bad]parent venting, many posts are about the frustrations that childfree people face when total strangers shame them for not making the “right” reproductive choices. Having lived in mostly liberal areas, I haven’t personally encountered some of the worst horror stories, but I have had to get into more than a few terse conversations with my friends over my choice to be childfree. The worst I got was my uncle, who I love very much, calling me an “idiot” for wanting to get a tubal ligation.

Other Stuff You Should Read

December 29, 2005: On Chivalry

A treatise on why chivalry is not good manners. In it I discuss why my wish to be treated a certain way is not tantamount to me trying to kill your romance. And, I promise, replacing the code of chivalry with simple good manners will not cause you or your SO to spontaneously combust.

Highlight:

Chivalry, in its original form and the bastardized version that’s touted today, may include common courtesies but the gendered slant takes it out of the arena of strict good manners. It’s good manners with conditions: I’ll open this door for you if you’re a woman, because I’m supposed to be nice to women. I’ll buy dinner for you because you’re a woman. I’ll do this and that because you’re a woman and my parents told me that women need/want to be treated this way. Not, you know, because we should be kind to those around us.

February 14, 2006: Game of Hearts

Hey, I want a chance to plug my creative writing skills. So go read my short story. The shortness compells you.

Highlight:

“Answer me, you slut!” “Whore!” “Hey, baby, you want some of this?”

Don’t answer. Keep your head down. Don’t speak. “Whoa there, little lady. Why don’t you just come here with me?” Don’t speak! But, he’s touching, he’s grabbing – No. You can’t speak. Those are the rules. If you speak, he wins. They win.

Whew, now that was a timewarp and a half! It’s amazing to see which of my values have changed and which have remained the same. I hope you have as much fun reading the posts as I did re-reading them. And, even if not, please join in a warm shout-out to me by wishing us here at OS.CB a very Happy Birthday!

Updated Captcha

tekanji

Okay, I know all of you hate the captcha with the burning fire of a thousand suns. Honestly, I’d love to get a better one (like the one blogger has), but I neither have the time nor the skills to seek out and/or code one.

But, as a stopgap measure I updated the fonts and the noise for the captcha I do have, so most of the problems with readability should be gone. Unfortunately, I don’t think the code comes with a way to ensure that the fonts stay within the image boundaries. I’ll continue to look into it.

Question: Is the captcha now easier to read?

And if you want to be really nice to me, I’d appreciate if you find one that the background or font makes it unreadable if you could screncap it and e-mail it to me. I’d say just describe it, but there are too many that are similar.

Request for Reader Opinions

tekanji

I did some changing to my link list (the right hand one) in an effort to make it better organized. In essence, I created a “Feminism” section and split up some of my feminist blogs even further.

So, a few questions:

  1. Is the breaking down of the feminist blogs into several categories better or worse than what I had before?
  2. Do you think the category names are appropriate, or should they be changed? If they should be changed, what do you recommend?
  3. My link list is rather large, do you find it’s hard to navigate? If so, should I:
    • Leave it the way it is.
    • Put some sections on the left side.
    • Remove all/some links from the side and make a separate page just for links.
  4. My “More Feminists” category is kind of like my “Unclassified Blogs” category. Do you have any ideas for further categorizing the feminist blogs there? I would like to make one for feminist blogs focusing on sex/sexuality, but I can’t think of a good name.
  5. Do you see any blogs that are categorized wrong? Would you like your blog put into a different section? Please tell me and I’ll make the appropriate changes!

Any other comments/advice on my link list is welcome. The point is to entice people to visit the links, and if my list isn’t doing that then stuff needs to change.

Semi-hiatus for March & April

tekanji

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!

In Defense of Domesticity [REPOST from Shrub.com]

tekanji

Note: This article was originally written on July 03, 2005 as a Shrub.com Article. In my process of switching all articles over to this blog, I will be reposting old entries. What follows is in its original form without any editing.

Because of some crossed wires, I’m taking this month instead of johnmoon (he’ll be up for August). Since I’m in the middle of moving, I’m going to shamelessly plagiarize my own comment from a thread over at reappropriate. On our blog, I argued for the ability for people to choose what, if any, parts of traditional femininity and masculinity are right for them. Taking the argument to its logical conclusion, everyone should have the right to choose what kind of life is right for them whether it be working a job or taking care of the house and kids.

When I was younger, I was pretty much against anything feminine. My personality, combined with my having a backlash against what was expected of me, caused me to get into a “male-normative” mindset (meaning that I thought that traditionally male things were “normal” and traditionally feminine things were “bad”): I hated makeup, and “girly” clothing like dresses and skirts, and, yes, I looked down on people who aspired to the domestic. It took me a long time to step away from that mindset but it wasn’t until I got a big dose of feminist theory that I really understood why it’s so important to see things such as domestic labour as valuable.

Now, I can understand fighting hard to give people a true choice in what they want to do with their lives. I understand that, right now, domestic labour is de-valued and, in many cases, can make a woman into nothing more than a domestic slave. However, I don’t think the solution is to further degrade that labour but to show society how valuable it is. To show society that “womanly” things are just as good as “manly” things.

The facts are, not everyone wants to aspire to a male-normative life. Some people, women and men, want to raise a family and keep their home functioning properly. And, frankly, that should be seen as a good thing. Homemakers, unlike the stereotype, don’t sit on their asses all day eating bonbons and watching soap operas. They do work: they can clean, they can cook, they can garden, they can decorate, they can be in charge of the finances, they can have time to have hobbies that they enjoy, if there are children around they can take care of them, too. Society is built not only by the breadwinners, but also on the backs of people (historically women) who have kept the less visible parts running smoothly.

These are people who have given all their time to making sure the people around them are healthy, happy, and in good order. These are people who have sacrificed much of themselves in order to benefit their families. Desiring to be a homemaker is, for many people, about loving one’s family above everything and wanting to be the domestic backbone that keeps things going.

Saying that these people have no ambition, degrading the valuable work they do… that’s what’s been done to them for ages. Calling their valuable labour worthless is calling them worthless for wanting to do that labour. And that is an anti-feminist value. To work for equality, we need to see the value in the traditionally feminine and not just try to make everyone into “men”.

Fantasy Women [REPOST from Shrub.com]

tekanji

Note: This article was originally written on November 01, 2005 as a Shrub.com Article. In my process of switching all articles over to this blog, I will be reposting old entries. What follows is in its original form without any editing.

While in the midst of writing my Girls and Game Ads series, I found myself going off on a tangent on the depiction of women in the fantasy genre and how it helped lead to the rise of the “girl power” paradigm we find deeply enmeshed in current Western pop-culture. While the whole “chicks in chainmail” deal was already being challenged by fresh authors and ideas by the time I got into fantasy, it remains an important part of the genre’s history. It is this idea that I will be addressing in this article.

My first real introduction to the fantasy genre as a genre in its own right was Ursula K. Leguin’s Earthsea series. While the way she used her female characters never sat right with me, nevertheless I believe it to be significant that my initial contact with the genre was divorced from one of its staple stereotypes. It wasn’t until I got into Dragonlance that I was introduced into the idea of “chicks in chainmail”. There, however, it was the art that emphasised that rather than the authors; Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman’s portrayal of their female warriors was pretty close to being gender neutral and most definitely didn’t fetishize them into “babes in brass bra bikinis” (to steal from Esther Friesner). Other Dragonlance authors varied in their representation, but even though I eventually quit the series I never felt that they had betrayed me to the stereotype. Indeed, partly because I’m not so much into high fantasy and partly because I tend to unconsciously seek out female authors, I don’t have much in my extensive collection that fits this paradigm.

Nevertheless, simply being immersed in fantasy culture is enough to make one aware of this stereotype. Even if not for the D&D books I briefly owned, or the fantasy genre video games I played, I still would have been aware that the books I chose were still not the “norm” for the growing genre. One of my favourite series, in fact, is a collection of parody stories: Chicks in Chainmail, Did You Say Chicks?!, Chicks ‘N Chained Males, The Chick is in the Mail and the newest one, Turn the Other Chick. These stories helped me to see that the harmful stereotype goes deeper than just the flagship “warrior babe” (fully equipped with scanty armour that wouldn’t protect a fly, let alone a human being) and into every aspect of the traditional genre, from the sexualized warrior women to the meek healing sidekicks. Not long after this, I was shown two other great series (Tamora Pierce’s Song of the Lioness quartet and Patricia C. Wrede’s The Enchanted Forest Chronicles) by my fantasy loving friends that, while not parodies per se, turned the stereotypes on their ears. Though already past the targeted age for Young Adult books, those series appealed to me on a highly personal level and continue to enthral me even now. Good writing, it seems, knows no age boundary.

While the expansion of the fantasy genre and, I would argue, the increasing inclusion of women’s voices, is beginning to erode the vice grip the “chicks in chainmail” paradigm has on the literary genre, it seems that instead of eradicating the stereotype all that is happening is that it is being transferred to other forms of the genre. Even today, you can still see it as a common theme with popular artists such as Luis Royo and the combined talents of Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell (a tagline in their footer even proclaims: “Beautiful women and heroic men”). The video game industry uses the model for everything from E3’s “booth babes” to Blizzard’s Night Elves. Hollywood has even picked it up with characters like Buffy (her television counterpart being less of a parody than the original movie), Leeloo from Fifth Element, and a whole host of characters from film adaptations of comics and video games.

Gaming Communities: Real or Imaginary? [REPOST from Shrub.com]

tekanji

Note: This article was originally written on May 05, 2005 as a Shrub.com Article. In my process of switching all articles over to this blog, I will be reposting old entries. What follows is in its original form without any editing.

Why is it that the most visible critiques on video games come from people who are obviously not even casual gamers? I always hear “violence” and “sexually explicit content” thrown around without the writer having an understanding, or offering an in-depth critique, on what those words mean for video games. I find that these so-called “anti-game crusaders” often buy into alarmist extremes, thereby misrepresenting the influence of videogames, without ever asking why such a correlation exists. Most times, this perspective misses the intricacies of the games and, in the case of online games, the gaming communities.

It’s understandable, then, when I lumped a Vancouver Sun article entitled “Those MMORPGs: Threat or Menance?” (March 24, 2005, A13) written by Erin Morisette, a political science undergrad, into the same category. Morisette seeks to prove that MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games) are “sedentary, solitary and anti-social, offering little in return,” or so the subtitle under the header would have us believe. While I can’t argue with the sedentary aspect, I find it hard to believe that anyone could accuse online gaming of being “solitary and anti-social.”

I suppose the pertinent question to ask, then, is “What makes a community?” For Morisette, one requisite is that it be in a tangible environment that enables the “developing of essential social skills or connecting with their real communities and cities.” What only someone who has played an MMORPG can fully understand, though, is that the games are designed to discourage progressing without the help of others. Most online games, and especially MMOs, are not for the anti-social; the whole point of being online is interacting with others! One of the staples of MMOs are online groups (guilds, linkshells, clans, etc) that give players a community, oftentimes of like-minded people, with which they can chat and play with beyond meeting people at random. Morisette goes onto criticize these games for being “effective at isolating and disconnecting players from their real-life communities because of their design,” again playing into the extremes and missing the fact that often parts or whole of real-life friendgroups will play together. I, for instance, play on a World of Warcraft server in the guild of one of my friends and will soon be starting a character on another server to play specifically with my mother and her boyfriend. Many people in my guild play with real-life friends, and I would be playing with more of mine if I had started playing sooner and tried to encourage us all onto one server.

To be fair, Morisette does admit that not all gamers tend towards the extremes, and that games can be fun. Yet, she is unaware of, or ignores, that some MMOs fit into her wish that the technology being used in “creative ways [that] contribute to the success and interconnectedness of future communities that will be dominated by today’s youth.” While the gaming communities are in no way better or worse than other kinds of community, one benefit of meeting people online is that you aren’t immediately aware of their physical aspects – gender, race, age, etc. These environments provide a way for players to connect to people outside of their immediate vicinity, giving them access to a wide variety of people with their own ideas and experiences. This gives you the opportunity to be friends with someone who you would never meet in real life because many real life communities tend to be on the homogeneous side. MMOs also develop teamwork, since having an effective party is an essential part of most gameplay, as well an understanding of social mobility and hierarchy as one levels and, in their guild community, becomes better known and higher rank. There is also the possibility of being ostracized, or in extreme cases punished by a GM, if you don’t play nice. Those who exhibit selfish and anti-group traits often find themselves kicked out of parties, guilds, and thereby effectively cut off from levelling in the game. Most online games also have guidelines on language and harassment, which is not always effective but with such large environments, as in real life, it is hard to deal with every occurrence quickly and easily.

In the end, though, while Morisette did bring parents into the equation I am disappointed that yet another article blames video games for being entertaining rather than blaming parents for letting objects do the parenting for them. Video games, surprisingly, are not the root of kids problems. Neither is television, or pornography, or D&D, or books, or sports, or any other entertaining hobby. These are merely tools for spending time, all of which develop different skills and can be good in moderation and bad in excess. Every aspect of life deserves to be critiqued, and video games are no exception, but this alarmist malarkey is old, tired, and completely off-base. Parents, you want your kids to lead an active lifestyle and be involved in your community? Don’t take away their video games, but do your bloody job and make sure they engage in a wide range of different activities, get involved in their life (if that means playing video games too, then you should make the sacrifice; you might find you enjoy it), and stop looking for a scapegoat for your own failings – be an adult and admit that you’re not perfect.

An Introduction

lake-desire

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?