Better late than never, neh? The Carnival of Bent Attractions #5 is up over at jay sennett jaywalks. No topics per say, but Jay has this to say: “Each submissions reminds of the importance of our bodies, that we live in them; that people hurt us because of what we do with our bag of bones.”
Category: Archived Posts
I like Chinese, I like their tiny little trees…
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
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…
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.
Yeah, I'd say gaming is a privilege
Can you run it? Do you have $$? We can help!
Looking random shit up on GameFaqs during a study break (and this is only the second day of classes, people! Studying > me), I came across this GameStop ad. I really do think it speaks for itself.
"Girl" Gamers Not Welcome [Gaming Communities, Part 2]
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]
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.
Settling in Japan
So, after a few awful mishaps that shall not be named, I’m in Japan, in my place, have power for my computer, and just waiting for classes to start on Monday. For kristy, since she asked in the previous thread, I’m going to be at this school for 1 to 2 years (however long it takes me to become fully fluent) and then I hope to find a job and work here for a few more years.
I’m not quite returning to blogging yet, as the classes will be intense and I’ll need to catch my stride (here’s to hoping I can get a good sized study group going…) but I wanted to update all of you and send out the love. I’ll try to respond to comments on the Male Gaze thread as soon as possible.
Veganism: Stepping Stone to Feminism
When I was seventeen, I was eating a piece of chicken on the back porch when Quistis and Beula, two of the family hens, hovered begging. I indulged my pets with all fondness, and felt unsettled. How was the animal on my plate different than the pets I was sharing my meal with? Chickens were my favorite animals; I bonded with them like people bond with their dog or cats. So why was it I could eat a chicken I had never met, but the thought of doing the same to a cat turned my stomach? Identifying this discomfort was one of many catalysts that continues to shape who I am.
Carnival of Feminists XII
The Carnival of Feminists XI is out at Written World. Topics include sexy heroines, comics, body image, television, the Duke Rapes, birth and more. There are a lot of new-comers to the carnival included I recommend checking out.
