Because I know all of you missed it, Sunday Link Blogging is back! (Until I get too lazy to link posts and put it on hiatus again, that is.)
Over at Utopian Hell, Astare took me to task for some of my cited reasons why I left WoW. I was thinking about writing this post anyway, but after reading what she and Aurora had to say (even after writing a novel in response – no, I wasn’t kidding when I said being concise pains me) I felt the need to elaborate on why I cancelled my account.
My feeling about Blizzard and women is the main reason I left. Because of the character limit, it was the only reason I felt the strong need to address in the “why are you leaving?” comment field. For the sake of my argument, and the fact that my anger was mainly directed towards that, I used the issue as my sole address in my previous post. Despite that, it wasn’t the only reason I left.
While I did mentally set aside the entire summer to play WoW (after all the hype about it, and so many of my friends being addicted to it, how could I not?), the reality is that I have more important things to do. Firstly, I’ve been travelling almost non-stop since I vacated my apartment in July. I just got the internet set up at my home base, but I’m intending to be here only a little more than half of each week and then in September I’ll be in Miami for the entire month. My current laptop cannot handle WoW, or any MMO. I also have a slew of real life appointments I need to take care of before I go to Japan in April, the most important of which is setting up and getting a tubal ligation. And last, but certainly not least, Sarah and I have been seeking representation for Children of the Storm for about a year now and if I don’t get my ass in gear and finish this round of editing we’ll never get the sucker published.
Time issues aside, because if I was hooked on the game I know I would make time for it, there was one major aspect of the gameplay that I wasn’t fond of. It’s actually the one way in which I think FFXI outstripped WoW, although ironically it was also an aspect of FFXI that was flawed enough to be a driving factor in my losing interest in the game. I’m talking about their party system. In FFXI you simply couldn’t get far into the game without having to play nice; partying with people was just that integral. The social aspect of it also made the game a lot more fun to play; there was a constant strategizing, chatting, and camaraderie from teamwork that made me feel like I was a part of a community of like-minded people. I had to actively seek out people to party with in WoW because, experience wise, it wasn’t generally a good bargain. When I actually found people I had a good time, but my social network outside of my guild was much smaller than what I had had in FFXI. Soloing (both grinding and solo-questing) just isn’t fun for me. Ideally, I’d like to see a mixture of the FFXI large-party emphasis and the WoW solo/small-party ability so that the teamwork learning curve is steep, but not so much so that during non-peak hours it’s impossible to find enough people to get a useable party going.
Another area that I thought FFXI excelled in and WoW lost in was the multicultural aspect. In FFXI, because I speak a little Japanese, I was able to combine my meagre knowledge with the auto-translate function (brilliant idea, imho) in order to play with a broader range of players. Sure, the conversation wasn’t great, but I loved the ability to connect with these people and fight together for a common goal (getting XP). I truly believe that the fact that the servers weren’t Western-centric impacted the overall feeling of the community, as well as the overall tolerance. Sure, I encountered my fair share of bigots, but their numbers were far exceeded by those who were willing and eager to party and communicate with anyone regardless of race/gender/orientation/what-have-you.
So, I guess part of what I’m saying is that I think each MMO brings its own unique pros and cons to light. I do wish that I had been able to stick it out longer with WoW. I most certainly wish that I didn’t feel like Blizzard was exacerbating the “girl power must be sexy/sexual” trend I’ve seen in Hollywood in the past several years. But, in the end my leaving is inevitable and, at the very least, it gives me a chance to explore more MMOs on the market.
From Gender and Computing:
According to Ph.D. student Robb Willer, men have a tendency to change their opinion if they are told that their opinion ‘is feminine’. Men who were told that they had given ‘feminine’ answers to a test “changed their opinion to be more homophobic, stronger support for the Irak war and a tendency to buy gas-hungry SUVs.” (And for the ‘feminine’ readers, that’s a Sports Utility Vehicle.) Women, on the other hand, did not have the same tendency to change their opinion, neither if they were described as feminine nor masculine.
See also: Masculinithy Challenged, Men Prefer War and SUVs, media girl, and The Countess.
If this study is accurate (I was unable to find information to verify the testing methods and sample sizes beyond “undergraduate students”) then this represents yet another confirmation that the fight for equality has thus far only succeeded in allowing women to “rise” to the position of men without actually elevating “womanhood” up to be on equal ground as “manhood”.
This represents to me another reason why feminists need to step out of the male-normative frame. By “male-normative frame” I mean men and the “male sphere” being the default, characterized most visibly as the “women must work to be valid human beings” mindset used by anti-feminists/non-feminists to decry feminism. I wrote a bit about this here and here.
I think this also clearly illustrates the link between homophobia (especially male homophobia) and sexism. Male homosexuality is seen as “feminine” – when a guy starts acting in traditionally “feminine” ways (like caring about his hair and clothes, oh no!) he’s immediately thought of as “gay”. Of course, all he needs to do these days is cry out, “No, no. I’m metrosexual not retrosexual!” Because, you know, we can’t just accept that it’s “ok” and “normal” for a man (regardless of sexual orientation) to not fit into the macho mould. No, we need to have two words that not only degrade a person’s sexuality by likening it to a choice in the way someone acts, but also reaffirm the man’s “maleness” by setting him apart from gay men. We need a word that a person can use to say that he’s “cool” instead of “womanly”. It’s a compliment for a woman to be told she’s like a man, but an insult for a man to be called girly. Coincidence? I think not.
At the core, feminism is about giving people the ability to live their lives as they see fit without their very personhood coming under attack. If we’re ever to achieve that, we need to break out of the oppressive male-normative frame that we’ve been lumbering under for years. Feminism isn’t about making women into men, no matter what the Rush Limbaugh-types tell you. Forcing people to be something they don’t want to be doesn’t work; if you don’t believe me look at the feminine backlash in China after Mao’s death. Heck, look at the backlash against “feminism” that we experience today in the Western world. That says it all.
If we’re ever going to win the war against the institutions that force us to be what they want us to be, we need to fight for choice on all fronts. We need to support not only the working women, but the stay-at-home moms and dads. We need to illustrate the links of oppression – feminism can’t just be about the straight, white, rich women. The perception of feminism can’t be about them, either. What I’m saying isn’t new, or novel, but it needs to be said and spread. Are you with me?
I cancelled my World of Warcraft account today. Truth is, I haven’t played the account since June. Mind, I got my account in May, so I logged maybe one month of play time. This is in comparison to FFXI, which chained me to my computer 12 hours a day for three months, and Puzzle Pirates, which lasted even into school time for a whopping 8 month addiction.
Was WoW just that bad of a game? Is Blizzard capable of screwing up that badly? Well, yes and no. In the “Why are you leaving?” comment (Blizzard asks, but does it read?), I explained some of my feelings:
There’s just too much unaddressed harassment in-game & on the forums. As much as I enjoy playing, it got too uncomfortable to continue. As a woman and an avid gamer, I feel that Blizzard doesn’t fulfill its own harrassment policy. Also, the hyper-sexualized female characters are a problem. Even my guy pals think it’s over the top. Blizzard already has a strong male following; it has nothing to lose and everything to gain by making the game more attractive to women and minorities.
Being that concise pained me, I assure you, but the character limit was unforgiving. I also apologize for the “guy pals” line, but it’s less characters than “guy friends”.
Now, anyone who knows computer games knows that Blizzard makes a damn good game. I’ve been a fan of theirs since Warcraft II. I own both Diablos and Warcraft III (but not the expansion). I used to play Tower Defense maps all the time before WC3 lost my interest. In terms of gameplay, WoW is one of Blizzard’s best games and it far outstripped FFXI in almost every way. So what went wrong?
Well, after listening to yet another moron bitch and moan about “teh eval femenests” (this after him cracking jokes about abusing women, mind), I realized, “This just isn’t fun anymore.” I couldn’t log on and play for more than an hour without something happening. The comments were like Barrens chat, except that I couldn’t switch zones to avoid them: they’re in general chat, in tells, in the emotes, in chat bubbles, and even in my beloved guild (though we had a policy against that). I couldn’t escape the drama or the harassment.
I mean, being on Laughing Skull is pretty much agreeing to put up with idiocy; it’s a popular PvP server. But it was also there on Shadowcouncil, an RP server with a stricter policy. And yet, it was on that very server that I would get tells like “hey sexy” or people trying to give me free stuff because my female dwarf was “hot”.
After I had seriously considered leaving, I logged on and joined my guildmates in the Scarlet Monastery. I was having a blast going through it, and I started feeling like, “I was going to leave behind all this? What was I thinking?” And then some sexist idiot started harassing a female guild member. He was silenced, but the woman had already left the guild. It wasn’t the first time it had hapened to her and she was sick of it. I could relate. I convinced her to come back to the guild, but that was the last time I played. I was sick of it, too.
Has Blizzard changed, or have I?
Well, I can remember being disappointed in WC2 for not having any female units. I can remember being excited when WC3 came out because of the Night Elves, but I was soon disappointed again because of their representation and the fact that the heroes were still overwhelmingly male (even in the Night Elf race). I remember being angry at the gender ratio, or perhaps the class type, of the original Diablo characters. And don’t get me started on the concept art; the busty Night Elf mascot for WoW says it all. Or perhaps her pole dancing does. No, it doesn’t seem that Blizzard has changed its tune. But, perhaps, that is exactly the problem. In all these years it hasn’t changed, at least not in its attitude towards its female players.
And perhaps part of it is that I’ve changed. Games like Beyond Good and Evil and Eternal Darkness have shown me that there are companies that get it. Why waste my money with the same sexist bullshit repackaged over and over again when there’s something better out there? Even FFXI did a better job of keeping the gender representation fair and balanced.
Still, when all is said and done all I’m left with is a bad taste in my mouth. Like I said, I’ve been a Blizzard fan for a long time. “This time,” I thought, “this time will be different. It’s an MMO. Blizzard has to be more fair; I mean, if FF can pull it off, Blizzard should too.” More the fool I. Oh well. As the saying goes: Live, learn, and then go get Guild Wars.
August’s article, Tilt, Game 6., is a short story on life, death, and the road in between.
I grabbed my computer and stuffed my trunk full of documents and booze and books and clothes. I opened the mapbook to a random page and pointed to a random destination. There. I drive.
The landlord didn’t much care. I found someone else to take over my lease.
I told my boss I’d be gone for a while. I didn’t tell him exactly how long, though, so it could be forever, right? He probably thinks I’ll be gone a week. Anyway, it was a shit job. Fuck him, that prick.
A new form of contraceptive (microbicides) is under development, one that looks like it might be able to strike a serious blow against the epidemic of STDs, HIV in particular.
It comes in the form of cream, gel, or capsule and has the power to save over 2.5 million lives over a period of three years, as estimated by the Rockefeller Foundation. […]
With 14 different versions in the works and 5 already proven safe enough for scientists to begin testing, microbicides are expected to hit the market at some date in the next 3 years.
Perhaps the most significant benefit is the product’s ability to empower women. Rather than negotiating the use of a condom, women would be able to apply the cream with disregard to the sentiment of their partner.
Over at feministing, Jen asks one question that the article fails to address:
I wonder…the article referenced doesn’t touch on whether it would be usable for gay men. I’d presume that lube would be helpful for anal sex, and a lot of gay men I know would rather not use a condom if they didn’t have to (a lot of straight men too, for that matter), so this could potentially have a huge impact on the gay male community and the impact of AIDS on them. Is this only a vag-friendly cream, or could it be used elsewhere?
Hopefully when this medication gets closer to a possible release date, issues such as these will be addressed. Even if it’s vaginal only, however, if proven safe to use, this medication could save a lot of lives. Of course, with the Christian Right all up in arms in the United States about the potentially life-saving HPV vaccines, because, you know, the women “may see it as a license to engage in premarital sex†(says Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council), I expect microbicides will also come under fire eventually. I just hope that, when the time comes, that neither medications will be denied simply because some religious nutbags think that premarital sex is a greater “risk†than saving the lives of women and men.
Via feministing
I saw this post on Hugo Schwyzer’s blog today and I was particularly struck by this part (emphasis mine):
I stand with my feminist allies who push men hard to change. I’m a pro-feminist because I want to see the men in my life become better lovers, husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers. I’m a pro-feminist because I refuse to believe that men are biologically oriented towards domination, violence, and poor parenting skills. I’m a pro-feminist because I believe that both men and women benefit from a society where gender roles are less rigid and more fluid, and where both men and women have access both to political and economic power as well as the opportunity to nurture the vulnerable. But I’m also a pro-feminist man because I love men.
All I have to say is right on, Hugo, right on.
I was pointed to a post over at marginal notations, privilege – redux, where cheshire discusses the dynamics of privilege. As always, the post is worth reading, but I wanted to bring one question over to here since it gave me an avenue in which to voice something I’ve been struggling with all my life.
cheshire asked:
Can you think of the instances where we actively play a part in this game (I know I do) and are simultaneously victims of it?
When I saw this question, the first thing that popped into my mind is my (and my family, and society’s) obsession with weight.
First things first: I have thin privilege.
More than this, though, I’ve grown up in a family (immediate and extended) that is obsessed with weight. I’ve been taught by my family, by the media, and by society that “overweight” people (ie. people who aren’t paper thin like me) are sad, pathetic, unhealthy, undesirable, and disgusting. I’ve fought against this idea since I can remember but I still sometimes find myself judging people with extra weight. I can’t count the number of times that I’ve been discussing something with my friends, whether it be weight, fashion, health or something like that, and I hear myself say something disparaging about overweight or obese people. And those are the times that I notice myself doing that, what about all the times that I don’t?
But I’m not free from it myself. It’s easy for me to advocate for society to adopt a broader image of beauty (and of health) because I’m thin. It’s easy to feel good about my body because I fit into what’s seen as the “correct” weight. But, as much as I try not to, I do think about my weight. I dress it up in pretty words like “healthy” and “toned” but part of it will always be about my body shape. It doesn’t help that every time I see certain members of my family I get comments about my weight. Snarling at, cursing at, and otherwise being angry with them has helped to keep the comments at a minimum, but I haven’t been able to get them to stop completely no matter what I do.
I’ve seen family members struggle with it, too – not just my sisters, my mother, my grandmother, but also my father, my uncles, and my cousins. I’ve sat by and watched my aunt tear into my cousin about being “fat” because he had a little belly. Sometimes she and my uncle would play it off as health concerns, which given his lifestyle of junk food I can agree with, but in the end it would come down to words like “fat” or “overweight” and the terminology associated with that. My other cousin who is a fairly active person, and who used to ride so she had some pretty impressive muscles, got similar comments from my aunt and uncle mostly because she has a broad frame. My mother hates having pictures taken of her, in large part, because she thinks she looks fat. My dad is always on one kind of diet or, more aptly, right about to start/resume one because his previous attempts failed. I was visiting my sister a few days ago, she currently works at Bally’s as a personal trainer, and one of the other trainers came over and told her that a new client asked specifically for her. Cool, right? Well, I thought so until he related that the client gave the reason as something like, “I want her because I have a weight problem and she’s the only one who can understand my weight problem because she overcame her weight problem.” Whatever the actual conversation, she had impressed upon the other trainer that my sister had (like her) had a weight problem that she overcame, thus making her more qualified to train this woman. I’m sorry, but my sister never had a weight problem except in the way she felt about herself.
But, that’s just the problem isn’t it? A lot of the problems that “overweight” (and even some “obese”) people have is not necessarily their weight, but how they feel about themselves. Having even 1% body fat in a world that says fat is evil and disgusting doesn’t make people feel good about themselves now, does it? Honestly, from where I’m sitting (which, again, is from the privileged position of being thin), it’s not fat that’s the biggest problem here, but how we treat people who we see as fat. Hell, even how we treat people who aren’t “fat” by any stretch of the word but aren’t personal-trainer- or eating-disorder-thin either. Am I the only one who think it’s a tad bit fucked up that it’s more acceptable in society to be too thin than have 2% more than the “healthy” percentage of body fat?
Maybe I’m just pissing in the wind here. I don’t know. All I do know is that I want one day, just one fucking day, when I can wake up and go through an entire 24 hours without think about weight at all. Hell, I’d settle for 12 if that’s all I could get.
July’s article, In Defense of Domesticity, is a short piece on domestic labour and feminism.
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.
Over at reappropriate, I was half responsible for hijacking one of Jenn’s threads, The Sexism of Father’s Day, with a lively debate on gender roles and choice. I highly recommend reading through the post itself, as well as all the comments, because there is a lot of interesting discussion on all sides.
phillyjay drew me into the debate when he said:
I just don’t think it so bad if men and women live up to their gender roles.
I responded with:
I would just like to say this outright: there is nothing wrong with people choosing what is best for them, whether it fits in the accepted gender roles or not, what the problem is that society in many ways forces it on us.
And, really, that sums up what I think is one of feminism’s biggest points: people should have the right, and opportunity, to choose to do what’s right for them. Now, there are obvious limits; my ability to choose ends when it impedes someone else’s life. Debates within and outside of the feminist community arise because that division is not a simple line to draw, but, at the root of it all, the feminist ideal is that of choice.
One traditional stereotype of feminists is that we look down upon women who choose to be homemakers or stay-at-home moms. While some people devalue that choice, it is completely anti-feminist to believe that. Ideally, feminists want homemaking and stay-at-home-parenting to be seen as a valuable activity, one that can be (and should be) open to either gender. Many feminists advocate the elevation of these “caring” activities (and professions such as nursing and teaching) to the same level as traditionally masculine jobs. If that is achieved then it will bring us one step closer to giving people a real choice in what they do, whether that be working outside of the home or inside of it.
Now, we feminists say we want choice. Some people may wonder how all of our social activism comes in. Some may argue that, instead of equalizing society we’re just trying to gain supremacy for women. I mean, we live in a world that seems, on the surface, to be pretty equal and no one is forcing a gun to our heads to make us act a certain way, right?
I address this a bit in my response to phillyjay:
Most times it’s more a very firm pressure that implies that if one steps outside these preordained roles then they will be branded as an outcast for the rest of their lives.
We have in our society what I like to call a “cult of masculinity” and a “cult of femininity”. What this means is that, from birth, we’re presented with images of what a “man” is and what a “woman” is with very little room for anything in between. This can be as simple as the “pink for girls” and “blue for boys” regimen, or as devastating as forcing a transsexual or intersexed child into the gender one wants them to be. We are, in many senses, robbed of the choice to be exactly who we are from a very young age. Sometimes all it takes is growing up and becoming aware of the issues to take back some of your choice. To say things like, “it’s ok for me to like racing cars” or “it’s ok for me to like makeup.” In a truly equal society, there would be nothing wrong with advertising that shows women in nurturing roles or men in overseer roles, because there would be other things to show the opposite is ok, too.
Freedom of choice means that a person should be able to be who they are without fear of being ridiculed because they don’t fit the traditional norms. It also means that they should be able to be without fear of being ridiculed if they do fit the traditional norms.
While feminists fight for choice on many fronts, we aren’t some perfect beings. We aren’t the Borg and there is no hive collective. Not all feminists want the same things, think the same way, or hold all “feminist” ideals. The same is true for non-feminists and anti-feminists. I know many people, women and men, who don’t identify as feminist and yet hold many feminist ideals and act in very feminist ways. And yet it is feminists who are held to some standard of “man-haters” as if that’s one of our basic tenets.
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.
People need to be free to choose who they want to be. But we’re not. And that is why I fight. That’s why I blog. And why I debate. And why I want to educate people out there about the world beyond constricting binaries. That’s why I sometimes come off as angry or, as two people close to me have suggested, “man-hating”. Because I am angry. I’m angry at the institutions that have taken away my ability to choose how to live my life. I’m angry at the media that has told me and the people I love that a feminist is a “man-hater” and that if you attack a dominantly male institution then you must be attacking the men that make it up. And I’m not going to stop being angry until I have done all I can to give the choice back to people.
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