Femininity, it's not just for the wimmins

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Katie has an interesting proposition over at her blog:

What if every Friday, one among all the “But I LIKE lipstick!” feminists in the blogosphere rounded up all the arguments she’s had to come up with to defend WHY she likes lipstick? What if she channeled it into a dead-serious ad for why men would like it too, if they’d give it a try.

Other feminists would then cross-post and quote her post.

Seriously, what do you think about making this a shared blogosphere project?

Lipstick one week, humanities majors the next, shopping the next (tell Walmart-mom-raised men the really awesome learning experiences they missed out on while they were at the lake!), etc.

We probably won’t sell any male readers, but if we collaboratively work at this every week for a year or two, we’ll get good at it.

Then we’ll have 52-104 well-developed and sensible arguments that male and female readers can take to real-life discussions in their locker rooms and homes.

She later clarifies the goal of this project:

The aim is genuinely encouraging men to embrace traditionally feminine qualities and so challenge the accepted ideas of gender, the ultimate aim being to get rid of gender steretypes altogether. (i.e. anyone can wear skirts, anyone can be super strong, anyone can wear lipstick no matter what their sex.)

Using Beauty to Establish Gamer Cred [The Gaming Beauty Myth, Part 3]

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Wearing our sexuality on our sleevesLast time I talked about two prevalent female gamer archetypes that represent the gaming beauty myth and this time I want to expand upon how that interacts with the real gaming world.

One facet of being seen first for your sexuality and second for everything else is that it can influence your position in something unrelated. In the case of gaming, that means that it’s possible that how much you conform to beauty standards plays a part in how the community receives you. Continue reading

Women in Games International Mentoring Survey

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A heads up for women interested in learning more about the gaming industry. Women in Games International has created a suvery regarding mentoring.

Women in Games International believes in empowering women through networking and communication. In addition to the resources currently available, we are interested in offering a mentoring program to our members. We need your input to help us develop and deliver a successful mentoring program.

Spam Related Issues

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Apparently I’ve had a batch of comments (I’m not sure how many) be marked as spam and therefore not published. I also found out that a group of comments that I approved somehow got unapproved and two of them ended up in the spam bin (which would have been deleted except that I checked because of the comment eating problem).

If you find that your comment doesn’t show up after a day, please at least e-mail me to let me know. I have no idea yet how widespread this issue is, or if it means I should seek another anti-spam tool besides Spam Karma.

Sorry for the inconvenience!

Female Gamer Archetypes [The Gaming Beauty Myth, Part 2]

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Since this blog is primarily aimed at people at least somewhat familiar with feminism, I often take it for granted that people know what I’m talking about when I say things like women are “the sex class” or that female geeks are made into “Second Class Geeks” by the way we’re treated as potential dates first and geeks second.

But what does that mean for female gamer culture?

I believe that the gaming beauty myth informs the typical archetypes attributed to female gamers. Whether it be conforming to the traditional stereotype of “geek” — the unwashed, unattractive, glasses-wearing, basement-living untouchable — or being the “hawt gamer girl” — the sex kitten supposedly out of every geeky guy’s fantasy — the two archetypes I will examine below share a common thread: percieved attractiveness.

Though I should hope this is obvious, I want to emphasize that I am not attacking any people who conform in whole, or part, to these archetypes. This post is intended to explore how the beauty myth interacts with the way that female gamers are seen by others as well as each other. Continue reading

Introduction [The Gaming Beauty Myth, Part 1]

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cakebite.com picture illustrating the gaming beauty mythThe beauty myth, a term coined by Naomi Wolf in her book of the same name, essentially describes the idea that a woman is viewed first by her sexuality/attractiveness and second by everything else (more information here). When I chose to call this sereies “The Gaming Beauty Myth” it was because I wanted to take Wolf’s ideas and see how they apply to “girl gamer” culture.

Although I have written on my personal experiences as a female gamer as well as referenced female gamers in my posts, I have not as yet done an in-depth look at female gaming culture. One reason is for that is that female gamer culture is as varied and complex as male gaming culture and not an easy subject to tackle in a post, or even a series.

In this series I will be only addressing one specific area of the culture: the way that the beauty myth interacts with the way female gamers are seen, treated, and the way we treat each other.

The War on Non-Christians' Newest Soldier: Spam

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So, December is right around the corner and it seems like it’s that time again. Yes, time for the fundamentalist Christians who are hell bent on giving all Christians a bad name, interpreting “freedom of religion” as “freedom for my religion only“, and in general asserting their Christian privilege in an attempt to oppress non-Christians.

In the past two days, I’ve gotten two pieces of near-identical spam hawking the same product.

Here’s the first one:

A new comment on the post #93 “The War Against Non-Christians” is waiting for your approval
http://blog.shrub.com/archives/tekanji/2005-12-20_93

Author : Bruce (IP: 70.92.97.82 , cpe-70-92-97-82.bak.res.rr.com)
E-mail : [xxx] URI : [don’t want to accidently advertise for them] Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=70.92.97.82
Comment:
Speaking of the war on Christmas, Best Buy has just dug their heels in and returned to the trenches by banning the greeting, “Merry Christmas” from their advertising campaign this Christmas.

I’ve been fighting back with this song (feel free to use it in your campaign if you like it):[cut because I’m not actually endorsing the spamming]

Here’s the second one:

A new comment on the post #186 “When will I get arrested for “driving while atheist”?” is waiting for your approval
http://blog.shrub.com/archives/tekanji/2006-03-26_186

Author : Dr BLT (IP: 70.92.97.82 , cpe-70-92-97-82.bak.res.rr.com)
E-mail : [xxx] URI : [don’t want to accidently advertise for them] Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=70.92.97.82
Comment:
Thanks for keeping the spirit of Christmas alive. Believe it or not, blogs like these empower soldiers fighting for Christmas. I’ve been fighting on the Best Buy front on the war on Christmas with an original song that seems to be generating lots of interest.

As you may know, Best Buy banned the use of “Merry Christmas” in their ads this year. It caused me to wonder what kind of an Inn Best Buy would be if it were an Inn, and not a department store, back in Bethlehem when Jesus was born. That thought gave birth to this song: [cut because I’m not actually endorsing the spamming]

I’m very glad to hear that my efforts to expose the “War on Christmas” as the oppressive, anti-freedom of religion BS that it actually is “empower[s] soldiers fighting for Christmas”. Onward Christian soldiers! Fight against those fundamentalists besmirching your good name! Fight for inclusive language such as “Happy Holidays” that acknowledges that not everyone is a Christian, nor does everyone celebrate Christmas! Go, fight, win!

For Those Of You Coming From Destructiod

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I do not hate Faith or gamers like Faith. Indeed I have tried to be respectful in my limited dealings with her and I even openly expressed support of her personally when she was being abused by the Kotaku goons for calling a boycott of the site. I disagree with some of her politics, as she obviously disagrees with some of mine. I have never attacked her personally, and if I have attacked the women who subscribe to the politics that I disagree with rather than the politics themselves then I apologize.

For the record, I do not appreciate or agree with the brush she paints my blog with. It’s one thing to disagree with and critique what is put forth here and another to accuse me of “hating” gamers like her, or believing that they represent everything that’s wrong with girl gamers.

I think that female gamers deal with enough hatred as it is without any of us heaping it on each other. I do not, and never will, support hating a woman for the choices that she’s made in life, even if I am critical of those reasons. That includes all female gamers; gamers like Faith, gamers like myself, gamers who don’t care either way about gender issues… it doesn’t matter, none of us deserve to be crapped on for the way we view gaming.

Faith, if you read this, please know that I certainly do not hate you and I do not wish there to be bad blood between us simply because our gaming politics differ.

A Not-So-Bad GF List

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I don’t have time to get into it full on, but this list by Bill Ward called 15 simple rules for getting your girlfriend to play D&D actually isn’t as bad as it sounds. Partially because some of it seems like common sense for including a person new to your party, but also because it actually has a reason for being a list targeted towards women and not just first-time gamers.

Witness:

1 – DON’T PATRONIZE.
All too often, male players tend to think that any female player at the table is a joke, or worse, as someone to drive off. Here’s a clue: if you want your SO to play, then treat her with respect, and don’t allow the other players to treat her poorly. It doesn’t matter if the DM does give you a special crystal. BTW, in a game at GenCon back in 1999, my wife, a veteran Battletech player who preferred lighter mechs, was picked on as the only girl playing in a tournament game. While three guys were picking on her (“She obviously can’t play if she chose a light mech!”) tried to remove “the girl” from the “man’s game”, she quietly fumed… and when the time came, she self destructed her mech, taking them with her (she might have beaten any of them in a 1-on-1 battle; she’s good, AND lucky). They were, to use her phrase, “Losers in every sense of the word.” After reading this, she wanted it known that she ejected safely and saved her pilot. The other players, not so much….

Wow, dismantaling stereotypes rather than reinforcing them? Confronting sexism head on instead of playing off of it and pretending that you created satire? Could this be the fabled perfect list?

Well, I’m not ready to take that step quite yet. The capitalizing off of a “girlfriend” image when it’s a combination of advice for including new players and some specific points geared towards not driving off potential new specifically female players gets a “so-so” from me. I’m willing to give it a pass because Ward actually addresses sexism and doesn’t rely on stereotypes of women to make his point (even when the point would have made it very easy to do so). On the occassion that a stereotype does pop up there is at very least an acknowledgement of it as such, although there is one occassoin where he uses his wife’s agreement to backup his use of a stereotype (“heaven help me for the stereotype, but this is Rebecca’s thoughts, too”).

But! I digress. Overall the article strikes me as well written. In the end, I’m not sure if I’m giving it too much of a pass because of the kind of drek I see regularly (some links of which are waiting for me to look at in my inbox, submitted by a sadistic reader) or if it actually did pretty much get things right. Either way, I’d recommend this as a pattern for people who can’t be pursuaded out of writing a Girlfriend List (or some equivalent).