Acid for Blood

The Woman Effect

I wasn't actually sure how to relate this year's Blog Action Day topic to gaming in a way that didn't belittle the topic's seriousness or complexity. The topic is poverty. Poverty is such a huge, complex mess of inter-related issues. Gaming and entertainment seem trivial compared to very basic security needs such as food, shelter, freedom from violence, and access to health care. As gamers know, this medium can be very compelling, and if applied correctly games can be a force for education, which can (eventually) spark real change. I did some research and I found several games that aim to educate people, typically children, about poverty. You can check out a selection of these games at Games for Change - Poverty.

As I continued to research issues that relate to poverty, and there are so many, I came across a video called The Girl Effect:

The Girl Effect initiative seeks to address poverty by focusing on adolescent girls as change agents. Their reasoning is that if we provide opportunities and empower girls, it will benefit society as a whole. I did a bit of research into the company that produced this video, and it turns out that the Nike Foundation is responsible for the Girl Effect initiative. It's pretty ironic, because Nike is well-known for their reprehensible labour practices. Having said that, it's good that Nike are highlighting the oppression of women.

Poverty disproportionately affects women:

70 per cent of the world's poor are women. The majority of the 1.5 billion people living on $1 a day or less are women.

According to the United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women, women living in poverty are often denied access to critical resources such as credit, land and inheritance. Their labour goes unrewarded and unrecognized. Their health care and nutritional needs are not given priority, they lack sufficient access to education and support services, and their participation in decision-making at home and in the community are minimal. Caught in the cycle of poverty, women lack access to resources and services to change their situation

The Girl Effect's initiatives are probably quite effective for the girls directly aided through their page at Global Giving. I could donate there to fund educational programmes for girls in India or Kenya, however there are wider social and legal structures that continue to perpetuate harmful social institutions that oppress women. The video and their approach to the issues seem a little overly simplistic, though their intentions are good.

I think that political advocacy is also a powerful way to effect meaningful structural change change and bring about conditions that will make it easier for girls and women to obtain the rights they deserve. I try to speak out and try to effect change in my own way when I encounter gender issues in my daily life. However I think can do more on the political advocacy side. I'm already a member of quite a few mailing lists that inform and alert me whenever an issue I care about needs lawmakers' attention, and I do take action if it's concerning an issue I feel strongly enough about. Oddly enough I don't belong to any groups that advocate specifically for gender equality. To address this, I am going to do more to educate myself on gender equality political advocacy, and take action when issues arise, just as I do with other types of political advocacy. I'm starting with Equality Now.

Discourse

I have learned a lot about the games industry and gaming culture from reading other videogame blogs, participating in videogame communities, and interacting with people through this blog. After looking back on old posts, it's evident that my perspectives and opinions on some issues have changed and developed since I started writing here.

I've always been vaguely aware of gender issues throughout my young adult and adult life. In my own family, I was treated differently and held to different standards than my brother because I am female. In high school I was vaguely aware of sexism in social interaction and also in the media. It's possible that because I read comic books so avidly, I became more aware of these issues just because of how sexist and misogynistic superhero comic books are as a genre, and maybe that awareness carried over to observations in real life.

Having said that, awareness of sexism and gender issues doesn't necessarily mean that I understood the social structures that underpinned all these examples of sexism I saw in games and other media. It also didn't necessarily mean that I was aware of all instances of sexism, other types of oppression, or my own privilege.

I have no formal education in gender studies or feminist studies. My formal education in sociology is minimal. I studied social theory and social psychology, which has more of a micro focus than sociology or cultural studies. My background in the social sciences, may have made me marginally more aware of sexism and gender on the individual level, but less so on the institutional level. Despite my background in the social sciences, it also didn't necessarily follow that I would be aware of other types of oppression.

Most of my knowledge of feminism and anti-oppression has come to me relatively recently and has developed mainly in the context of participating in and observing gaming culture. The past year and a half has been especially educational for me. Discussing social and cultural issues in the context of gaming with other feminist gamers on the Iris Gaming Network has been integral in helping me develop and articulate my thoughts and perspectives. Reading the articles in Cerise Magazine has also widened and challenged my perspectives on gender and oppression and given me a lot to think about.

One example of how my perspectives have changed is that I previously used ablelist language, terms that are derogatory and discriminatory towards those with disabilities. I didn't know that calling something a variation of "retarded" or "lame" was hurtful and bigoted, though I was certainly aware of other bigoted uses of language, such as using "gay" as a derogatory term. It wasn't until I started learning more about anti-oppression and ableism that I realised that I had used bigoted language and why it was wrong to use that kind of language. I'm trying to be more aware of the language I use because of this.

Another example of how my perspectives have changed is that I used to blame attention-seeking women gamers like Jessica Chobot for making it harder for other women gamers to be accepted and welcome amongst male gamers. I heaped scorn and disdain upon women like her for using their sex appeal to get ahead, arguing that they weren't "real" gamers (whatever that meant). I used to think that these women were the problem, rather than indicative of historically and socially constructed structures that went beyond their individual experiences. Rather than examine the reasons why such behaviour is acceptable and rewarded in gaming culture and in society as a whole, I just blamed attention-seeking women gamers for sexism against all women gamers. I was focusing on the wrong things.

These women are acting in ways in which our society encourages and approves of. Sure, they are independent women and capable of making their own decisions in the end, however there is unbelievable pressure for many women gamers to be accepted amongst male gamers, to be "one of the guys". Women gamers have to prove themselves to be twice as better as male gamers to gain the same kind of acceptance that male gamers have automatically just by being male. Is it any wonder that some women will use whatever means they have to their advantage, either consciously or subconsciously? I realised that the problem was far more complex than I'd initially perceived.

It wasn't easy to have my perspectives challenged. I cringe when I look at what I've written in the past. I feel embarrassed about how I used to think about certain things. It shows that I had a lot to learn then, and that I'm still not finished learning. I have expanded my daily readings to include general feminist and anti-oppression blogs to deepen my understanding of oppression and privilege and how it impacts everyday life, and I continue to have my assumptions, perspectives, and privilege challenged.

What does this post have to do with videogames? Nothing directly, but it does provide some background on how and why the discourse on this blog has shifted.

Vexation

After I started my new job a couple of months ago, I was going to respond immediately to the bigoted, ignorant, and narrow-minded views of several people in various gaming communities. Since then I've been busy at work and at home, and frankly I haven't been in much of a mood to blog, nor have I been able to gather the mental focus to sit down and organise my thoughts on this topic until now.

When I introduced myself to the Guild Wars community, I did not discuss my personal life or my personal worldviews at all. However, after some Google searching, some people decided to take it upon themselves to bring up issues related to my personal life and ideological beliefs.  Hearsay being what it is, a few even accused me of starting these discussions about my personal life in the first place.

It made me angry that people, who know nothing about be apart from what they found through Google, targeted me with sexist, misogynistic, anti-feminist, racist, and homophobic comments.

It made me angry that people made sexist and objectifying comments about my appearance. Apparently I am supposed to welcome comments from people (I assume they are males) saying that they'd "hit it" or "tap that" because they found me attractive. Comments that reduce me to an object without agency or will are compliments, right?

It also made me angry that people made racist comments. Oh wait, fetishising me because of my race is supposed to be a positive thing as well? Get a clue, people -- it's not acceptable. It's racist and ignorant.

It made me angry that people who don't have any clue about feminism believe that feminists are a threat to their "fun". Following that line of logic, apparently sexism is fun? Eh, not so much. I find it depressing that the most basic tenet of feminism -- equality between the sexes -- should be viewed as a threat to the existing (un)acceptable behaviours in gaming communities.

While I am on the subject of feminism -- I am a feminist. So what? There are games industry women, more famous, more high-profile, and with more widespread influence, than I who identify as feminist. Feminists are out there.

It's irritating to read comments from people who mindlessly swallow all the stereotypes they've heard about feminism. Moreover, the idea that all feminists are ideologically identical is both stupid and ignorant. The main belief that all feminists hold is simply equality between the sexes. That's it. Anything beyond that depends upon the individual.

It made me angry that at least one person did not welcome the fact that I am female. It's a surprising attitude to find in 2008, but it exists. What was almost as surprising as this attitude is the fact that before and after I joined the game, the ratio of female and male Community Managers was identical. Why one would oppose maintaining the same female/male ratio is beyond me; god forbid the ratio ever be equalised at some point in the future.

It made me angry to have people speculate on and make assumptions about my sexual orientation, too. It was not acceptable for people to make the assumption that I am a lesbian, assume that I am out to everyone in my life (including work), and parade these assumptions around as fact -- publicly to the internet. News flash: being a feminist does not mean that one is a lesbian and conducting an interview with a founder of LesbianGamers.com doesn't necessarily mean that one is a lesbian either. One a sidenote, it irritates me that people continue to cling so desperately to their narrow, black and white views of sexuality and sexual orientation, assuming that if someone isn't heterosexual, they must surely be homosexual because nuances in the human condition apparently do not exist.

Furthermore, the homophobia that some people showed, after they assumed that I was a lesbian, was absolutely repulsive and apalling. There was even a comment from a homophobic "concerned parent" who was convinced that I was personally responsible for corrupting their child because some random members of the Guild Wars community decided to speculate on and discuss my sexual orientation.

Another thing that these people didn't think about or probably even care about is: what if I was a lesbian and wasn't out to everyone at work and at home? Did they even care that their comments and discussions could have an impact on my career and personal life? Not everyone in the world is equally tolerant, as evidenced by the "concerned parent" above, and unfortunately gay people often have to choose the terms under which they come out. To rob someone of that choice, regardless of the correctness of the facts, is wrong and thoughtless.

To make things perfectly clear: I am not a lesbian, but I am not not a lesbian. My sexual orientation, whatever it is, isn't something that I'd even consider discussing with the Guild Wars community at large, much less any other random gaming community.

I did know that people would do Google searches on me. I knew they would find articles I'd written, interviews I'd participted in, and so on. My blog is public, and it's not hard to link my handle to my real name. However, just because I expected some of these responses doesn't mean that sexism, homophobia, racism, or all the rest of that shit are remotely acceptable.

Some gamers really need to grow up.

P.S. -- Before someone tells me that I'm being too sensitive or that I'm too uptight and just need to get laid... News flash: I am sexed quite regularly, and yet sexism, racism, homophobia, and all the other bigoted and ignorant attitudes that fester in gaming culture still piss me off.

EDIT: 31 July 2008: Some kindly person has linked this on the forums, and I'm receiving an influx of comments. I don't know why people feel the need to resurrect discussion on a post that I wrote well over a month ago, about stuff that happened nearly four months ago. I have moved on. You should probably do the same.

Fear not. The response that I received from the bigoted members of the community has decidedly not affected the way that I approach my job. I practice the fine art of keeping my personal life separate from my professional life. This may explain why, ya know, I haven't expressed my displeasure about these bigoted members of the community in the forums.

‘Rape’: More Than a Word

One of my pet peeves of gaming culture (and I guess culture in general, since I've heard non-gamers use the word this way) is how gamers use the word 'rape'. I recently read a blog post which explains that:

To some people rape is just four letters put together to make a monosyllabic sound... To others it is an invisible scar that can be worn for all to see, hidden away beneath layers of camouflage, or in some cases acknowledged but not quick to be shown.

In WoW, on the server I am on, they call Alliance, AC. The C stands for cunt. They are loathe to use this word around others, yet they will shout out how they raped that AC paly or got raped by that AC rogue. (For the record, the word cunt doesn’t bother me.)

When I see those four letters slung about without a care, I get shivers down my spine.

The post continues with a descriptive set of reasonings of why people should be more sensitive to how they use words.

[Read via Jade Reporting]

“STFU and GTFO”

Priceless quote from a commenter on a recent Joystiq post about Gaymer.org (emphasis mine):

I'm sick of hearing about gay gamers and female gamers. When 90% of their audience is straight men, why would any developer care about any of you? I know that trying to segregate yourselves is a lame attempt at getting a bit of love from devs, but it's not going to happen. Oh sure, some indie game company is going to come along and throw a gay romance and whatever it is that women like in there games, into one of their games, and their sales will see a spike from what they'd have been without, but will you ever see Mario having homosexual relations with another man (like Toad)? No. And if you ever did, I'd be willing to give up gaming right then and there. So here is a bit of a reality check from me to you; You are not special, you aren't entitled to anything, and you really need to just STFU and GTFO.

1) If he's going to quit playing videogames just because Mario and Toad get into a relationship, then gaming culture as a whole will probably be better off without him. How childish.

2) Someone seems to be a little over-protective of their heterosexual male gamer "club". He's assuming that 90% of the gaming market is composed of straight males, but that's just not true, at least for the male bit of his assertion. Attitudes like this alienate many gamers who aren't male and who aren't heterosexual. It's just embarrassing behaviour. And people like him wonder why LGBT gamers and women gamers have formed their own online communities when they get treated this way on general gaming sites? Also, he's telling us to "STFU and GTFO". Who is being unwelcoming to whom?

3) LGBT gamers and women gamers don't want special treatment. They want to be treated without the kind of hatred and venom displayed there. The idea that some people have to speak out or even fight in order to be treated with respect is completely foreign to this person, thus he regards it as people seeking special treatment.

4) The comments to the post, as a whole, are actually pretty tame as far as homophobia goes.  I'm not excusing it, of course, I'm just saying that I've seen a lot worse. We'll see what happens tomorrow.

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Cerise Magazine Launches

The first issue of Cerise, an online magazine dedicated to electronic and non-electronic games, is now up. Cerise is a feminist (Is that still a "bad" word?) publication focused on gender issues in games and games culture. It was created by women gamers, with the intended audience being primarily women gamers. Although the focus is on gender, they have a policy of inclusiveness, so issues that affect other traditionally underrepresented groups in games culture, such as members of the LGBT community, people with disabilities, etc. will likely see discussion as well. They have an open submissions policy, and are accepting articles for the next issue.

Cerise is a publication of Iris, a gaming community for people interested in discussing and exploring gender and other issues. Since its launch in March, the Iris forums have seen discussion on a variety of topics related not only to gender, but also sexuality, sexual orientation, race, class, disabilities, and more. If you're interested in discussing these issues or learning more about issues important to underrepresented members of the gaming community, check out the forums. I'm a moderator there. Please play nicely. :)

There are many communities around that have been created as welcoming spaces for women gamers, free of the immature and (frankly) alienating bullshit that tends to pop up with alarming (and disappointing) regularity in many gaming communities. Why do we need another community for women gamers? One could ask the same question of gaming communities as a whole. Why do we need so many of those? Why not just have a few large gaming communities on the internet. Where's the fun in that? Women gamers, like men gamers, have diverse interests. There is enough room on the internet for all.

Ganking is “Impoverished” Play

Thomas Malaby analyses ganking over on Terra Nova:

What I would like to suggest is that this kind of PvP is meaningless. Or, perhaps more precisely, that the meaning it has is so narrow, rationalized, and improverished that it is outside of, or rejects, the game in which it is situated. Games, as ends in and of themselves, are things that can generate new meanings and experiences. For the ganker, however, ganking is a means to other ends ("Personal best crit!"), not a potentially generative new experience. (And, by the way, please keep in mind that I am not talking about all PvP -- there are many other kinds, both institutionally designed by the developer and emergent, which would not fit with the argument I'm making here.) ... Ganking lower level players is, then, a somewhat pathetic attempt to feel, well, something. But that something is not the meaning that participating in a challenging game would create -- it is removed from that. If there is no contingency, it follows that there is no meaning -- all you have left is an impoverished environment where pointless negative reciprocity (I was ganked at L24, so I'll gank at L60) reigns.

Pretty much sums up how I feel about it.

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[Thank you, Id, for pointing this out.]

What it Feels Like For a Girl

IrGXaNa, a male, played a female Night Elf on a role-playing server in World of Warcraft:

I was wanting to roleplay my Night Elf character but the server I was on wasn't a RP server. So I decided to start a new Night Elf hunter on a RP server. This was much more fun and starteed off so well. I joined a guild of Hunter Elves and to start with was great fun. but i'm starting to realise the trouble many women find with gaming... the sexual harrassment.

As I was roleplaying a female character, many many times male characters just kept coming up to me and flirting, blowing kisses and declaring their love. Cos I was Roleplaying I didn't wanna just say "hey, look mate, i'm a guy, leave it, ok" so i thought I'd just make my character not interested in it all.

What was intersting before i moved to a roleplay server was a female character was always asked if I was male or female, but I never once saw a male character being asked the same thing. It's almost as it's assumed that male characters are only played by men, yet the female charaters might be men too.

He goes on to detail a bit of a crazy experience in which members of the guild he joined accused him of some major guild drama which resulted in the break-up of the main guild and the formation of a splinter guild. Eventually, after it got really crazy, he decided that all the drama wasn't worth his time, when he just wanted to role-play and get on with the game. Unfortunately, he also acquired a scary stalker with some psychological issues, apparently. He decided to start from scratch with a female Human Rogue. Unfortunately, he really did want to play that Night Elf, so he couldn't get into the new character as much. His first experience was tainted by some horrible drama and sexual harassment, and now he's wondering whether World of Warcraft is worth playing at all.

He ends with the following:

So, do I continue playing after the 9th feb when my bill needs renewing? Ever since all that crap I've not enjoyed it as much. I am even thinking of starting yet again on a new server as a male night elf hunter. Ok i'll be doing all those missions again, but you just don't get all that sexual harrassment as a guy. My sister was saying this is kinda how a lot of women feel going into pubs or clubs, guys hitting on them all the time or thinking they're complete bitches when they're not interested. God that sucks!

[World of Warcraft and my first 2 months via Jade Reporting]

Escape From the Top

A friend of mine linked this to me last night, and it is making the rounds throughout the blogosphere. It's an account by a former top guild leader and why he quit WOW:

I just left WoW permanently. I was a leader in one of the largest and most respected guilds in the world, a well-equipped and well-versed mage, and considered myself to have many close friends in my guild. Why did I leave? Simple: Blizzard has created an alternate universe where we don't have to be ourselves when we don't want to be. From my vantage point as a guild decision maker, I've seen it destroy more families and friendships and take a huge toll on individuals than any drug on the market today, and that means a lot coming from an ex-club DJ. ... Blizzard created a game that you simply can not win. Not only that, the only way to "get better" is to play more and more. In order to progress, you have to farm your little heart out in one way or another: either weeks at a time PvPing to make your rank or weeks at a time getting materials for and "conquering" raid instances, or dungeons where you get "epic loot" (pixilated things that increase your abilities, therefore making you "better"). And what do you do after these mighty dungeons fall before you and your friend's wrath? Go back the next week (not sooner, Blizzard made sure you can only raid the best instances once a week) and do it again (imagine if Alexander the Great had to push across the Middle East every damn week). ... There are three problems that arise from WoW: the time it requires to do anything "important" is astounding, it gives people a false sense of accomplishment, and when you're a leader, and get wrapped up in it, no matter how much you care or want people to care, you're doing the wrong thing. ... The worst though are the people you know have time commitments. People with families and significant others. I am not one to judge a person's situation, but when a father/husband plays a video game all night long, seven days a week, after getting home from work, very involved instances that soak up hours and require concentration, it makes me queasy that I encouraged that. ... The game also provides people with a false sense of security, accomplishment, and purpose. Anyone can be a superhero here if they have the time to put in. Not only that, a few times I've seen this breed the "rockstar" personality in people who have no confidence at all in real life. Don't get me wrong, building confidence is a good thing and something, if honed appropriately, the game can do very right. But in more than a few cases, very immature people with bad attitudes are catered to (even after insulting or degrading others "in public") because they are "better" than the rest. Usually this means they played a lot more and have better gear. I'd really hate to see how this "I'm better than you attitude" plays out in real life where it means jack how epic your loot is - when you say the wrong thing to the wrong person it's going to have repercussions and you can't just log out to avoid the effects of your actions.

This is just one of many accounts about how one can become so absorbed and obsessed with a game that it has a major effect on one's life. There are many good points he makes about WOW in the article, so give it a read. The follow-up piece is also worth reading.

[The View From the Top and the followup, The View From the Top: Redux]

[Thanks, Roomiepbt]

Colour in Earthsea

Via Raph Koster's blog, I came across an essay about minority racial representation in science fiction and fantasy, specifically regarding The Legend of Earthsea series for the SciFi channel and how Hollywood had changed the race of the cast of characters. In the show, they are white. Koster notes that Goro Miyazaki's film, Tales From Earthsea, also features an all-white cast. In the books by Ursula K. Le Guin, the heroes are black, and the baddies are white.

Pam Noles writes about her passion for science fiction and fantasy and her experience of being a minority in the fandom:

Why do you love a thing that won't even let you exist within their made up worlds?

How many other FoPs (Fans of Pigment) were driven to tears by this question they could not answer, despite painful struggles to do so? Am I the only FoP forced to develop a veneer of denial in order to function at the gaming tournaments, at the conventions other than the comic book fest in San Diego, or while watching "Buffy" and wondering if The Hollywood People who had ever actually been to Sunnyvale? Because, you know, if they had, there'd be five Asian/Pacific Islanders and at least three Latinos in the background. Am I the only FoP who was reduced to searching the people in the background because the people in the foreground were always a given? Am I the only one to wonder why the Los Angeles of "Angel" looked a lot like the New York City of Woody Allen's films?

I can't call myself a "Fan of Pigment" with a straight face. WTF. However, she makes a lot of good points. She writes as if this "veneer of denial" is a conscious act. It's not. You don't (at least I didn't) consciously think about the fact that there are no Asians, or rather they aren't present in large numbers, in Buffy's Sunnydale, despite the fact that California has one of the higest populations of Asians, in the United States. I have grown so used to consuming media containing racially homogenous casts, that that this fact hardly registers. When I was an avid viewer of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, I never questioned the lack of Asians or other minorities. I guess I've become so used to being excluded (at least in terms of race) in the media that it doesn't bother me. It's interesting that, on a personal level, I am more sensitive to sexism and homophobia, but less sensitive to racism.

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