To My Someday Daughter, by Geordie Tait - a Magic: the Gathering Miscellaneous Article (via 3liza)
perfect
Trigger warnings for misogyny (though somewhat tame) below in case this gets reblogged.
This was a cool article. I am still reading it, but so far I am really enjoying it. Sexism is definitely rampant in the gaming community. I couldn’t tell you why, but it really makes me disappointed and sad. If I had a nickel for every time a female gamer came on the microphone while I was playing TF2 in a public server somewhere and someone who thinks he is being witty and hilarious comes up with the genius retort of “Shut the fuck up, bitch. Go back to the kitchen.”, I would sadly have more than one nickel. Stuff like this is why I can’t allow myself to be identified as a gamer, because the gaming culture for some reason allows this sort of shit to continue.
I really can’t imagine how this sort of thing feels from a female perspective, to try to play a video game and get the whole thing thrown in your face. This sort of stuff reminded me of something you posted earlier about the worst thing you can call a man, you can call him a woman. The gaming culture, in my experience while playing games at least, seems to center around emasculating your opponent. Certain communities form around games that are more competitive than others, and draw different types of gamers. I would say that less competitive games have more level headed communities than games like Call of Duty or Halo which are notorious for the horrible shit talking that players have to put up with. “Sit down Bitch!”, “Take that faggot”, “I fucked your mom last night, bitch”, are all normal things to hear after you get killed in the game by another player. Yes, they are normal. This is a meta-game that is played within other games called ‘Making your opponent feel worthless’.
This is why I don’t enjoy playing competitive games. I can’t deal with this kind of shit when I want to sit down and enjoy myself. I can’t identify with a community or culture that rewards the kind of attitude shown towards the female gamers who get on the microphone during a match of call of duty, halo, or tf2 and just receive a torrent of shit from people who I really hope are ignorant of the hurt they are causing this person - because I’d like to hope that no one would try to do that consciously.
I think though, that there is hope. Things are definitely changing in the gaming community. More people are speaking out about these culturally attitudes than I have seen before. I think a large chunk of gamers are now divorcing themselves from this attitude towards women - that being a woman is shameful, or that losing a game is analogous to being just as bad as a woman is. I love when people speak up after someone says something offensive on the microphone. A lot of the time it just takes one person and then more people grab their headsets and yell back. I really love that things like that are happening more often when I play games, and that I am seeing more women who are not afraid of this male dominated world and the attitudes they face when they play games actually playing these competitive games. What I love most of all though, is that when our teenage comedian who thinks yelling misogynistic shit is hilarious is banned from the server by the woman with admin privileges he just yelled at. It makes me smile every time.
While that Alyssa Bereznak article about John Finkel was regrettable, didn’t really make narrative sense, and was probably written to “ride nerd tears all the way to the gizmodo ad revenue bank”, I think the gaming culture needs to realize that a lot of the responses seen were absolutely not appropriate in any capacity, and that there is a lot of work to be done to eradicate the attitudes that are firmly cemented in the culture of gaming towards women. Women gamers shouldn’t have to feel like outsiders in their own community.
This was longer than I meant for it to be, but the gaming community has really been making me sad lately. More feminist gamers are needed.
(via fionafix-it)
(via onearetwoesses)
