Geekery & the Great Outdoors

In earlier times, there was rarely a judgment made on the new person’s qualifications to be a geek, it was simply a “You like Star Wars? Cool, so do we!” But in recent years there are too often stories of a new fan attending a convention, with a first attempt at a Jedi costume, coming across the 501st and asking about becoming a member and being summarily mocked and driven off (often by the one person at the booth that’s not in costume). That’s not to say that the vast bulk of the 501st aren’t incredible people, but when that first impression is poor, that’s hard to get past that.

Women used to be few and very far between, but now the gender gap is closing at a furious pace. Unfortunately when a new geek girl appears on the scene they’re still constantly assumed to not be a “real geek” – meaning that they are assumed to not have better than a passing familiarity with a fandom, and they’re forced to jump through hoops to prove themselves.

Listen, diehards. Newbies don’t hurt you. They don’t diminish your enjoyment of your fandom. You don’t lose anything by having them join you in sheer, ridiculous love of something. There isn’t some magical geek threshold that one must meet in order to be “good enough” to fan something. 

Take a step back, and be excited that someone else loves what you do. You get to teach them about it, geek out about it with them, and share the joy. There’s no need to be so possessive about your fandom. 

Once again, we need a badge. “I am a geek, and I’m not a giant d-bag.” 

kellysue:

dcwomenkickingass:

A few days ago an asshole using the Twitter ID @MisterE2009 started making attacks on a bunch of male and female creators and fans. A sample of the abuse which can be seen at Bleeding Cool (as the guy has now deleted the Twitter page). Soon people figured out that he also had another Twitter ID, @JonVee. 

All of this came to the attention of Mark Millar and Ron Marz who were outraged by the guy’s conduct. Things had been going on for a few days before I became aware of it and really the guy’s conduct wasn’t a surprise at all. The person in question has been systematically harrassing me and my co-host Kelly on the Internet for a long time. 

Of course, one would think that the fact this asswipe was talking about rape and gang rape and harrassing women (men) on the internet getting called out and hopefully brought down would be a universally applauded.

But nope. While there was lots of condemnation, I soon saw that there was a through round of victim shaming as the story got written about over the net. Here’s a good one:

Click through and read the whole thing.  

I have some thoughts about ol’ John/Jennifer but I’m preeeeeetty sure they don’t qualify as free speech either.  And I’m absolutely certain they’re no good for my soul or yours, so I’ll save them for my fiction and spare us both.  

I will say this: I want my daughter to grow up in a world where she is safe to speak her mind without fear of sexual threat or violence.  Whether or not you agree with everything they have to say, the fact that women like Laura Hudson and Sue and Kelly will not be cowed by frightened little psychopaths with internet access, means that we are one tiny step closer to a better outcome for my girl, should she be blessed with the courage to ask if things could be done differently. 

For that and to them, I am intensely grateful.  

You are made of molten steel, ladies.  Rage the fuck on.  

This woman is my hero. We have to start calling this stuff out every time we see it. There’s no virtue in being the harassed, silent, “good girl.” The more of us call this stuff out, the more these trolls will see they are in the minority (and I do believe they’re a minority, just a ridiculously loud one.) The more they will see there’s no room for this crap in our culture.

As an aside, WTF is going on with geekdom recently? I don’t know if it’s just that it’s getting more attention, but stuff like this seems to be happening more frequently. Is it getting worse? Is it because certain aspects of geek culture are getting more press, and that’s dragging more of our dirty laundry into the light? Are we having a Jeff Foxworthy problem, where it’s not that geeks are all intolerable, mouth-breathing, misogynistic jackasses but that we just can’t keep the most unstable amongst us out of the spotlight?

We should make a badge. “I am a geek, and I’m not a giant d-bag.” Then we could easily separate the wheat from the chaff.  

hyrulechozo:

charalanahzard:

hyrulechozo:

This brief article looks at a new mode in the upcoming Borderlands 2 which is supposed to cater to non-gamers or gamers who are inexperienced and unskilled:

Officially, the term is “Best Friends Forever,” but internally—and to the press—the game’s lead designer John Hemingway calls it “Girlfriend Mode”, a term so casually sexist in its implication of how women must be bad at videogames that it seemingly dismisses the fact women make up half the population of gamers overall and are every bit as capable of being gamers as their male counterparts.

I’ve had to do so many facepalms because of the games industry lately that I’m starting to bruise.

So, this is what David Jaffe called me about - his support for ‘girflriend mode’ and my distaste for it. I disagree with the term, I think the reasoning is ridiculous, but this article has twisted words to make them even worse.

The idea is not that women must be bad at video games. The point, from a developers perspective, is that the majority of people who play games like Borderlands are typically male - this is according to their statistics, and the statistics Jaffe has access to. Of course, they want to change that, they want to make more girls play their game, and they thought a mode that’s friendly to new players may encourage that. To summise it as “they think women are bad at games!” is really unfounded, because absolutely nobody said that. It’s supposed to be about making the game more approachable to new players, and a huge demographic of players they’re missing are females. They just presented that idea in a really negative way…

Like I said, though, I disagree with it entirely and managed to talk Jaffe into realising he was being a jerk, but I feel the need to clear up why it was said beyond “women are bad at games!”

While “women are bad at games” has not been explicitly said by the developers, the implication is there, plain as day.  If you create a mode that’s designed to be easier, for “inexperienced” players, then call it “girlfriend mode,” that pretty clearly says “this is for girls because it’s easy.”  It doesn’t take a particularly large logical leap at that point to conclude that if a mode for girls has to be extra easy, then girls must be bad at games.

However, who has more “skills” in gaming is not the real heart of the issue.  The more troubling part of your post is that you take the false assertion this whole thing is based on and repeat it as fact - “the majority of people who play games like Borderlands are typically male.”  It may be a simple majority (i.e. 51%), but the idea that games are still almost entirely male with just a few women hanging around is out of date and just plain wrong.  The fact that Borderlands 2 (and sadly, most other games) is being made as though males are the only audience that matters is the problem.  The developer assumes that his audience is male, but might want his girlfriend who clearly must know nothing about videogames to join him.  The real problem here is that women are not being treated as players, consumers, fans, or equals.  They are again being relegated to one of the roles they always have to play: eye candy, abuse victim or spectator.

^This. Although I (a chick) am super psyched about Borderlands 2, because I love the first game so much, I did give Gearbox some serious side-eye over the “girlfriend mode” thing. I get what they’re trying to do, and I think it’s admirable because I’ve tried to introduce friends who were either non-gamers or non-FPSers to Borderlands they were in fact a little overwhelmed and intimidated by it. So a sort of companion mode that is geared toward newbies is actually really clever, but I agree that there was no need to call it “girlfriend mode,” even internally, and that does reflect an outmoded, incorrect, and demeaning attitude toward women gamers. That said, I think Gearbox is honestly trying to do some cool stuff, particularly with their female characters in Borderlands 2, so I cut them some slack on this particular situation. 

It’s just super-frustrating that their view and privilege as male gamers/game designers is so freaking entrenched that they didn’t even realize WHY “girlfriend mode” might be a sexist and crappy term. I don’t think it was malevolence; I think it was ignorance, which, while it can be cured, is also a little more head-desk inducing. >.<