Women who game are everywhere. We’re not all that new to the scene, either. Back in the early 90s, the people who first introduced me to the SNES were not my male siblings or even my father (he did, however, introduce me to the Atari console he had from the 80s). No, it was my two female cousins that I would visit for weeks at a time in southern New York state. I owe my love and dedication to video games directly to them. Their passion and skills are the reasons I love playing video games today.
But even at my young age, I realized that video games were never really “meant” for me. That didn’t stop me from playing them, but all my favorite games were with male protagonists saving their female counterparts. It was always a boys club, and I constantly felt like I was betraying my gender by enjoying video games. I know that I’m not the only one who felt that way.
And yet here I am today, partially because I have plenty of female and male gamers who acted as role models to me growing up. While my sister played Barbies with our next door neighbor, I was playing video games with her brother in the next room.
Subsequently, my husband reawakened my passion for gaming when I met him and I am so happy to have surrounded myself with great male and female gamers today (including many here on this site!).
But that doesn’t stop the game development world from making games still seem like the boys club from when I was younger. Now that I have grown up, educated myself, and am employed in social justice, I realize how important it is to keep encouraging women who enjoy video games to not feel like they are permanently excluded.
The emergence of the blog scene has been a great help for finding companionship and common interests in even the most remote cultural subcultures. We female gamers — who also blog — are coming out in droves, showing our wit and competence in the gaming scene despite the obvious sexism that occurs much too frequently. I share some of my favorites with you now — because they have helped me in the past — to realize that the perhaps sexist events happening in the gaming sphere aren’t just my own overblown frustrations but legitimate concerns. Furthermore, I believe I share these legitimate concerns with other female gamers (and male gamers as well).
So check out these blogs by some great female gamers, and let’s continue to challenge the notion that women just don’t care about how they look, or how they are treated, in video games.
Go Make Me a Sandwich – A (Mostly) Humorous Look at how to Not Sell Video Games to Women: An excellent examination into the good and the bad of video game marketing and how women are often the sexualized victims of it all. The author is also an artist, so expect some great drawings and representations of female bodies in games.
Fat, Ugly, or Slutty: While you can’t help but laugh at some of the submitted screenshots of people harassing female gamers online (mostly in Xbox Live), it does highlight an unfortunate reality of what it means to be an “openly female” gamer in multiplayer games. To those that believe sexism has disappeared in our world, I present numerous obnoxious counterpoints.
Geek Feminism: A great blog from numerous feminist contributors (who are also geeks!) speaking to all sorts of aspects of geekdom and the female experience within them.
Azeroth. Me.: A female WoW player blogs about her video game passions, World of Warcraft, and attempting to score highly on the Social Justice Points Roster.
Boobs Don’t Work that Way: A humorous tumblr that focuses on the portrayal of female anatomy in video games, anime, and comics.
[Header image courtesy of Go Make Me a Sandwich]
[GLaDOS Comic courtesy of BrokenTeapot.]