Feminist gaming blog with a heaping dash of science and politics
**CAUTION: There are spoilers for the books in here. Also, trigger warning for discussion of sexual assault and rape.**
The world of Game of Thrones is not a nice place. We get that, DB Weiss and David Benioff, we really, really do. We understand that because in the very first episode of the series we saw: a village worth of Wildlings’ frozen butchered bodies strewn about in the forest; we saw two men savagely hunted and murdered by the White Walkers; we saw the one man to escape the White Walkers beheaded for desertion; we saw this last bit intentionally be done in front of four children, one of who was only ten years old; we saw a dead direwolf gored by a stag’s antler; we saw the funeral of a man poisoned for political gain; we saw a girl of only 16 be sexually assaulted by her brother who then sold her off to be a stranger’s wife; we saw a man die at their wedding for no good reason; and then we capped off the episode by watching a ten year old boy be pushed out of a window and fall to his presumed death. Read more of this post
So something’s been really stickin in my craw lately. Enough to get me out of my posting hibernation even!
I really, really hate seeing female action characters running around in heels. It screams objectification to me and really just turns up the “HEY LADIES YOU CAN BE STRONG AND STUFF, BUT FIRST YOU GOTS TO BE SEXAY” message to 11. And it’s freaking everywhere right now.
Black Widow in the latest Cap Movie went into multiple situations where it was known before hand that the likelihood of seeing some action was very high. AND SHE STILL WORE HIGH HEELED BOOTS.
This is during the long action sequence in which she literally jumps off a bridge.
Ethergeist June 12, 2013 at 8:41 amI cannot understand why there is always a complaint about how there is a lack of female protagonists – Here’s why: When game companies make female protagonists (as evidenced by your article above) there are complaints about how “sexist” or “scantily-clad” they are – are you “slut shaming?” – I doubt it – my point is this: EVEN MALE PROTAGONISTS look NOTHING like the males who play the games – their “best features” are also exaggerated – If we wanted to see things in video games that mirrored real life, we just wouldn’t play them. So, get over it, and if you think that there are not enough female protagonists, or that they are “over-sexualized” or whatever – Make some games with female protagonists that you want to see – it is easier, and more possible today than ever before. And above all, stop complaining.
*slow clap*
Well done, Ethergeist, well done. You sure told me. And on a two year old post, too! Woo boy, let me tell you, past-me is so getting over it right now. Hot damn.
In all seriousness though, who got your boxers all in a bunch? Was it this tweet by Feminist Frequency? I bet it was. Otherwise it’s kinda hard to imagine that someone of your estimable critical thinking skills would google “lack of female representation at E3” or the more likely and ever so classy “women bitching about bitches at E3” and go back the however many pages it took to get to my lil corner of the backlog woods. Read more of this post
The last few days I have been nigh on obsessively watching this. It’s an amazing, pitch perfect parody of Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance that celebrates the Woman’s Suffrage movement and its perfectly timed for International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month. Frankly, though, I think the reason I keep coming back to it, aside from it’s catchy lyrics (“I wanna wear pants!”), is that during this horrific political zeitgeist we’ve got right now, I really do need to see something that is joyously and wholeheartedly celebrating women’s fight for their rights and freedoms.
Final Update: Thankfully the Personhood Amendment was defeated in Mississippi by a vote of 58% to 42%. It’s a narrow margin, but it is the result of the hard work and sweat of the grassroots activist and local women that turned the tide. They were up against PersonhoodUSA and its rich backers who poured outside funds into the state to try to get this bill passed. The local activists had scant few weeks to break through PersonhoodUSA’s flood of misinformation and propaganda, but they did it. And in doing so they protected not just the rights of women and pregnant people in Mississippi, but in the rest of the US as well. We can’t relax just yet though, PersonhoodUSA has got similar Fetal Personhood bills working their way onto the 2012 ballots in California, Nevada, Oregon, Montana, and Florida. And to add insult to injury, Republicans in US House of Representatives are trying to introduce and pass Fetal Personhood bills as well. We won this fight, but the War on Women still rages on.
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No, seriously, it does. These “Fetal Personhood” bills are terrifying.They’ve been introduced in Ohio, Colorado, Louisiana, and other states, but they have all, thankfully, been voted down by the populace. This year, however, there is one being introduced to the Mississippi ballot and it is expected to pass. Let me repeat that, this horrible, terrifying piece of legislation is expected to pass. And once it’s passed, the bill’s sponsors expect it to be challenged in court and for it to go all the way up to the US Supreme Court and overturn Roe v. Wade, overturning nearly 40 years of feminist progress. This bill is terrifying to me. However this may seem like no big deal or maybe even a good thing for those of you out there who don’t know what Fetal Personhood bills are or who have only heard the anti-abortion rhetoric that glosses over the real ramifications of these types of bills. Please believe me when I say that this is indeed a big deal and that it is also most definitely not a good thing. Allow me to explain:
Zaewen 