Gaming, Color and Gender... Oh My

I recently read a fabulous article in Bitch Magazine about being a Female Trekker (Trekkie is passe and insulting). In an interesting historical note, it was women that saved the show from being cancelled. Women wrote and produced the original Star Trek fanzines in 1967, and women who created and implemented the first Star Trek convention in 1972. Shows such as Quantum Leap, Farscape, Stargate SG1 and many others have been saved from the chopping block by the female fans of science fiction.

Fanfiction is largely treated with disdain, even though the women who created it lead the way for the Star Trek and Star Wars novels which are written (mostly by men) today. Female geeks, nerds, dweebs, techs, trekkers, fanfic-ers and the like, deserve better.

I'm amazed by all the creative, intelligent women who shaped the history of science fiction, gaming, fandoms and nerd-dom in general. Yet I have to ask, what is our role?

I am a gamer, a woman and a person of color. What does this mean in terms of gaming? Let's start with my general perspectives on women in gaming. I have role-played since 1999 when I moved to Lansing. I was a goth-y gamer chick who wore lingerie in the daylight and I wanted to make friends so I joined a group playing Vampire The Masquerade because I wanted friends. I never wanted to be a gamer, I wanted to have a place to belong. It was a safe haven for my smeared mascara and metallic spikes. Everyone was weirder and smellier than myself, so I was free to be.... whatever I was.

Over the years I've seen my share of female gamers come and go. What I've seen is that looks matter. Of course they always matter, but in this regard, if you want to get ahead, if you want to be popular and liked, f you want to get ahead in gaming, shorten the skirt, lower the neckline, play the nymphet and you might just get somewhere. The irony is you are being sexy for zitty guys who jerk off to Anime. Its okay for them to be unappealing, but only If they can sexualize you, can you have a taste of power within games.

I'm not knocking gaming women. Your sexuality is one part of who you are and you use what you have to get ahead and frankly, gaming guys are easily manipulated because they are driven with their teenage libidos (even when they are in their thirties). Its also not to say that I haven't encountered really good female gamers who earned their power, because I have. But its a lot easier to win the games when the boys are falling all over themselves to show you how to play.

In gaming, tough women are simply not taken seriously, Feminism is a four letter word and any attempts to discuss sexism are treated with rolled eyes and disdain. Gamers believe they are the only victims. Groups of fragile ego-ed, white beta males who have been victimized by bullies have retreated to vast fantasy lands where they are sexy and strong and smart and always get the girl in the spandex jump suit. They cannot fully let women in as equals because real gamer girls threaten their carefully constructed fantasies of what women are.

In the game Werewolf The Apocalypse (my favorite game), there is an all female tribe of werewolves. They are strong and feminist. They don't let men push them around and they can back up their feminism with fists and claws. Just about every girl who has ever played the game wants to be a member of this tribe the first time they play. Those girls are ALWAYS treated with contempt and derision by the male gamers who think its so typical that they'd pick that. Never mind that the other tribes are stereotypical male wet dreams based on a comic book version of masculinity. Women want to be heard and have the ability to back up their opinions with a little violence? It shrivels their balls right into their body cavity to think of it. How ridiculous. Gaming is about fantasy of what we wish for ourselves. For these men, women are supposed to be the bit players, the mothers, the caretakers of their swollen egos and not anyone who could compete with them or be in charge.

Now as a female gamer, I am simply not sexy enough or IQ laden enough to be a threat or an interest. I do not have the right combination of traits to be considered truly feminine and in fact, they often act as though I am a male and say whatever horrifyingly sexist thing they want because they know I will simply laugh with the boys. I always have. It was safer than losing my gamer identity, which was the only identity I really had for many years.

I am simply unsexy in gamer terms. I'm fat and my hair isn't long and doesn't sway in the breeze. I'm neither an amazon nor a pixie. I require mature men who are willing to take second and third looks to find my beauty, be it my eyes or my dimples or the way my hair is wild and rebellious and sexy, I require more than a teenage mentality can process in order to find my sex appeal. In this regard male gamers are able to push me outside of the narrow standards with which they view women because I don't really register as female. This frees me from some of the difficulties of female gamerhood, but plunges me head long into the waters of tokenism.

In our college town, I know that if a white girl or white guy is crossing the street and heading right toward me, they expect that I will move out of their way. I call this Sidewalk politics. As a woman of color, I will step aside and let them pass without banging into them. You'd be amazed how often this occurs in a day. They know they don't have to change their behavior because I will back off and give them their entitled right to the sidewalk. When I have stayed on my path and not swayed, they simply bang into me and keep walking. If I am walking and a person of color is walking toward me, most of the time we both step aside. I tell you this to tell you that for most of my gamer friends I am the only gamer of color they know. I have spent years putting up with racist jokes, drunken slips of the words "nigger" and "spic" and I've been expected to smile and say it's okay, or laugh it off or simply ignore it. I'm not supposed to cause a scene because it will spoil the gaming for everyone else. If I do say something, I am a bitch. Sidewalk politics.

The minute I walk into the room, I am immediately made aware of my oddness, my otherness, my colored-ness. It is usually regarding my hair. Being that many gamers are of the Caucasian Persuasion, they treat afros or braids the way cavemen first treated fire. They are baffled and want to put their hands in it. But unlike flames, it offers no practical purpose. They can neither envision their hands running through it sexily, nor will my hair cook the mastodon they brought home for dinner. So I am instead treated as an oddity, a pet, maybe even a mascot. See! We have black friends! Hahaha, hey what up "Poof"
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I have spent too much time laughing along and I'm tired of these reindeer games. I want to be able to have real conversations with people who value my thoughts and opinions and aren't just looking for ways to out-smart me conversationally. I want more gamers of color, more gamer women more gamer trannies and more gamers who have actually put down the D&D books and picked up something substantive about race and sexuality.

I'm not sensitive about my hair, my color or my gender. I can take jokes, and I do, but it would be nice to be treated as if these things weren't liabilities in the gaming world. I've grown tired of overgrown boys who hide behind their D&D books. I still love gaming. I would love to do more of it, but I have stepped off the sidewalk for now. I'm mad at myself for that, but I can't be bothered. My job is not to convert every man-child over to my way of thinking. They can have their narrow, crooked walkways to nowhere. I'm going to have to find another way to get where I'm going.