Tag Archive for women

| February 16, 2013
16 comments

Games Imitating Life: Rape Culture in MMORPGs?

Contrary to the Kotaku article, no one was accused of rape in game at any point, and that is not the point of this blog post. Any comment that suggests that someone was accused of rape, or attempted rape, will not be approved.

 

A curious event happened to me recently while roleplaying, and I’ll use direct quotes whenever appropriate. For those of you not familiar, I’ll explain things. Roleplaying, being the act of taking on the role of a character that’s not yourself, is traditionally done through tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons. With the rise in popularity of massively multiplayer online roleplaying games (MMORPGs) it’s taken on a different turn in the online space with people playing out scenes as their avatars (their usually three-dimensional computer generated character) in an online world.

These days I play Guild Wars 2 (GW2), a recent and fairly popular MMORPG set in the fantasy world of Tyria. Read more

Category: Culture, Media, Personal | Tags: , , , , , , ,
| February 5, 2013
10 comments

Introduction: Class, Poverty, Gender and Violence

A particularly insightful article by a blogger here got me to thinking quite a lot lately. More importantly it got me to writing and the subsequent post has ended up serving as my introduction in returning to blogging with my partner here.

I’ve had the good fortune of being a cis gendered male born into a wealthy western country. Even though I began life in one of the poorest corners of that nation, I count myself fortunate in many ways. Read more

Category: Culture, Personal | Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
| February 1, 2013
No comments

Interdependence

I have been sick this week and unable to blog, but I found this post on strong female characters and interdependence that said a lot of the things I wanted to say in such an elegant manner.

What I look for in strong female characters when I evaluate their relationship to other people is interdependence. There is no shame in relying on other people sometimes, on needing their emotional, physical, or other support, just as there is no shame in offering that support to the people around you when they need your help. Look at Veronica Mars, for example; there are scenes where Logan helps her when she’s in a jam, but conversely, she’s also the one helping him when he’s falsely accused of murder and he’s trying to exonerate himself. The two characters enjoy an intimate connection and an interdependent one as they help each other navigate the world, and it’s a more more equitable balance than one where Logan always saves the day or Veronica never shows vulnerability.

Another thing I loved about Veronica Mars was that she had relationships of all different types. She had male and female friendships, she had a loving and supportive relationship with her father. She was a wonderful role model, and I’m still upset they cancelled the show.

Category: Media | Tags: , ,
| December 17, 2012
One comment

Normalizing and Desexualizing Kinks

People’s kinks are varied and diverse, and often trail into realms that they’re not interested in or comfortable with in real life. Porn, and other sexual outlets, allow us to explore these things with minimal impact on our day to day life.

However there’s certain people who crave for 24/7 lifestyle fantasies that sometimes involve not all partners realizing the full extent of what it is. While browsing on FetLife the other day, I stumbled across a group that was dedicated to one woman’s fantasy of being sexually harassed in an massively multiplayer online game (MMO or MMORPG).

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Category: Culture | Tags: , , , , , , ,
| October 16, 2012
9 comments

Anastasia Steele – Mary Sue

Anastasia Steele is a much talked about character. She is the lead female protagonist of the popular 50 Shades of Grey, and people absolutely love calling her a Mary Sue.

You might not like her, or understand what Christian Grey sees in her, or feels that something in 50 Shades of Grey wasn’t really what you wanted it to be. You might find it hard to empathize or sympathize with her, or that her story is hard to believe. But none of that makes Anastasia Steele a Mary Sue.

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Category: Culture, Media | Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
| October 9, 2012
4 comments

Problems with Feminist Labels

There’s a lot of splintering in feminist groups. Feminist seems like a bad word, even to women and men who want equal rights and equal pay for the genders. Even to those that agree there is a patriarchy and that we should work to dismantle it. Even to those who agree that the way we treat each other, and our daughters, and our sons, is shameful.

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Category: Culture | Tags: , , , , , ,
| June 11, 2012
No comments

Boys Who Play Girls – Female Measurement Guide

I’m a strong supporter of men playing female characters and female playing male characters. What better way to empathize with the opposite sex than to put yourself in the figurative mind and body of one?

However, I often notice that men, for some reason, have trouble with bra sizes. And weights. And statures of women. So I wanted to help out a bit in that regard!

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Category: Media, Personal | Tags: , , ,
| May 7, 2012
No comments

Femininity

It’s no hidden truth that certain things in our world are gendered. Barbie dolls are for girls. Big trucks are for boys. Dresses are for girls. Blue is for boys. Pink is for girls.

These are not universal truths, and have not always been truths, of course. Not long ago, men wore tights and dressed their boys in pink and let them have curly hair. Now we wonder what doing something like that will do to our children’s self esteem and several schools have banned male students from having long hair, dressing in a feminine manner, etc.

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Category: Culture, Media | Tags: , , , ,
| April 27, 2012
3 comments

Jobs and Choices

Trigger warning for discussion of sex work.

There was a thread earlier on Literotica talking about prostitution, why it was illegal, and what that meant. Someone said the problem was that some women didn’t have a choice but to sleep with people for food to feed their family.

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Category: Culture, Personal | Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
| April 16, 2012
No comments

Evil Demon Seductress Trope

As defined on TVTropes.org,

“Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members’ minds and expectations. On the whole, tropes are not clichés. Above all, a trope is a convention. It can be a plot trick, a setup, a narrative structure, a character type, a linguistic idiom… you know it when you see it.”

Last year, Feminist Frequency did a video about The Evil Demon Seductress trope.

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Category: Culture, Media | Tags: , , , ,
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