I Oughtta Get Angry

Yesterday a thing happened on Twitter. Vox Media is a new game news web site in development. They started their media blitz by talking about how they were all “handsome” and were then forced to answer the question “are there any women on your staff?”

So, well, no: this is a thing started by dudes who presumably all know each other and as these things sort of tend to go they probably hadn’t really considered that a lack of diversity (race, gender, etc), would be a “thing.” Turns out it was a thing, so they started asking on Facebook “hey, who are the best women who write about games?”

Related! Here’s a list of some of the best game articles of 2011, as picked by Critical Distance and its readership. Look! Some women!

Worth commenting on: The bottom section, where women are talking about the culture of gaming, and how they often feel under-represented, has the majority of the female writers. Probably the easiest way to get noticed that you are a woman who writes about games is to write about how much this can suck. I think it’s an important conversation to have, but I’m not entirely sure that this is fair, because women write cool shit about games all the time. Just this week I thought this was interesting and also this. Maybe women have a different style of writing, and when this same writing is being vetted by male editors it becomes more invisible. Or maybe:

Yeah, actually: that.

Also, there’s this extra cool thing about being a woman where your appearance matters than if you’re a man, where you’ll get insulted and called “fat” on the internet by men (and other women) a lot more, and where it matters a lot more what you’re wearing. As a bonus, if you’re really a man but just pretend to be a woman, you can find some real success if you pretend you are, like, super-hot.

The Vox editors took the thread down after I guess they realized that making this a popularity vote ie “Shepard’s Hair Color” wasn’t necessarily the right thing to do, and they should have either accepted applications or just scouted for more writers themselves. Anyway, that’s what institutionalized sexism looks like. Women already should’ve been considered (while we’re at it, more diverse people in general). I think part of the problem here is, men tend to want to work with people that make them comfortable, and that generally means other men, that they already know, rather than also inviting someone not in their circle. If they reach outside of the circle merely to be inclusive, it rings of tokenism and is still hollow. If it’s a popularity contest, it is hollow.

I oughtta get angry. But honestly, I hate being angry. I want to be positive, and write about games I like. So I’m not really angry. Just tired that these conversations need to keep happening, over and over again.


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