Posts Tagged ‘women in games’

Harris O’Malley has posted an excellent piece about male privilege in geek culture, women’s representation in gaming and all that good stuff over at Kotaku. If you’re into that kind of thing, it’s worth reading. If you’re not into that kind of thing, it’s definitely worth reading. So go read it, because I’m not going to summarize it here.

Instead, I want to draw your attention to one paragraph that summarizes the crux of the issue with every women-in-gaming conversation that has ever taken place, especially on the Internet.

In this case, the threat is that – ultimately – fandom won’t cater to guys almost to exclusion… that gays, lesbians, racial and religious minorities and (gasp!) women might start having a say in the way that games, comics, etc. will be created in the future. The strawmen that are regularly trotted out – that men are objectified as well, that it’s a convention of the genre, that women actually have more privileges than guys – are a distraction from the real issue: that the Privileged are worried that they won’t be as privileged in the near future if this threat isn’t stomped out. Hence the usual reactions: derailment, minimization and ultimately dismissing the topic all together.

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