Conference Land

I have had a bit of a break from blogging here because I have had the amazing ability to speak at and attend several conferences in Austin these past few weeks.

I was really privileged to be the keynote speaker at the 15th Annual Emerging Scholarship in Women's and Gender Studies Conference at UT. I spoke about the ways that the video game industry create barriers to entry for women and girls and the ways that the video game industry is perceived by academia as being a male centered domain affects the quality of research done on games. Although I do see some real progress being made with the introduction of games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero and the Nintendo Wii system.

I also attended the Gender and Technology Conference at UT and the Texas Girls Collaborative Project Kick-Off Conference. Both of these events were wonderful and they reminded me of why I do this work. The Texas Girls Collaborative Project was created to help universities, instructors, and organizations that work to help girls succeed in Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) come together and create even more successful programs. It has long been a problem that we are losing too many girls from these areas and I am happy to be a part of such a necessary project.

I Feel Like Abigail Adams

Abigail Adams was the wife of John Adams, the second US president and there are letters from her to John while he was away at the Constitutional Congress asking him to "remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice or Representation."

Of course, he and the rest of the men did forget the women. I am sure they wondered what the fuss was about when they came back home and told their wives who had fought for independence as well.

That is what I feel like when I write about the video game industry. I keep shouting that they shouldn't forget the women and when they do they wonder what all my shouting is about.

It's frustrating.

Academics and Games

There is a problem in the academic study of video games. The girls are invisible. For some reason many of the researchers who study video games are completely comfortable taking the game industry's party line for granted - girls don't really play games. The industry is totally comfortable with the idea that girls play casual games, or even the DS, but when it comes to what the game industry considers the "hard core" games, the girls and women just are not visible. And it doesn't seem to matter how hard women work to become visible, the industry just works that much harder to make them go away.

The new book, Grand Theft Childhood is one example of how invisible girls and women are and how damaging that is. This is a good book that does not demonize the game industry and take out the woes of the world on this new technology. However, it is an entire book on games where the interviews were only done with boys. So to rephrase....they only talked to boys...no girls. They did some surveys for the statistical part of the study and found that 30% of the girls play GTA, but they did not go back to include girls.

The researchers just listened to the games industry party line about how girls don't play "hard core games" and they just never considered them.

What this means is that when people read this book...a book whose title implies it covers both genders because they use childhood, not boys...they are only reading about boys experiences.

People in the games industry are reading this book, other researchers are reading this book. Decisions will be made because of this book...where the girls are absolutely silent.

This is just one example of how the absence of girls...the silencing of girls...has a negative impact on not just what we play, but how others see what we play.

Of Prostitutes and Photography

I read a really nice article about prostitutes today and I don’t say that often. I was drawn into a story in the LA Times about a woman who took photos of prostitutes in Las Vegas.

Jonnie Anderson went to Yale to get a Master’s in photography only to return to Las Vegas where she embarked on a project to take photos of prostitutes where they could feel beautiful. She and her roommate would give these women makeovers and they would get to chose clothes Jonnie provided so that they could have their photograph taken, which Jonnie has turned in to a book.

What I loved about this article was the absolute respect Jonnie has for the prostitutes and the respect of the author of the article for these women as well. There was no biting commentary on the lives these women live, no analysis, just a desire to document these women in a way that would not degrade them.

It is often easy to deride choices others make or have thrust upon them , without truly understanding their lives or perspectives. I appreciate the work both Jonnie and the journalist have done.

Awesome Comic

I just love this comic by VG Cats. The reality is that too many of the games geared toward girls and women highlight the girlier side of life. Since I do most of the cooking, I really have a hard time understanding the facination with Cooking Mama. It would be like my husband wanting Laundry Man for his relaxation time when that is something he does too much of in real life.

Miss Bimbo...Again

I realize that this game probably doesn't deserve as much press as it's getting, but I have heard the argument that Miss Bimbo is not that bad because if shooting games don't make the players killers, then how can playing Miss Bimbo make girls think less of their bodies. And I must refute it.

Well, just for the record, that is a ludicrous argument. If we were handing out guns to children and then showing them all the great ways they would feel if they would just go out and kill someone already, then we would probably have a direct correlation. However, when girls are inundated with images and messages about how their bodies suck and how no grown woman with any sense likes her body. Then they are given a game that allows the characters to take diet pills and get plastic surgery and then be judged on their bodies, well that is a direct correlation and that in deed does lead to the players feeling bad about their bodies.

It is all about how things are portrayed across various forms of media. We are generally told that killing is bad. It's against the law, even. However we are told across all forms of media that big boobs are good and fat is ugly, well then it doesn't take much to draw the obvious conclusions.