Tekanji continues to write, and I continue to comment. In bold, as usual, is quotes.

Much like being the Traditionally Geeky Female Gamer is a double-edged sword — you get cred as being “one of the boys”, but in a way that entails the rejection of the feminine — so too is the Girly-Girl Gamer. In this case, it hinges on how the feminine is seen to be included into the gaming community.

I'm not seeing the downside to rejecting the feminine, which in esscence is denying yourself to become only the sum of your looks instead of what you do. If I wanted to be a pretty decoration to get some man hot, I'd do that, Not all woman want to be seen as objects. Many want to be seen as subjects. If a woman wants to be seen as an object, fine, but it's not a universal desire of women.

While often praised to their faces, in other areas of the gaming community women who post their pictures get labelled “attention whores” and get told that they are one of the reasons why female gamers don’t get taken seriously.

That is because that sort of thing does make it hard to take anyone seriously. Women are often told that behavior that is in esscence, self defeating, is what they should do- put the priority on looks over smarts, think that a man can/should take care of you, avoid developing one's self as a person because that's not feminine. The work for feminists to do is for us to recognize when the societal message really is bollox.





I don’t want to spend too much time on this subject, as I think it’s better suited for the next part of my series, but suffice it to say, “fakers” are classified as women, usually models, who are faking their interest/knowledge in gaming to get attention/money/whatever. These are the bottom of the barrel and are considered not to have any gamer cred whatsoever. It’s also a classification based solely on these hypothetical women’s looks; it is contingent on the perception that these women entered the gaming community/industry in order to profit off their appearance.

Actually, it's more behavior than looks. If a hot girl says she's a girl gamer and actually shuts up and plays games- no one thinks they are a faker. But if they are constantly talking about how hot they are, and licking PSPs and going on- of course the perception is going to be that they are well, attention whores.

Seriously, what sensible adult person would go and lick an electronic device and then wonder why people don't take them seriously? The problem is that these women have bought into the idea that their looks are the most important thing about them, and that this sort of behavior will make others think well of them, when the obvious reality is that people are a bit more marketing savvy nowadays. So when they see obvious plants like the Frag Dolls or booth babes or women who get columns at IGN not because of any skill they may have but because they are so hot, they are going to raise an eyebrow to women who promote themselves as girl gamers. This of course reflects badly on women who actually do like games, and actually do take more time playing games than posing in our underwear.

I read the LJ community girl gamers. Many of the women posting there could in fact be very hot. Model hot. But the majority know that nobody cares if they wear lipstick to match their DS's(there are pink DS's and I want one) or whether they wear merry widows to game in and confine their posting to actual games and game related talk because it's a gaming community. There are in fact many other communities where if these women want to get attention for their looks, they can be validated in the way they desire.

Just leave my hobby out of it. Just be a model or a sex worker, and stop trying to promote yourself using my hobby,ok?

ETA: I hate this shitty parody commerical.