Last week, I was at an academic conference, presenting on a game I and a colleague created for classroom use. It’s a big conference, and I got to listen to a lot of very smart scholars hold forth on all the things I’m interested in, from first-year writing to games […]
gamergate
28 posts
If you live in the United States, this will probably come as no shock: people are angry. People everywhere feel oppressed, targeted, slighted, and unheard. What’s particularly interesting is that people who are in power, who have always been heard, who have not been oppressed as a group are the […]
You may or may not believe this, but studying games isn’t always fun. In fact, sometimes it’s downright horrible. Ask any PhD student who is researching video games from any kind of critical perspective and they will tell you: games are full of some of the most defeating, vitriolic, toxic […]
Last Friday, Alex Layne explored legal definitions of terrorism, stalking, and cyberbullying to draw some conclusions about cyberterrorist acts, specifically in terms of online harassment against women tagged as “social justice warriors” by the GamerGate movement. Alex’s piece ignited a firestorm on Twitter, with responses ranging from mockery and downplay […]
Conditions, diseases, the law, careers, crimes. The list could possibly go on forever. What list? You ask. The list of things that mean less, carry less weight, and are taken less seriously when they happen to women than to men. One only needs to quickly peruse the history of medical […]
On Wednesday Zoë Quinn wrote a heartbreaking post about why she is giving up the fight against her ex boyfriend who has defamed her, harassed her, and made her the most hated person on the Internet. The last one isn’t true of course, but one could think it is by […]
I am writing this in the midst of yet another campus active shooter. Professors and students at Delta State are huddled in classrooms, praying, hiding in the dark, covering windows as best they can. All we know is that one professor was killed, and thousands and professors and students are […]
“If innate male aggression and dominance are at the root of the female oppression, then the feminist program would logically require either the extermination of the offending sex, or else a eugenics project to modify its character. If sexism is a by-product of capitalism’s relentless appetite for profit, then sexism […]
Women have been long denied a voice in the gaming industry. This site, and others like it, have been fighting for years to establish a place where women’s voices aren’t only tolerated, but they are central to what it means to talk about games. Just because this site focuses on […]
I went to a Wine and Cheese Equity and Diversity Summit last week. This was held at my university to talk about the idea of implementing a racial issues course requirement to the common core. Now, I work at an urban university with plenty of diversity, in terms of ethnic […]
I usually try not to get all emotional in my posts, but I just couldn’t help it with my topic this week. Hopefully you, reader, can enjoy and do a little reflecting on your own. I recently spent two weeks without the Internet. I competed in the 2015 PDGA Amateur […]
Recently there has been a lot of discussion in the games community about criticism and objectivity. Questions have arisen such as: What is criticism, and what does it mean for the gaming sphere? What are the bounds of criticism, and what purpose does it serve? Is critique censorship? What is […]
A quick stroll through the Playstation or Xbox stores reveals the distinct lack of a once-common feature: demos. A search of the Steam store returned 15 demos released since the beginning of June, most for free but some available only for purchase. Many of these demos, however, are for games […]
Sometimes gamers forget that the virtual worlds we participate in, while they often become as much our “real” world as meat space, are not subject to the same laws of freedom of speech as our meat space. When we participate on forums, chat within a game, or send someone a […]
As women, we are taught from a young age to fear the unknown. It is our responsibility to avoid dark alleys, short skirts, abusive men, or any other abnormal and risky behavior. Today people are too savvy about political correctness to say some of these things out loud; ie. you […]
Sometimes it really is about ethics—or is it? GamerGate members (ostensibly) launched a site this week called Deep Freeze, which, in their own words, aims to serve as “a journalism reference resource, conceived to supply a reader with easy-digestible[sic] information to determine the reliability of an individual writer or outlet.” […]