Just recently I've come out to my friends and family as a Gamer. Being a Gamer is something I've always been, something they've always known, but we never acknowledged it officially. But after my most recent love affair, The Legend of Zelda, it has become obvious that this is more than a phase like we originally thought. I've finally dumped The Sims franchise after an eight year relationship and began playing other games. The break-up was tougher on The Sims than it was on me, after all I have recently I've realised that our political aspirations don't match up and I'm fed up being a home-maker all day long whilst my creations get to go out and experience a digital world.
Which leaves me wondering what games are out there that I am prepared to play; a recent experiment with Red Dead Revolver and Tekken 5 tell me that I do not appreciate out-moded "masculine" formulas, whereas my experience with The Sims leaves me suspicious of anything seemingly friendly to female players. Why do video games have to be designed with either gender as the perceived audience of the game? I think that is why I enjoy The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess so much; the protagonist, Link, is male but his game companion is female, Midna. Midna is pretty powerful in her own right and has the ability to conjure a Dark Energy Field to dispatch some pretty nasty enemies. Not to mention the Princess Zelda holds the Triforce of Wisdom and is shown as being willing to defend her Kingdom by force with her own sword (sure, she surrendered, but that was after she saw defeat was inevitable). Poke'mon is another nice-and-gender neutral game; in some of the games you can pick the sex of the avatar and in all games there are equal amounts of female rival trainers of all difficulty levels.
Why can't there be more of these games out there? Games that don't need big explosions, typically male-centred story lines or highly sexualised women to make them worth playing? Why don't Game Developers not release that the best way of tapping into the female game playing market isn't to develop games like Animal Crossing or Mama's Kitchen but to provide more gender-neutral games? Ay, ay, ay.
So, last week I wrote about the inappropriate Derby Olympic Torch Celebration; after publishing the post, I sent an email to Derby City Council. Since then I have received three responses. The first was a acknowledge of my email, then the "Contact Us" Department informing me that they are now forwarding my email to the Complaints Department. Finally, the Complaints Department informed me that I had not gone through their official complaints procedure and that a formal investigation will need to occur. This could take up to two weeks whilst the relevant departments are informed of my complaint and then a solution is found.
Will keep you posted,
Over and Out
Faye
xxx
I've just started reading Ariel Levy's Female Chauvinist Pigs; this might be something that I need to reread several times just to form a solid opinion on her writing. At least when I was reading Greer or Levenson I knew as I was reading what I identified with and what I rejected. With Levy I'm torn. On one hand, I agree that (some) women are demeaning their selves and flaunting themselves as objects; I've lived in Birmingham for two years and been to the party scene, witnessed this degradation and even borne the brunt of it myself when two men decided to push their luck with my boundaries. I've always been morally against Playboy and Hugh Hefner, even when as a teenager most of my friends had pencil casing sporting the Bunny Logo. However, there is something in the writing style of Levy that baffles me. Hopefully I'll understand why there is a niggling feeling inside of me that says, Something is not quite right with this book.
Keep your eyes on this space for more of my thoughts of Female Chauvinist Pigs.
Over and Out,
Faye Stone
xxx
At University it seems that whenever I get passionate about an issue regarding women in some way, usually after my friends in Psychology or Counselling attend a lecture about are exposed to some angry revolutionary from the Second Wave, I am met with a disgusted, "Are you a feminist?"
Well, yes I am, thank-you very much.
What angers me in this situation is that no matter how calmly I express my point, using as much reason and restraint I can muster, the chauvinist merely smirks and cracks a joke about how a "woman's place" is in the kitchen. Sometimes, when the man is completely lacking in the required creativity it takes to repeat a joke that someone else has has already told me too many times, he simply demands a sandwich.
I guess part of the problem is that, men and women, have been allowed to become complacent. I see it all the time at university, students drifting about and using the three years it takes to obtain a degree as a buffer between adolescence and adulthood. Some have absolutely no direction at all and merely attend university to escape their parents. Others are truly inspiring individuals who cling to every opportunity presented to them because they need it to grow and develop into self-actualised human beings; but these are disappointingly a minority at my university. University has become a time-consuming transaction to purchase access to the middle-classes. This change in student's expectations has altered the type of education we therefore receive; it is changed into a hoop jumping exercise with learning objectives aimed at passing assessments rather than developing life skills.
Where are the mass student demonstrations that occurred in history? After all, was it not students who began the Hungarian Revolt? Was the White Rose group in Nazi Germany not a student organisation aimed at proliferating anti-Hitler propaganda? I have known of only one student protest in my two years as a student, The Demo-lition.
It is this level of complacency that is allowing ignorance in both men and women to breed; If this is allowed to continue unchecked then what we will soon face is social regression. Violations upon our rights will go uncontested, resulting in evermore disastrous infringements until nothing is left but the life that women have previously striven so hard to improve. The Glass Ceiling Effect needs to be challenged, as do gender roles and the UK's Government Budget Cuts. If we want changes we need to be prepared to make them happen.
My generation, like those before, needs to join the debate and start questioning the world around them. Is this the world you want to live in?
Faye Stone
