No Damsel In Distress Here: Anita Sarkeesian and Her Kickstarter Story

I’m a gamer and damn proud.

You won’t catch me toting a DS waiting to update my Animal Crossing town or feed my Nintendogs. I won’t spend hours in front of my tv wasting the brilliance that is the outdoors. And I will never pass up time with friends, to finish that last level of Bioshock Infinite or play one more round of Zombies. However, I will keep up with the industry’s latest and greatest. I do long for that occasional heartwarming nostalgia that comes with replaying an old N64 favorite. And I will always look forward to the occasional follow-up or reimagining of a series like Zelda or Tomb Raider. Gaming has been ingrained within me since as far as I can remember, but it wasn’t until recently that I stumbled upon a daring vlogger who prompted me to reanalyze these pieces of my past with a new feminist perspective.

A month from yesterday will mark the one year anniversary of a bold concept that would later rock the gaming community forever. After being invited to speak to video game development company BUNGiE, vlogger and creator of Feminist Frequency Anita Sarkeesian felt satisfied with her involvement, but realized there was a lot left to be said for the industry as a whole. She decided to launch a Kickstarter campaign to fund a series of videos that would analyze the history of video games from a feminist lens and illuminate the iconic portrayals of women in these games. Little did she know the tidal wave of backlash, harassment, and vandalism that would follow her from arguably the most proverbial of boy’s clubs.

Tis the Season to Be…Critical

I don’t know if its the warm weather or the abundance of pollen plaguing the air but I can’t help but think about the summer which in turn makes me think of swimsuit season. UGH the dreaded words, the thoughts of self-loathing, the images of women that are prettier than you, skinnier than you and wear that bikini better than you that flood our minds as the ocean tides flood the beaches.  As HannahGrace mentioned in her latest post, feminists sometimes have trouble admitting that we are not impervious to the images presented to us in the media that make us feel inadequate.  I’m not here to talk about shaming other women due to personal feelings of inadequacy or turning to eating disorders or disordered eating. What I really want to explore is point where our societal beauty ideal transformed from one of a healthy curvaceous body to a thin one represented by 5% of the actual female population.

I don’t know about you but a far as I can remember thin was the way to be even though my mother told me I was beautiful no matter what physical phase I was going through.  On our scales today the women on the bottom row of this picture would be considered “overweight” but have you ever considered over what weight? What is this tight imaginary box of poundage that we are supposed squeeze our way into?

Boys Will Be Boys

Last Wednesday afternoon, I sat down at my kitchen table to do some homework.  Like any normal, procrastinating college student, I headed straight for Facebook, momentarily disregarding the mountain of work silently pleading with me to get busy.  After logging on, my initial intention of posting stupid pictures with cryptic captions was immediately sidelined, as I came across a trending article in my newsfeed that nearly twenty friends had reposted.  My spidey senses started tingling when I realized it was from Jezebel.  I clicked away, and my heart sank as I read the opening statement of the article, as follows:

“A 16-year-old student says she was forced to withdraw from her prestigious Catholic prep school after texting a topless photo to two of the school’s star athletes, who shared it with the entire lacrosse team but received no punishment.  Instead of using the incident as a teachable moment for both male and female students about trust and social media, the administration sent a clear message: girls are ungodly creatures who tempt boys into sin.”

I was immediately appalled, and knew right away that I wanted to write a blog post about this.  As a graduate of a Catholic high school myself, I felt an instant connection to this story.  To boot, the subject of the article, Paul VI Catholic High School in Fairfax, VA, is my alma mater.

Oh, the plot thickens!  In all seriousness though, the school got a lot of heat, and frankly, it’s totally understandable.  However, I want to step away from the parallel of girls being biblically-proclaimed wily temptresses, and come at this controversy from a more religiously-neutral standpoint than Jezebel.

Book Recommendation: The Guy’s Guide to Feminism

Unless you’ve been living in a cave or the Midwest, you’ve noticed spring (weather) is finally here! Yes, the beautiful time of year when the birds are back, flowers are blooming, and the thaw of winter is behind us. With the return of the sun comes the return of outdoor recreational reading. There’s nothing I love more about my outdoor porch than curling up in my favoring chair, and with a glass of lemonade beside me flipping the pages of a wonderful book between my hands. One such book I had the pleasure of reading was The Guy’s Guide to Feminism. It’s a brief but well written read that’s sure to fit into anyone’s schedule and personal feminist level.

Buffy: We Can Slay It

I’ve been considering doing a throwback post, taking something of the of the past and reevaluating it through a feminist lens.  For some of you this may be a throwback but for me, my past was void of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and her female empowerment. Granted  I was six when it first aired so I guess it was good parenting that prevented me from watching it but even then I wish I had joined in the Sarah Michelle Geller craze.  I remember people raving about Buffy and her slaying but I jut never really go into it, primarily because I used to be a good ol’ scaredy cat and even the not so special effects of the 90′s would have scared the pants off of me.

But I am proud to announce that I am officially a member of the Buffy fan club.  I have recently become obsessed (thank goodness for Netflix) but am only halfway through season two and am thoroughly excited to watch all 7 seasons.Buffy is an excellent female role model for women of all ages she exhibits independence, rejection of gender roles and confidence in her identity through her battling of literal and symbolic demons.  Writer Joss Whedon announced in the first mission statement for the show, Buffy is about “the joy of female power: having it, using it, sharing it” and holy crap has she shared it with me.

Imposed Cultures: Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus

Welcome to my fourth installment of Imposed Cultures, a series that takes a closer look at common societal practices and beliefs to reveal that what we often think of as “natural” is anything but! Today we are going to explore the popular idea that  ”Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.” While many people use the scientific “truth” that men and women have different brains to explain gender divides, there is actually a lot wrong with this theory – starting with the fact that I don’t even like chocolate.

Anonymity at a Whole New Level

JMU Crushes. JMU Confessions. JMU advice.

Are these anonymous Facebook and Twitter accounts helping or hindering our already technologically dependent generation?  I vote hindering.

 I take up many issues with these new forums that basically encourage stalking and overall disrespect but is there really such a thing as anonymity  when it comes to the internet?  Your name may not be publicly affiliated with that degrading, creepy or ignorant post but there is a cyber footprint.  I’m not an IT professional but I’ve heard, once on the internet always on the internet.  This isn’t meant to be an internet safety lecture but if I were going to be a dumbass the internet wouldn’t be the first place I’d turn to as an outlet.

For those of you that don’t know, some anonymous person has started Facebook pages and Twitter accounts that enable JMU students to send in messages that will be relayed anonymously on the page.  Ultimately not a harmful idea but when you ask for the deep innermost thoughts of a bunch of college students, you’re obviously bound to reel in a web of gems.

Failure of Upbrining: Hegemonic/Toxic Masculinity

Apart from this above image I wasn’t really explicitly told what it meant to be a man in my childhood. You hear of the sex talk, but I don’t remember my dad sitting me down one day and telling me the birds and bees of manhood. So when I was sent a link to an article earlier this week on the ideas of toxic masculinity/hegemonic masculinity and the growing need for people to stand up against societal structured norms that contribute to delinquent behavior, I was dumbfounded at how I had and in some situations still am contributing to societies perpetuated norms of masculinity. This very same article would later explain that the extreme of this delinquent behavior, radical violence, is a direct result of the modern societal view (or value) of masculinity versus femininity in boys. It harps on the recent trial of the Steubenville rape of a 16 year old girl at the hands of two high school football players, and I’d like to walk through what I’ve learned about toxic masculinity.

Crab Mentality: How women hold each other back

That’s just crabby.

A friend of mine recently introduced me to the concept of “crab mentality.”  This concept refers to a common occurrence in buckets of crabs: if one crab attempts to escape from a bucket of live crabs, the other crabs will pull it back down, rather than allowing it to get free. Often, the crabs will wait until the brave crab has almost escaped before pulling it back into the bucket. This seems strange—why would the crabs pull each other down, instead of working together to get out of the bucket?

The same question can be asked of women who compete with other women.  Real talk:  whether we’re willing to admit it or not, all women are competitive with other women, to some extent.  I repeat:  ALL women.  I recently read Catfight by Leora Tanenbaum, which discusses the ways in which women compete, in every aspect of our day-to-day lives.  At first, I didn’t quite buy into her hyperbolic examples of lady bitchiness, a la Mean Girls.  I’m not passive-aggressive and under-the-table, I thought.  Therefore, this logic doesn’t apply to me, right?  Wrong.

We’re socialized to compete in some form or another, because as women, we all fall short of an ideal type:  we fall outside of the category of man.  We are conditioned to equate manhood with credibility, and because we were born with two X chromosomes, we are inherently “lacking”.  As Tanenbaum points out, “if a woman belittles other women, she can prove her superiority among women—and is one step closer to the inner circle of men.”

What’s So “Pinteresting”?

I recently read an article on how Pinterest is “killing feminism.”  When I first discovered the article, just a couple of weeks ago, I knew immediately that I wanted to do a blog entry on it, as I’ve felt pretty strongly about the issue since Pinterest’s inception in 2010.  I’m surprised at myself as I write this post though, because my opinion has radically changed over the span of the past two weeks.  Had I written on this subject in the midst of my initial passion, I’m sure I would have regretted it later.  You see, I initially had the idea that women were being superficial in using Pinterest, and that maybe the social media outlet was giving us a bad name.  But what exactly about women loving fashion is so wrong, and how is that a threat to feminism?  Isn’t a bigger threat when we start thinking it’s okay to regulate the interests of the feminist next door?

Fashion advice, a la Pinterest.

Allow me to explain.  First, for those of my readers who are unfamiliar with Pinterest, it’s essentially a social media platform that allows users to compartmentalize their interests via online “pin boards”, to which they attach links and pictures that strike their fancy (you’re welcome, Mom and Dad).  So, for example, if I’m trying to plan my dream apartment in Seattle, I can use Pinterest to sort through pictures of awesome room décor, affordable living room furniture, you get the point.  I’ll then post them all on a “pin-board” entitled, “dream apartment” or whatever.  Pretty cool, huh?

Well, some critics would say “nay.”  According to BuzzFeed writer Amy Odell, “Pinterest’s user-generated content, which overwhelmingly emphasizes recipes, home decor, and fitness and fashion tips, feels like a reminder that women still seek out the retrograde, materialistic content that women’s magazines have been hawking for decades — and that the internet was supposed to help overcome.”  She further stipulates that women’s media should be informative “without overwhelming them with superficial information about diet, exercise, or clothes, or wildly aspirational images of thin, photo-shopped models wearing designer dresses and lounging in mansions.”