And my boy still wanted it. After I told him about the blog post, he was back to whining. “Did you tell them to change me to a girl yet?”

“No, son. It’s wrong and I won’t do it.” Because we have rules in this family, guidelines for living that include “Be kind” and “Learn something new every day.” Also “Don’t sell your soul.”

Some of these rules are easier to explain to young children than others. This is another one they weren’t quite sure about:

I bought this magnet the day the post first appeared and put it on the refrigerator above our family calendar. I hoped the children would see it and somehow the words would leech into their minds, allowing the meaning to steep over the years.

But today I took it off the refrigerator. I made the kids stop their homework and read the words on the magnet out loud. “Do you know what this means yet?”

They shrugged.

“This is what it means.” Then I read this email to them:

“Thanks for getting in touch with us about your son’s LEGO® Club membership. I’ve read your blog post with interest and I really regret that you’ve had this experience. Any of our LEGO themes can be enjoyed by any builder, which is why we offer so many different options from which children can choose based on their interests.

We found the conclusion at the end of your post very compelling. As a result, we’ve updated the way kids can opt into or out of the LEGO Friends insert in their LEGO Club Magazine. We’ve worked across global functions to make this happen as quickly as possible, while also developing a more in-depth strategy for next year.

The quick solution is that from now on, LEGO Service advisors will be able to select the LEGO Club magazine with or without the LEGO Friends insert. This will be based on the LEGO Club member’s preference as you suggested and not as determined by gender. Please call or e-mail us again so we can update your son’s preference to get the magazine with the LEGO Friends insert. We’ll then send the latest issue to him so he can enjoy it.

Our longer term approach to improving the online sign up process will offer parents and the LEGO builders in their family a choice of magazine versions, so that we can be sure that we really meet to our fans’ tastes.

For 80 years, our core values have been Fun, Creativity, Imagination, Learning, Quality and Caring. We take these values very seriously and we really care about our fans, so I’m grateful that you took the time to share your views.

Please let me know if I can do anything else.

Brick on!”

If Lego follows through, my son will get his Friends insert. Someone else’s son won’t even have to ask, or forced to identify as something he doesn’t consider himself to be. And no one’s daughter will be automatically enrolled based on outdated gender stereotyping. And children with a gender identity that isn’t girl or boy, won’t need to identify as something they aren’t just to get the toys they crave.

Thanks to Lego, my kids understand the meaning behind the magnet.

After seeing how far companies can go to allow for greater gender equity in toy marketing, my daughter is composing a letter to Toys ‘R Us: “The Princess and the Pet Peeve: Where You Can Stick Your (Boys-Only) Sword”

Hello Hair Trigger Types Who Read The Title and Immediately RT. DON’T. Read the editors note first. Then read the actual article. Then read the 5 or 6 articles written after that. THEN consider leaving a comment. But you absolutely don’t have to. Enough has been said, really. – KDC (10/12/2014)

by Kristin Bezio

Editor’s Note — Since this post was written in February! 2013!, Kristen has written followup posts about this issue, including “Digital Damsels in Distress: A Simplified Version of a Real Problem in Gaming”

If you want to comment or share this, do so knowing Kristen is a feminist AND a game critic AND an academic, so this is a critical analysis, because The Learned Fangirl’s tagline is “a critical look at pop culture and technology”!

…..

Back in May, the internet exploded both in favor of and against Anita Sarkeesian’s Kickstarter project “Tropes vs. Women in Video Games,” with a huge contingent of trolls attacking her professionally, intellectually, and personally. Another less vocal contingent supported her Kickstarter campaign to the tune of approximately $150,000. Since then, Sarkeesian has been a vocal presence in the online and real world communities, speaking out against online sexual harassment and occasionally tweeting and blogging about the games she’s playing (presumably for the video series).

On the surface, much of this would seem to align itself with my own personal sympathies, and for a long time I was also a supporter of Sarkeesian’s proposal and her efforts to defend herself against the trolls. I continue to think that her proposed project is one that needs to be done, and I also continue to think that the treatment she received at the hands of the under-the-bridge-dwelling internet was unconscionable.

I am, however, getting over her.

I think it’s long since been time to stop talking about what happened to her and how awful it is and high time to start taking a more progressive stance on the whole thing. Okay, there’s bad behavior on the internet. I got it. How do we help change it? How do we raise our kids and talk to our fellow gamers about acting like adults instead of infants? Repeating over and over how immature the gaming community is as a whole doesn’t do much.

Painting a picture of the gaming community as cruel, misogynistic, violence-prone basement dwellers is not helping with viewing gaming through the lens of rationality. It also alienates those gamers who are genuinely nice people. And further alienates feminist gamers as “White Knights” (people who will defend female gamers at all costs, no matter how wrong they are) rather than reasonable human beings with respect for all.

As a female gamer, I’ve been subject to sexist, harassing, and misogynist comments and assumptions whenever I play online. I understand and sympathize with her desire to lash back, and with her desire to see that it stops. I just think it’s time that the conversation move somewhere more productive.

But May was a while ago, and while Sarkeesian has been occasionally tweeting about games, she hasn’t managed to release even one video in the series her backers paid for. I’m actually finding myself agreeing with a lot of voices on the internet wanting to know why they haven’t seen anything. People are starting to wonder whether those who donated have any recourse if they don’t ever see videos. And that isn’t helping people to feel any more sympathetic toward Sarkeesian herself.

Yes, she’s been busy interviewing in NPR and doing a TEDx Women talk, and travelling around to universities and conventions and other places. I get being busy. But there doesn’t seem to have been a concerted effort to actually begin the serious production process for the video series. Perhaps she has – I don’t know, because she hasn’t been sharing that. I know she’s got a lot of work to do – a lot of games to play, a lot of notes to compile, and so on. As an academic, I understand the overwhelming nature of research and production. However, she can create videos in installments the way an academic researcher putting together a long-term study or a book cannot.

Most important to me is that the snippets of feminist criticism that I have seen coming out of Feminist Frequency have not inspired confidence, in either her interpretive skills as a gamer or in her ability to separate “feminist criticism” from “pointing her finger at women in games and saying ‘bad.’” Take her tweet on Dishonored, for instance: “Many truly brilliant elements in the game #Dishonored, sadly representations of women are not among them. #Disappointing.”

Here’s my problem with this. Dishonored doesn’t have many “strong female” characters … except for the Empress, the Empress’s daughter Emily, and Callista Curnow. Yes, the Empress gets killed in the first five minutes of the game and Emily needs rescuing (she is 10, after all), but Callista makes a point of doing several things in the course of the game that tell you she’s quite a capable human being. One of the most powerful figures in the game is female (though insane – Granny Rags), and the nation appears to be a matriarchy. Yes, there are a lot of female victims in the game, but there are just as many if not more male victims. In fact, pretty much everyone is a victim at one point or another. And yes, there are female villains, but there are male villains, too.

Sarkeesian seems to dismiss Dishonored as misogynistic simply because it doesn’t contain the stereotype of the “strong modern female” in a game that is about how everyone is at the mercy of arbitrary fate in the form of rampaging plague rats.

My point isn’t that games aren’t misogynistic – there are far more of them that are than that aren’t, and some of them are really blatant – nor is it that someone doesn’t need to have the serious conversation about representations of gender (especially women) in games. I think both those things are true. But if Sarkeesian is going to dismiss a complex and intelligent game like Dishonored out of hand, then I have my doubts about her overall ability to be that voice, at least to the degree that we as an internet gaming community seem to have accepted.

I don’t want me or other “feminist gamers” to be thought of as those that do nothing but whine and yell about how women are underrepresented and misrepresented in games and the gaming industry. I don’t want to see women and feminist men with valid criticisms and interpretive opinions silenced because “feminist gamers” have gotten a negative reputation because of what Sarkeesian has and has not said and done.

What I want, really, is for Sarkeesian to make her “Tropes vs. Women in Video Games” series. I want to see what kind of critical approaches she actually takes, and I want to judge her ability to speak for female gamers on the merits of what she has to say about games, in detail, with examples, not based on fleeting tweets and TEDx talks on how internet trolls are horrible people. I want her to make something of quality, and to be successful because of what she’s done rather than what has been done to her.

And that’s how I want all women, gamers, academics, critics, and others, to be successful. Because of what we are capable of accomplishing, not because we have been made victims by trolls, by society, or by individual men (or women). Yes, it is important to talk about what has happened to women, historically and currently, but it is also much more important to talk about what women can do. Let’s talk about how to make the industry better, smarter, friendlier, more tolerant, and more accepting, not just how bad it is now. And if we want our games to change, let’s look at what’s really wrong with them, not just the surface checklist of whether it has a female protagonist or not.

And, finally, let’s stop all the arm-waving and finger-pointing. Videogames don’t cause misogyny. They don’t cause violence. They don’t cause any of society’s ills. Like any other form of popular culture, they reflect those ills and seek to make changes to those things they can. Dishonored puts a princess in a tower (literally) not because it thinks she belongs there, but because it knows she doesn’t.

The Learned Fangirl is steeped in the experience of being a fangirl. Unfortunately, there aren’t nearly enough pop culture examples that are from the perspective of fangirls. Fortunately, there is Answer Me 1997 (2012), a Korean drama, half-set in 1997, the starting point for K-pop’s unending hallyu wave of manufactured groups. This is a show for present or former fangirls of music — from Beatlemaniacs through the Metallica/Megadeth fan battles to those with Bieber fever.

What is so delightful about this show — from the first episode to the last — is that it shows fandom as a powerful, distracting, encompassing, and motivating force in the lives of fans, especially female fans. The show starts when the characters are teenagers, so it shows all of the aspect of high drama that only is possible with the heady mix of hormones, groupthink, and innocent obsessiveness of teenage girls. I laughed knowingly during the first episode when the main character Shi Won almost loses her mind dancing along to H.O.T. in the aisles, nearly passing out from pure fandom excitement.

Throughout the show, fandom is respected in a way rarely seen (and even rarer to see sustained through the entire run of a show). Friendships are tested, but never broken, due to being part of different fandoms. The show is based around the real-life Sechskies/H.O.T. fanwars, but also delves into real world issues, such as inclusiveness, especially of gay (& closeted) fans to traditionally female fandoms.

The fandom of the characters is so serious that one of the main characters as an adult is still known as Mrs. Tony — her teenage nickname based on her love of Tony (from H.O.T). And as an adult, a minor character despite her high profile job, still manages to be the head of a fan club. There is also a strong flavor for the idea that being an obsessive fan is passed down from mother to daughter — even if the object of the fandom varies, much in a similar way to the honored tradition of sports fandom being passed from father to son.

To show the recursive aspects of the show, most of the actors on the show have also been the objects of this type of fandom, considering many of them have been idol singers themselves. The writers clearly know how much they are poking at fandom by having the equivalent of a former real-life Backstreet Boy (here: member of Sechskies) portray the boyfriend of an obsessive fan of the Backstreet Boys.

This is a show that believes in fandom so much that a character wins a college scholarship based on her real-person slash-fanfic about her favorite group.

Dramabeans has great recaps of all of the episodes, but to watch the show, try Dramafever (my recommendation), Hulu, or VIKI. Be sure to watch Episode 0 if you want background on H.O.T. or other aspects of mid-90s Korean pop.

This conversation was on the heels of an in-person conversation that Viv and I had earlier this year, there’s much less profanity, but the ideas are the same. – KDC

VO: Is it just me or is this year the year of harassing geek women? There’s been tons of news about people questioning Felicia Day’s geek cred, the harassment of Anita Sarkeesian for the Tropes vs. Women in Video Games web series and the whole line of “what’s a real geek”? What’s even funnier is seeing this happen roughly at the same time as what was going on in the metal scene.

KDC: Definitely not just you, I think it’s happening in a number of fan communities, that “Girls don’t like metal” post from Metal Sucks comes to mind, even though it was last year. And there have definitely been similar sentiments pop up in other blogs. It’s like open season on chicks who dare to enjoy any kind of pop culture that isn’t Twilight or Fifty Shades of Grey. And it’s weird to me because I swear this level of anger towards women in fan communities seems relatively recent, or at least more pronounced as of late.

Cross-gender Justice League at San Diego Comic-Con 2011Image; Roger Chang, FlickrVO: I think that some of this that the conversation is coming to the forefront. The Internet is offering the ability for women to speak up and tell their stories and I suspect that (geek-wise) they’re upset because they’ve always been seen as the outsiders that welcome everyone, and it turns out it’s not quite the case. Plenty of my friends have stories of being talked down to or having people play their characters at conventions or where gaming professionals talk to their boyfriends or husbands even though they asked the question.

The anger to me is reactionary to them finally being called out on their shit. And it’s not every guy, but it’s also food for thought on the culture as a whole.

KDC: I definitely agree with you, it’s not like like girl geeks are anything new. they’re not even new to fandom, or online fan communities (i am thinking of old school Star Trek fandom, or the Beauty and the Beast TV show or X-Files fandom in the 90’s) But I do think social media has brought different subsections and fandom niches together in a way that never happened as much before and allowed (forced?) them to co-exist. There’s not a cross-pollination of fandom in-jokes, tropes and culture and maybe for some fanboys, I think there’s a feeling that their special club has been invaded.

Fandom diversity because “mainstream” with social media because it encourages a higher level of transparency, rather than the total anonymity of the old school Internet (BBS, Usenet, etc.) I’m sure back in the day, people thought I was a guy, with the screenname “Pastor of Muppets,” and the fact that I never made a point to call attention to my gender (or for that matter, my race) I’ve had a couple of different experiences with this because as a metalhead, I feel like I’ve not really been talked down to or condescended to much, but then, I’m not super active in online metal fandom, where I think there’s more of that kind of behavior. Personally, I feel like male-dominated online fan culture tends to be more combative by nature, which I think plays a big role.

VO: I think it’s also seeing a different perspective that may not mesh with what they want — for example the vitriol aimed at DC’s reboot and their portrayal of Starfire (which is really, really awful and I can’t see letting my daughter read that, even though she loves Tiny Titans and Teen Titans). It’s like they fail to realize that there’s other audiences out there and it’s more diverse than what they think.

What I don’t get is that by ridiculing others, they’re alienating a potential audience that was ALWAYS there, but never noticed. To say that we’re not “real geeks” or that our voices don’t matter is incredibly insulting. I mean, being ignored is one thing, but outright dismissed? That’s fucking war in my book. But this also reminds me of the rock scene and how people start slagging off on an indie band when they start playing MTV or getting larger audience notice. They’re not selling out – there’s just a wider audience than what you initially thought.

KDC: I do feel like issues of wanting to maintain the status quo come into play: people want what they want and in many cases, especially with fandom, radical change on any level is usually not welcomed with open arms, but this is different to me, this has way more to do with (here we go…) privilege and entitlement, the belief that these communities were only meant for men and can only speak to men and that women are interlopers. I think about the whole music blogger trend of classifying melodic or (non-brootal) metal as “girlfriend metal” as if a.) only women like melody b.) only melodic bands are “safe” or “appropriate” for women. Which of course is some grade- A bullshit. I really do think it has to do with the idea that women are not only participating in these fan communities, but also carving out spaces where the approval and participation of male fans as so – called “experts” is not needed or even considered as a factor of our own enjoyment.

So what to do? Is there anything we, as fangirls, can do, except continue to speak out and be ourselves?

VO: What I’ve seen from my friends, and what I tend to do is just keep on keeping on. Don’t leave because of some asshats (and really, most of the geek dudes I meet at Gen Con are good players and good guys overall) are being jerks. You call them out on that shit and make them rethink their positions. Also, for me, having a good group of friends who are willing to speak up also helps. My view is that they need to be reminded that we won’t go away. We are here to stay and we will continue doing what we like to do, even if you’re weirded out, feel the need to categorize it or talk down to us. We’re here whether you want us around or not.

We’d like to hear your thoughts. Is sexism in fandom on the rise? Or are we just hearing about it more via social media? Leave your comments!