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“But Censorship!” Screams Echo Over Redacted Batgirl Cover

March 17, 2015 by Shoshana, posted in Comics, Speaking Out

(Warning: discussion of fictional sexual violence ahead.)

It’s that time again. The time when the internet rings with screams of people crying ‘censorship’ over a pulled comic book cover that showcased the victimization of a beloved super-heroine for literally no good reason.

This week saw another comic book cover controversy spin up over a variant cover designed for DC Comics’ Batgirl #41. The cover by renowned comic artist Rafael Abuquerque (of Mondo Urbano and American Vampire fame) depicts the Joker and Batgirl in a creeper-victim pose reminiscent of the 1988 one-shot Batman story called The Killing Joke by Alan Moore. The comic is part of a promotional event going on during the month of June, where variant covers depicting the Joker would appear across DC comic lines. The event is similar to their ‘classic movie poster’ event that went on recently… except this event showcased a comic moment that still haunts Batgirl’s history to this day.

Hailed as one of the definitive Batman and Joker stories ever written, the comic became a pivotal moment for Barbara Gordon aka Batgirl when the Joker shoots her in an attempt to drive her father Commissioner Gordon insane. Barbara Gordon suffers spinal damage and ends up in a wheelchair, but perseveres and continues her crime-fighting career as Oracle, and later upon recovery of the use of her legs as Batgirl once again. Yet a more disturbing element always haunted the Killing Joke, and that’s the implied sexual violence that Barbara Gordon received at the hands of the Joker. Commissioner Gordon is stripped and tied to a chair and forced to look at photos of his daughter, naked, screaming in pain, photos that imply sexual violence. While many have said it’s unclear if rape was involved, later released edited pages by artist Brian Bolland show an even further sexualized Barbara, taking away much of the ‘implied’ nature of the violence she sustained. (Images of that redacted art under this link – warning: NSFW and TRIGGERING for sexual violence).

Many criticized the events of the Killing Joke and the violence done to Barbara Gordon as one step too far. Even Alan Moore was later interviewed and said he regretted going that far with the storyline. This is quoted directly from the wikipedia entry about the comic:

While the quote is disturbing, it is sadly unsurprising. Though comic book fans have called out victimization of women characters for years, it’s only in recent days when those call-outs seem to be making much traction. DC Comics is, in fact, the origin of the term ‘women in refrigerators’, so named for the time in Green Lantern comics that Kyle Raynor’s girlfriend was murdered, chopped up, and stuffed in his fridge all for an emotional plot-point for Kyle. So when a comic cover like this hit the internet, it received a lot of friction very fast.

The issue 41 cover is no question a throw-back cover to the Killing Joke days. The Joker is dressed much as he was in that comic, with his hands all over Batgirl as she stares at the reader with tears in her eyes. In an homage to the ‘why so serious?’ of the Batman movie series, the Joker paints a ragged smile across Barbara’s terrified face, a gun hanging loosely in his hand as he drapes his arms over her. The cover is uncomfortable, victimizing and vulnerable, and nowhere near the kick-ass, positive Batgirl we’d come to see in the previously established run of Batgirl. In fact, Cameron Stewart and the recent Batgirl team have received positive press for their reimagination of Batgirl’s costume and her new story lines. Their helming of Batgirl has brought in more readers, including and especially a younger demographic of girls that seem to enjoy Batgirl’s new style. The art in the book has reflected that shift, including and especially in their covers. Here are some examples, including one by Rafael Abuquerque (who made the above Killing Joke variant) for the upcoming Batgirl: Endgame #1:

These covers showcase Batgirl as an ass-kicking fun super heroine, fully in charge of her own story and her choices. When shown in contrast with this:

…it’s no surprise that fans went bananas.

So it’s to the credit of the Batgirl creative team that the decision was made so quickly to pull the variant cover. Writer and artist Cameron Stewart responded on Twitter, saying:

https://twitter.com/cameronMstewart/status/577639370502574081

https://twitter.com/cameronMstewart/status/577639515227078657

https://twitter.com/cameronMstewart/status/577639735788711936

https://twitter.com/cameronMstewart/status/577640016245075968

https://twitter.com/cameronMstewart/status/577640395980607488

For this sensitivity from both Abuquerque and Stewart, Stewart was besieged on Twitter by people berating him for ‘caving into censorship’ even after Stewart pointed out that Abuquerque pulled the piece himself of his own free will. The situation further escalated when DC Comics made a statement saying that those who spoke out about the comic cover were harassed. Stewart added:

https://twitter.com/cameronMstewart/status/577656291839119362

So to be clear: the people who stood up and said that the cover should be pulled, not the artist, were the ones threatened. Because that’s the world we live in now: where when people bring up objections to the further exploitation of the image of victimized women, THEY get harassed and told they’re supporting the bad kind of censorship. Even after the artist pulls down the piece of his own accord, and the creative team on the book calls for it to be pulled down themselves.

And that’s where I began to feel something like this:

I got into several discussions about the cover and the decision for its removal, and received mostly positive responses. Yet a theme sliding around on Twitter and Facebook that disturbed me was the always-present comments of: I hate political correctness! It’s censoring art! A favorite of mine (name not shared for obvious reasons) was, “We give too much power to people like this [ie: those that complain] when we give in to their complaints. Everything is a potential trigger.”

And sadly, all I hear is “I don’t see why you’re so upset, I want what I want, blah blah censorship.”

First: WE didn’t give anything. The creative team behind the comic made a creative decision that they stand behind of their own free will. They had the same sense that plenty of other people had and said no to a poor artistic choice. The artist himself made that choice. You, the armchair quarterback of comic book art, had nothing to do with it.

Second: People like this is such an infuriating term. Do you mean people who spoke up about yet another example of a popular woman character being depicted in a victimized way on the cover of her own book? Of the returned reference to her sexualization and victimization in an old comic that the writer of said comic even openly admits regretting? If by ‘people like this’ you mean folks who are tired of seeing constant depictions of women characters as disempowered victims in comics for the sake of selling books, for the sake of getting attention, then yes. There are people like this out there. They’re called fans, tired of seeing their favorite women super heroes treated like damsels in distress.

I posit a test that is upsetting to me to even posit. Consider a variant comic book cover. Superman is behind held by Lex Luthor. He stares pleadingly at the reader from the pages of the cover, tears streaming down his cheeks. Luthor stares out, a creepy, proprietary smile on his lips as he puts one arm over Superman’s shoulder and dangles a hand right over Superman’s chest with a Kryptonite ring on. With the other hand, he strokes his finger over Superman’s cheeks. Creeped out yet? Kind of uncomfortable? Yeah, that’s kind of the point. Maybe now you’re getting it. And even that example isn’t a good analogy because most readers will probably fall back on a hetero-normative view of those characters, in which Superman wouldn’t be in danger of sexual violence from Luthor. But in this cover, the history of the Killing Joke that is being called up by the costume and the set-up of the piece of art clearly points directly to the previous history of sexual violence and the sexualized danger to Batgirl. The piece of art posed Batgirl with her attacker.

Do you get it yet? Do you see why this is a problem?

If not, I don’t know quite what to say to you. How to convince you that harkening back to a history of sexual violence on the cover of a comic whose audience includes kids is uncomfortable and unnecessary. How there are a million other ways to depict characters like the Joker and Batgirl that are not victimizing to the main character of her own book. How the cover is only a variant and therefore not really there to impact the story or the book run, but only to appeal to collectors as part of a marketing stunt, and how that fact makes the problem even worse. But more than that, I cannot figure out how to say to people who don’t see the problems here: just because you can do something for art doesn’t mean that it’s a good decision, in good taste, or that you should in the first place. Yes, art is free, but art without common sense and decency and thought about your audience is just a whole lot of mess. And maybe the place for a piece of art depicting a terrorized sexual violence victim is not on the place of a widely read comic book for kids and adults.

I fully support this cover being pulled, and give a well done to Rafael Abuquerque for seeing the problem and responding so graciously. I give a hearty thank you to Cameron Stewart for having the vision to call for the removal of the cover, and for his understanding as to why it was a problem.

Under Our Noses: The Rising Anti-Semitism In Our World

January 17, 2015 by Shoshana, posted in Speaking Out

A man went to the store the other day to pick up challah for the Sabbath. Challah is the traditional bread Jews eat for the Sabbath, and pretty much any other time you can get away with it because the stuff is delicious. Families cut up the braided bread and share it together as part of the end of the week Sabbath and holidays. Mothers make it with their children, a tradition passed down for generations. Or else if you don’t make it in your kitchen, which is (as my mother would say in Yiddish) a lot of potchka (annoying planning and trouble), you go and buy it from a store.

So a guy was running to a store to get his Friday groceries. He got everything he needed and rushed out of the store, and got to his car before he realized he forgot his challah. He ran back to the store only to find a woman shuttering up the windows and locking the door. He begged her to let him back in to get his challah, but she warned him away. Then from inside, a voice ordered the man into the store. That’s where the man was confronted by a hostage taker, who took him into the store and shot him dead on the spot. Because he was looking to pick up his challah for the Sabbath.

This is a story I read online after the tragic events that took place at the Hyper Casher kosher supermarket two weeks ago. The article did not attribute which of the hostage taker’s four victims was the origin of this story. Was it 22-year-old Yohan Cohen? No, he was reported to have tried to stop the hostage taker by trying to get the man’s gun away from him and was shot in the process. So, it couldn’t have been him. Maybe it was Yoav Hattab, 21, the son of the chief rabbi of Tunnis. Or perhaps it was Philippe Braham, 40, or Françoise-Michel Saada, a man in his 60’s. Whichever of the four men were killed for leaving behind their challah, they were all killed for another reason they had in common.

They could all say #JeSuisJuif – “I am a Jew.”

Except saying that, identifying as a Jew in Europe, has never been more dangerous. The attack on the kosher supermarket is being reported as just as deadly as the 2012 Otzar HaTorah school in Toulouse, which killed 4. Amazing how it is that we have statistics now of which attacks are more deadly, they happen so often. We have one horror to compare another horror to, as if this was some kind of competition. It’s no wonder that out of the 600,000 French Jews, 7,000 left France to live in Israel with another 50,000 having made inquiries as to how to make aliya (immigrating to Israel). That number is staggering when you think about it. 50,000 people are willing to uproot their lives in France to get out and head for Israel, a place they see as safer for Jews. And they’re not alone.

The Anti Defamation League claims that of those surveyed in 100 countries between July 2013 and February 2014, 26% indicated anti-semitic leanings. (Their findings can be found at ADL Global 100). And while they are the leading research group on Anti-Semitism, their conflation of numbers (listing more than 1 Billion people being extrapolated as Anti-Semetic based on their small sample survey? Er, not sure I’m behind THAT) makes me suspect to take their word for it. So how about this FBI chart that tracked anti-Semitic attacks from 2002-2012 (source: BBC). They indicate that in certain places, attacks are in the thousands while elsewhere (Sweden) we’re talking lower numbers every year.

Still, thousands of attacks? Can’t really wrap your head around it? Neither could I. I grew up and live in New York, where being Jewish is sort of a badge of pride. Everyone knows New York is the largest enclave of Jews living anywhere outside of Israel. And even in New York I’ve run across people who were anti-Semitic. You run into preachers on the subway, jerks on the street, and even folks at your college who want to tell you to convert, who want to tell you that you need saving, that you have no soul, that they’d beat you to death if they could. I’ve run afoul of each one of those anti-Semitic asshole examples myself. But I’ve never been on the receiving end of a beating, a stabbing, a bullet. I’m lucky. Other people, elsewhere in the world, are not. Now thousands of Jews are considering fleeing their home country to go to Israel, a place rife with political strife, because in the end it’s better there where Jews are accepted than in a place where you wonder if you’re going to get knifed-

Oh wait. People get knifed in Israel for being Jews all the time. Or blown up. Or shot.

Hang on, and that happens in the US too.

Attacks in the past year have been reported in Belgium, Russia, Canada, the United States, England, and Germany to name just a few. In other countries, community centers and synagogues have been attacked or shot at, and individuals have been harassed with nazi graffiti and slurs. It seems it’s not a great time to be Jewish anywhere. But then honestly, when has that NOT been the case.

I grew up an Orthodox Jewish girl and then woman in a religious household. My family was rife on my mother’s side with people who fled the Holocaust, and the ghosts of those who did not escape the genocide of Europe followed them to Brooklyn. There wasn’t a time when I wasn’t aware that my grandmother’s family had lost so many, that she herself escaped Auschwitz to marry my grandfather, who had lost two children and a wife to the gas chambers. My grandmother would not speak of the Holocaust to me much until the end of her life, even though she practically raised me after school while my parents both worked. I grew up in her house not knowing why she’d hide money away everywhere, or why she convinced me that it was important that I stay in good health. I one day plucked up all my courage to ask. She looked at me with this haunted, serious face and said, “Because you never know when you’re going to have to run.” When she passed away, there were hundreds of dollars in rolled up bills found all over the house. She was ready, in case someone came for her again.

Sounds paranoid, right? But does it sound any more paranoid then thinking you’ll go shopping in your neighborhood grocery store and have a man bust in with a gun to shoot you dead for being a Jew? It’s scary to think what the mindset of Jews must be like living under that kind of threat. In New York, you might get spat at every once in a while, called a kike, or a dirty Jew, but at least you’re usually safe. Right?

Y’know, until someone busts into your synagogue where you’re minding your own business and stabs you while you’re just trying to study Torah. That happened in Brooklyn, at 770 Eastern Parkway, the seat of Chabad-Lubavitch Judiasm around the world. If you’re not familiar with the Chabad organization or the Lubavitch sect, I’ll just say that they’re all about helping people out and celebrating God in joy and happiness. No joke. They’re a religious sect who are all about helping Jews by opening up kosher kitchens and accommodations around the world so that Jews can have food and housing along their travels. They’re fucking harmless.

Dude walked in and tried to stab ’em to death, tossing around anti-Semitic slurs. Cops shot that guy dead.

But hey, synagogues are going to attract the worst attacks. How about this one, at Temple University? Where there have been reports of anti-semitic issues for ages, and a kid was attacked. I got a few more but I think you’re getting my point.

Can I ask a simple question?

What the HELL is going on here?

The world has been rough on everyone for the last few years. We look around and for every victory, there seems to be another hardship, another war, another economic depression, no jobs, no upturn, and less hope than there ever was. And yet so many spend their time fighting for safer spaces, safer words, more equality, better times ahead. So I wonder now: when do our better times begin? When can Jews stop being afraid? Will we only be safe when we’ve hidden away our Judaism, made ourselves the same as everyone else, homogenized into popular culture so as to be inoffensive, indistinguishable? Will Jews then be safe from hatred lurking out there?

Hate to tell you. It ain’t lurking. It’s out there for all the world to see.

It sounds paranoid. People say “anti-Semitism isn’t still a problem, you’re making a big deal out of nothing.” But only one look at the statistics, at the events going on around the world, and you can tell that it is ignorance to minimize the affect anti-semitism has had on Jews the world over. And just because it’s not comfortable to talk about hatred against Jews doesn’t mean that it’s going away. Just the opposite in fact. Just because it’s not politic to talk about anti-Semitism at cocktail parties doesn’t mean it’s going to go away by itself.

My grandmother used to tell me that nothing would change in this world for Jews. That Israel was the only place where Jews would be able to live in safety. Of course we know that the situation there is complex, that safety there is not assured for Jews at all and never has been. But I used to tell my grandmother that I didn’t believe that the world was such a dangerous place for Jews. I believed that as we got older, we would strive as a world to combat the bigotries and hatreds we had to build a future where we could all be safe. And she’d look at me with that same haunted, dark look that said she knew better. I never wanted to believe her. I still don’t entirely believe her. And yet. And yet. Let’s look at the last few years and say, ‘and yet.’

The politics of Israel have been sited as a reason for the rise in anti-Semitism around the world. Driven by the rage at what has happened to the people of Gaza and the West Bank, rallies around the world have spoken up for the Palestinian cause and in solidarity for the civilians whose lives have been so horribly harmed by the violence in Israel. Yet often those very discussions are couched in language that holds anti-Semitism side by side with Palestinian freedom, that blames Jews overall for what has happened and not a political regime in Israel in an unbelievably complex situation. It’s unfathomable to me how people could blame all Jews the world over for the actions of a political party in command of a country where most of us do not live, whether we support Israel or no. It boggles me how we can all be tossed in the same pot, ready to be boiled alive by the hate flowing around in the name of people who have been maimed and hurt and disenfranchised. People marry the politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the identity of Jews everywhere and, in doing so, erase all nuance to the conversation and link anti-Semitic hatred to the battle for national identity for two warring groups.

Jews are not combatants. We are people living our lives the world over, with as much right as anyone to our freedoms. We are not ‘Christ killers’ or people whose souls need to be saved. We are not second class or less than. We are not part of some ridiculous secret plan to control the dollar, or Hollywood, or the world economy. We are not the heart of your conspiracy theories or your political gripes. We’re people going to work, trying to create lives for ourselves.

We’re a guy going to the store on a Friday to get challah for the Sabbath. We are people who want to be able to say #JeSuisJuif and not be afraid for our lives, like our ancestors had to be in countless countries and countless eras.

I am a Jew. I say that proudly. And I watched my grandmother be afraid all her life that someone was going to come and kill her family. And suddenly, today, I don’t think it’s that paranoid after all. And how fucking sad is that?

UPDATE: The article was adjusted after more research into the ADL Global website survey indicated that the more than 1 Billion people number indicated on their page is an extrapolation based on their actual survey data. In other words, it’s not actual hard data and very misleading. The problem is bad enough, we don’t need to make it seem THAT much worse.

A Freedom Worth Fighting For

January 8, 2015 by Shoshana, posted in Speaking Out

Back in 2011, the offices of a French satirical magazine called Charlie Hebdo was firebombed. The picture above is of the magazine’s editor, Stéphane Charbonnier aka Charb, holding the reason for the attack: a cartoon they decided to print that depicted the Prophet Muhammad. By the laws of Islam, it is religiously prohibited to create a likeness of the Prophet in any way, and so the cartoon was considered sacrilege. The cartoonist, as well as any associated with the project, received death threats. The offices were fire bombed. And yet the cartoon was published anyway. It was joined in subsequent years by numerous other cartoons of Muhammad, each compiling the rage aimed at the Paris-based magazine.

After publishing the comic, Charb was quoted in 2012 as saying, “I would rather die standing than live on my knees.”

Well, Charb is dead now. He was shot dead in the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris on January 7th. He was murdered alongside eleven others, including three of the other cartoonists who helped found Charlie Hebdo – Cabu, Tignous, and Wolinski. Eleven others were injured in the attack, four critically. Of the twelve killed, eight were journalists and two were police officers.

The alleged murderers were caught on camera walking into the building all in black. They executed a police officer first, then went up to the office and started shooting. Reports state that they called out the names of those they were going to kill, then executed them. This came from the mouth of one of the suspects, who just before the beginning of my writing this surrendered himself to police. Eighteen-year-old Hamyd Mourad is in custody while the other killers, Said and Cherif Koachi, are both at large. At the time of this writing, so much is still unknown about what happened, about the whereabouts of the two other suspects. But one thing is clear to anyone who is paying attention:

Twelve people lost their lives in Paris on January 7th over the art they created.

From the moment this horrible event happened, people have been jumping to politicize the tragedy. Newspapers across the world trotted out the “Behold, the true and horrible face of Islam!” garbage. (And it is garbage, please, because radicals are radicals and not representative of a whole religion, so let’s not dance that dance, okay?) Donald Trump climbed out of the woodwork to post on Twitter that the victims of this tragedy would have been better off if they’d had guns to protect themselves (yeah, Captain Hairpiece, like the cops didn’t have those – oh why do I bother). Still others wanted to use this to talk about immigration into European countries. Agendas by the armload. Agendas from the rooftops, across blogs and social media and pundit pieces galore. But if you stop listening to the politics for two seconds- close your ears to it and shut your eyes- you’ll hear another rumbling going on across the internet from creators of art everywhere. They’re all asking:

Is this the new standard? When did creating art become so dangerous?

charb — Stéphane Charbonnier aka Charb, 2012.

The truth is, it always was. Painters, writers, musicians, poets, illustrators, comic book makers, dancers – all have expressed their ideas in countries across the world and been subject to censure. Some has been subtle, and some has been overt, and a lot of times it’s come down to violence. Because in plenty of places, the freedom of expression, the freedom to create, has not and does not come free.

But today, in 2014, we take for granted that we have the freedom in the western world to create in safety. Our right to freedom of expression is unassailable, inalienable.

Until someone walks into a magazine headquarters and murders people for making cartoons.

It would almost sound absurd if it wasn’t so horrifying. Cartoons of a religious figure made some people angry enough that they picked up guns, walked into a Paris building, and executed other human beings.

Do you shudder at that? I do. It shakes me down to the core.

I’ve written in my time about being considerate with the content of your creative work, about being sure that when you produce art that you are trying to do right by your readership in terms of representation, inclusivity, and sensitivity. And there are battles in our media constantly about content, things that make people angry, things that are meant to shock and are sensational and that trigger and that offend. But at the core of these arguments is always the same (sometimes uncomfortable) ending to the conversation: people should have the right to create what they wish. And when we shrug our shoulders and shake our heads at that, we are glossing over the importance of that saying.

We live in a world where people should have the right to create what they wish.

People lived, fought, worked, and even died to make the freedom to create a right. In some parts of the world, parts far away from the safety of our western lives, they are fighting for that right today in real and bloody ways against open threats we can’t imagine. That right says that for the world to grow and expand and evolve, we as human beings have the right to express ourselves through our speech, our artwork, our writing, all of it. And while we might disagree with someone else’s creations, we are all part of the glorious tapestry of things that are made and things that are expressed. In other words: you might not like it, but you’re not the arbiter of what gets to be created. You are not the arbiter of freedom.

Until someone decides they are. And they pull out some guns. And they go to an office one day in January.

B6wZOY8CMAA_b6v.jpg-large — By: David Pope

To say that the attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo is an attack on freedom of expression is not an attempt to politicize a tragedy, but a solid conclusion. It was the choice of three men to take their grievance over their own religious outrage and turn it into violence. They didn’t choose to make a piece of art slamming Charlie Hebdo. They didn’t make a speech or write a column or make a documentary or any number of proactive ways to express their opinions. They instead decided that they were the arbiters of freedom of expression. Their beliefs trumped another’s right to make things, to express, and ultimately to live.

Does that sound dramatic? Sure. Does that make you nervous? I hope it does. It should.

The right to create is not unassailable. It can be assailed. And when it is assailed, we all feel that shudder as everyone looks around and wonders: should I speak my mind? Should I open my mouth? Make that art? Write that piece? Because in the end, could I be next?

Fear lives in those moments, when you duck your head and wonder if the angry face across from you when you speak your mind will punch you in the face. When those angry comments on the internet will lead to a credible threat on your person. When the credible threat might turn into that one in a thousand, one in a million, that might send you to the hospital, or worse.

That’s fear, right there. That’s what it tastes like. Makes you nervous? Yeah, me too.

And I say to that fear: Fuck. You.

I can’t believe I’m going to quote a Broadway musical, but in Rent one of the lyrics goes: “The opposite of war isn’t peace – its creation.” Sounds easy to say, right? But when there are legitimately people being shot for their creations, its not hard to see the correlation. Peace sounds nice, very solemn and simple and a space made of rest after a conflict, settled and silent and still.

I’m not interested in just being peaceful. I’m interested in creating, so better days can lie ahead besides ones ruled with gun and bomb and threat and repression. I’m interested in sharing ideas, in shaking things up, in making jokes and games and stories and songs. In hearing and seeing and experiencing that which makes the world a brighter, louder, more vibrant place. And with harm to none, I say this: we have to keep creating, no matter the fear. Because we don’t choose guns to share our ideas but words and pictures and music that proves stronger than any bullet at making a point. And in those creations, we celebrate that right and we fight to make sure it doesn’t die out. We create so we can stand up too.

Charb said he wanted to die standing, and he did. And tonight, the cops are hunting halfway across the world for people who chose to destroy his work, who decided to kill him and the other victims of this massacre, over a cartoon.

Does that bother you? It bothers me. It sure as hell does.

By Buzzfeed's Nathan W. Pyle, Loryn Brantz, and Will Varner. — By Buzzfeed’s Nathan W. Pyle, Loryn Brantz, and Will Varner.

This Isn’t Your Community, Gamergate, It’s Ours

October 17, 2014 by Shoshana, posted in Geek Culture, Speaking Out

Tonight, I want to write about Gamergate.

Actually, let me be clear. I don’t really want to write about Gamergate. I wish I’d never heard the term. I wish we could get in an epic Doctor Who TARDIS the size of the planet and go back to before two months ago (by god it’s been that long already) when all this madness started. If that’s when it started. Some folks say the Gamergate controversy was just brewing, waiting in the wings for an incendiary incident to drag all those feelings of misogyny and rage and resentment to the surface. I personally agree, that there’s been a lot of awful beneath the surface as the gaming community goes through its adolescent growing pains. As it grows from a haven for interactive technology, play, and those who sought to turn that into an identity, gaming has come to mean a lot of different things. And now, Gamergate has become that bone-rattling clash of cultures as what was once a subculture rockets towards the mainstream and the intrenched majority suffers from change-shock.

I’m not going to rehash the discussions about Gamergate here. There’s been a dozen analyses done by gamers, game scholars, thinkers, news mediums, and even cable news networks. The mainstream media has caught on and if you want to go through the entire history of this debacle, there’s plenty of timelines to catch you up. I would suggest this article talking about the knee-jerk rage of movements and even my own discussion about the decrying of the term gamer from a few weeks back. I’d also suggest this brilliant take-down by Brianna Wu, who went on HuffPo Live after she was threatened out of her home, where she takes on the so-called issues of Gamergate. But in talking about Gamergate, reading about it, seeing it go on for so long, I’ve become full up on it, saturated to the gills. I realized upon trying to write about Gamergate today that I don’t know what else needed to be said. It had been analyzed in relation to the Men’s Rights Movement, defended as a reactionary movement based on fear of change and deconstructed on the front page of the New York Times. The Verge has practically been camping out on the issue. Compared to all that, what else do I have to say?

Something. I need to say something. To get out of my system the feelings rising up whenever Gamergate is discussed. Whenever I see some ridiculous tweet or the comments section rebuttals to articles. Or worse, when I see a friend stand up and defend gamer-gaters as part of our gaming community. There is a feeling that goes full circle, back to the fundamnetal issue that most Gamergaters seem to ignore.

Guess what? I’m against the Gamergate movement and I’m a gamer too.

I’m a gamer. I’ve been one since I was old enough to have a gaming console, since I got my first computer, since I played Mortal Kombat in arcades and played online roleplaying games in chat rooms. I made gaming my business and loved every second of it. Still do. I call myself a gamer, proudly. I’ve been a gamer for twenty years and in half dozen different mediums. I don’t need to spit my cred and I don’t cred check others. I don’t decry the title or say that now is the end of gamers. I share my community proudly and speak loud and proud about my love for games.

But I am also a woman, and until recently, the tension between those two parts of my identity- that of being a woman and that of the community I love- were always at odds. For every ten great experiences in the community, there were awful moments. There were feelings of exclusion, of ridicule. There were moments of outright harassment and earnest moments of terror, of feeling unsafe, of feeling alone. This is not an unusual story. I’ve heard it from gamer women from the video game world to the LARP world, from tabletop RPG conventions to playing in D&D in the home of a friend. So I stand up to be counted with those who speak against inequality, who are demeaned and maligned and called Social Justice Warriors. I laugh like hell when people use that term as an insult because I wear that title proudly. Yeah, what?! I am a Social Justice Warrior. What’s wrong with being a warrior for a cause you care about? I don’t shout at people, I don’t harass. I stand for zero tolerance on bullying and harassment and for representation of all kinds in our community. That’s how I am a gamer, with social consciousness in my mind and happiness in my heart.

Then Gamergate happened. And all that awfulness just under the surface, all that mistreatment and harassment and misogyny that’s been there for years, it comes bubbling up. And because it’s couched in the language of some kind of ‘ethics’ discussion, because it’s hidden behind a supposed defense of the gamer hobby based on ‘assaults’ by those nasty, evil SJWs, then the real disgusting behavior gets marginalized. “Well that’s not us,” says the poor, maligned Gamergater. “We’re here to defend the gaming hobby and talk about journalistic ethics! We’re not about death threats!” And suddenly, they’re an equal part of the conversation. They get an entire segment on HuffPo Live to defend their ‘stance.’

And it makes me furious.

Their stance is built on supporting maligning women. In maligning any critic who stands up for unequal treatment in games. They stand to be counted with harassers – or they did, until the mainstream attention to those threats made them start looking like a lynch mob. Then suddenly, the language changed to “please, listen to us, we’re just misunderstood.”

And I’m just so tired of it. If I could, I’d wish it all gone.

I wish it was back before this pseudo-movement/ consumer revolt/ journalistic integrity thing / hate mob was born. I wish we were back in a time before I knew the name Eron Gjoni, before I knew that boyfriends could be so hateful as to record their relationships and pour them out on the internet to become the springboard for a malicious campaign against a woman designer. I wish we were in a time before I knew what the hell a false flag was, before I knew something called 8chan existed, before I knew they were the folks so bad they got knocked off 4chan. Before I had to learn about sock puppet twitter accounts made to feign actual discourse in an effort to troll. I want to go back to a time when misogyny in the gaming industry didn’t have a movement that got a B-list Hollywood actor like Adam Baldwin to use his social media reach to malign women and perpetuate attacks on social justice.

I wish I didn’t know that this post might attract all kinds of negative responses. I wish I didn’t know that I might get threats. I wish I didn’t know that somewhere, someone might read this and wish me harm.

I wish a lot of things about the gaming world. But right now, I wish this more than anything: I wish I knew what to say with more delicacy about a horror show of consumer superiority complexes and entitlement gone rampant. I wish that I didn’t go online every day and read about another person who has been harassed, about infographs full of half-truths and conspiracy theory language pointing to women in the industry and saying “Hah! I deny your experiences!”

I wish more than anything that I could put up my hands and say, “Jesus Christ, people, we are talking about a community of making games that has room for criticism, that has room for discussion, that has room for evolution of ideas! That has room for a better day where everyone can find themselves represented and respected, not just a target demographic! Where women can feel safe at play and at work within the gaming world! And where you, you over there, you with the angry look on your face and your hashtag full of hate, can accept social justice as a THING without flinging the internet equivalent of monkey shit.”

I wish I could just say: I’m a gamer too, and my opinions are just as valuable and valid as yours. And my opinion is that we need some change up in this community. And you don’t get to say no because this community isn’t yours. It’s ours.

So tonight, I wanted to write about Gamergate but I really wish it didn’t exist. I wish people could find some other way to express their concerns about journalistic integrity, if those are actual issues to be explored, without couching it in a language of hate. And I wish people could see that any actual conversation about issues was long ago tainted by the horror of rape and death threats, by the sad reality of women forced from their homes in fear.

By the real possibility of a goddamn school shooting because a woman criticized video games.

I want to write about Gamergate because there is some horror coming off this upheaval that gets lost in the news stories and the fighting on Twitter. It lies in the cracks between the MSNBC coverage and the New York Times article, the death threats and the IRC chats. It lies in the silence that fills up the minutes when you write a post about games, when you post that Tweet, when you say something on Facebook. It lies in that moment when you wonder, “Is this where someone on my feed comes and tells me I should die? That I should be raped to death? Am I going to be next?”

It comes in the conversations with your friends at IndieCade about who might be targeted next. Or who has been targeted. Who has gotten threats and who got things thrown at them. Who is going to be doxxed and who is afraid to walk alone.

It comes from waking up in a cold sweat in an LA hotel the night before IndieCade, wondering if you’re going to get into a dust-up with someone who read your Twitter account and thinks you should just die.

It comes from wondering if it’s all worth it, in the end. If this community is where I want to be.

Well here’s my answer: Screw that noise. I’m here to stay.

I’m a gamer. I’m a game designer. Brianna Wu stood up and said she is the Godzilla of bitches to those who would take her on. I might not be a kaiju, but I’m a gamer woman. I’ve taken slings and arrows all the damn time since I joined the community. I’m not afraid to be told that I don’t belong here because I’ve ALWAYS been told that. What else is new? So you’ve got Adam Baldwin on your side, Gamergate. I’ve got Chuck Wendig and Joss Whedon, Wil Wheaton and Patton Oswald. I’ve got women like Anita Sarkessian and Zoe Quinn and Brianna Wu to look to as examples of women who have continued on after you’ve tried to warp their public image and destroy their lives. I’ve got people whose talent knows no bounds telling me that this is OUR community, ours and not just yours. And there’s a new day coming when maybe I can get on Twitter without hearing about someone I care about getting harassed into hiding.

I’m a gamer woman. I’m here to stay. And that’s all I gotta say about this damn Gamergate.

Forgiveness and the Paradox of Letting Go

September 16, 2014 by Shoshana, posted in Personal

[[NOTE: This post started out as a discussion on my feelings about forgiveness. Over the course of writing, it turned into a revelation I had about enabling. It rambles a bit at the end because of that, but I think the conversation with myself explains the idea. Needless to say, this is a more self-reflecting post and personal. We’ll be back to gaming and such in the next one, promise.]]

I woke up this morning with the urge to forgive.

The impulse has come over me in the last few months every once in a while. I’ll wake up in the morning or look up from something I was doing, and think: “I don’t really need to be so angry over all of this. Just let it go.” And for once in my life, I really am. I’m learning to let it go.

It’s not something I’m used to doing. In the past, I would hold onto so many slights and fights for ages. I would have laundry lists of reasons why I shouldn’t trust someone, or why someone had hurt or shamed or embarrassed me, reasons why they shouldn’t be a part of my life. These memories would stick with me, ‘cautionary tales’ I held onto for years. But in the last few months, I have come to a place where I want to shrug my shoulders and say, “Nevermind all that. It’s not worth it. Just forgive them.”

This all started in June with my graduation and my brain surgery. Graduate school was not an easy time for me. I worked through a great many difficult things during that time, faced down an obscene amount of pressure, and in the process isolated myself a good deal from others. I fell into the trap of letting negativity rule my life because of that stress. Because of it, I wasn’t always the most kind or considerate friend. I pushed people away and I was harsh. Sometimes I was downright selfish and cruel. It was never out of the impulse to become that way, but always out of fear for self-preservation, hurt over slights I imagined or that were actual, or just plain selfishness associated with trying to survive in an unbearably stressful lifestyle. Without using it as an excuse, a lot of that was also due to the tumor in my brain producing too much ACTH, pushing my body into hyper-stress mode, but that doesn’t unring the angry bell. It doesn’t excuse ages of being so angry, so stressed. I look back now on those two years and wish I’d been kinder. Wish I’d been more open to people. Wish I had been able to process my stress in a less negative way. Wish I’d been less afraid.

But then came my brain tumor. My last week of school, I was rushing to finish up everything in preparation for graduation. I had to get my end of the year show presentation ready. I had to present my work, and stand up and talk about my thesis in front of the department. And that Monday I had discovered that I had Cushings, that I was going to have to have brain surgery. I graduated, walked the stage and sat listening to Martin Scorsese give the commencement speech. I flew that very evening to Los Angeles through some of the worst travel delays I had ever experienced to run Dresden Lives at WyrdCon. And the entire time, echoing in my ears were the words: you have a brain tumor, you have to have brain surgery.

I sat that week and thought about a lot of things. I thought about the fights I had had that semester, the stress and the people who had left my life in the last two years. I sat in the hospital room before the surgery and worried about the possibility that I would not survive the surgery. I thought about what I’d like my future to look like if I did.

Well, spoilers: I did survive the surgery and it went brilliantly. And as I lay there, post ACTH-tumor, a strange calm filled me. I felt more relaxed then I had in years. Mind you, most of that was the lack of rawr hulking-out stress hormones flooding me. But I had also come to a calm about my life and the past, and what comes next. And as I recovered in the next few months, I had the opportunity to think over a lot of the last few years and decide that a change had to happen. I had to learn to let things go.

I started to see that so much of my behavior was ruled by reactions to other people’s slights. My anger, my course-corrections in my life, were really heavily influenced by negative things that had happened to me. And as opposed to reacting in a positive way, I let those negative things course-correct me towards safer paths, or curbed what I wanted to do. I allowed myself to be steered away from career paths that could have been very rewarding. I let myself be influenced to believe that my work wasn’t good enough to make it in the creative world because “there’s just so many people out there trying harder and being better than you.”

Some of the anger and fear responses were, of course, reasonable beyond a shadow of a doubt. My history of sexual assault makes difficulties I have connecting in relationships understandable, I believe. So does the years of fat shaming. But as I recovered from the surgery, I realized that the older I get, the more I understand the need to let things become part of the past. More than anything, I don’t want to be defined by my difficulties, but improved by them.

Mind you, I don’t know that I can forgive everyone. I certainly don’t forgive the person who sexually assaulted me, though I (in a weird way) understand his actions and motivations. That neither excuses nor eliminates the horror, the hurt, or how utterly wrong it was. Yet I’m no longer blaming life for putting these things in my path. I’m no longer blaming myself for the actions that led me to that and other awful places. And I’m no longer resenting life for the hard things that have happened, only trying to look for positive ways to make changes and move forward.

So the process is a hard one for me. It involves:

Looking at things that bother, frighten, anger, frustrate or stress me out.
Analyze what the causes are to these situations (i.e. what is making them happen, including other people’s motivations) and try to understand why other people are doing what they do.
Forgive and/or let the interaction go.
Try to find positive ways to move forward instead of dwelling on the negative reactions.

This is the uphill battle I’m going to tackle going forward. I’m not going to discount the negative emotions I feel, but instead process them and try to find positive solutions instead of holding onto them. And in the process of doing this, I came to a startling revelation in the last few days:

Forgiveness can also enable bad behavior in others. There is a balance when dealing with people in my life between letting bad behavior go because a person’s reactions are ‘understandable’ and holding people accountable for what they do. Sometimes, when a person brings negativity into your life it is necessary to tackle that issue head-on with the person instead of just letting it go. I don’t believe in giving up on people. But sometimes, you have to make it clear that tho you understand the other person’s perspective and want to let it go, you cannot allow the pattern of behavior to continue. You can still care about them and want them in your life, but you cannot continue to allow that person’s negative behavior to harm you and others. I didn’t understand how this boundary was so important until recently, until I started to see that my constantly forgiving another person’s bad behavior was fostering new opportunities for that person to continue hurting me and others. Too much understanding without repercussions can lead to enabling.

For some people, this is a pretty simple idea. For me, it’s a bit of a new boundary I am going to have to foster. Moreover, it’s helped me put aside a lot of the anger I had towards friends who distanced themselves from me while I was myself doing destructive behavior in the last few years. I get it more now than I did before, and I understand. I’ll work towards forgiving THEM for letting me go when it needed to happen.

Whew, confusing circle, isn’t it? It’s Forgive-ception. BWAHHHHHHH!

Okay, that was just to lighten things up. Because whew, heavy stuff here. But that’s what this blog is about. It’s not just about work, and writing about media. It’s about exploring things that influence me as a creator and my life, without fear where I can. And with forgiveness, when I can.

Gamers, Gatekeepers and the Golden Rule: Gamergate and the Real Ludic Century

September 8, 2014 by Shoshana, posted in Geek Culture, Geek Social Fallacies, Speaking Out

I was at lunch the other day with my mother when a woman came by the table. She stopped to say that she loved my t-shirt, which had the Portal-inspired logo for The Mary Sue on it. I thanked her and she hesitated, looked at my mother, before saying, “It’s just terrible about Gamergate. I can’t believe it!” I perked up immediately. Out in the real world, outside of the household of other game designers I live with, I never expected to hear the word Gamergate used aloud. The woman told me upon further prompting that she ‘wasn’t a gamer’ but she’s on the convention circuit and knows people who are. She’s heard about the things that have happened, and she’s disgusted.

While we both nodded knowingly, my mother looked on perplexed. After the woman left, my mother looked up and said, “Gamergate? What are you talking about?”

Then I realized. She didn’t know. She didn’t know that for the last few weeks, along with working, I had dealt with death threats over vocally standing up for Zoe Quinn on Twitter. She didn’t know that women I respected, like Mattie Bryce and Jenn Frank, had quit because of harassment. She didn’t know about any of the insanity that has become Gamergate because my mother isn’t a gamer. To her, it was Thursday. To anyone embroiled in this nonsense, it was Day #Whatever since this craziness began.

In the past few weeks, the gaming community has been under siege, embroiled in an invented scandal that has turned into its own internet movement. It’s called Gamergate, and if you haven’t heard about it, I wish I could say you weren’t missing anything. Because to most of the world, you’re not missing anything. You’re only going about your life while the gaming community goes through some of the most serious growing pains I could have ever imagined. If you aren’t a gamer, or aren’t working in the games industry in some way, then Gamergate is just another strange word to you invented by the internet. But to those people who take these things seriously, who either associate with the gamer community or develop and write about games, Gamergate is nothing less than the catch-all word for a cesspool of rage, lies, and hate that erupted a few weeks back.

I won’t go into a full breakdown of the events of Gamergate, because this article did a fantastic job of it for me. But I will give the basics and go from there. Once upon a time, before we ever knew what the hell a Gamergate was, a jilted ex-boyfriend of Zoe Quinn (the developer of Depression Quest) decided that it was all right to created a blog to vent his spleen about his break up with Zoe. This guy’s exhaustively long post included insinuations that Zoe Quinn had slept with reviewers and even her boss to receive professional advancement and good reviews for her game. The fact that these reviews did not exist was irrelevant. The fact that this is a typical tactic often employed against women to discredit them, by insinuating that they could not achieve anything without doing so on their back, is pretty obvious. However, this blog post set off a monstrous response by so-called seekers of ethics, who loudly decried Quinn’s behavior as an example of the nepotism going on in the game design world. And by loudly decried, I mean they threatened her life, harassed her, doxxed (spread her personal information to the internet), harassed her family, and hacked her accounts. All in the name of ethics in games.

If you see the sick irony in this, you’re not alone. Many designers, journalists, and game enthusiasts rose to Quinn’s defense, and so touched off a back and forth explosion across the gaming world. Gamergate supporters targeted anyone who they deemed ‘Social Justice Warriors’ for harassment on social media if they dared stand up to speak out about the behavior of the internet mob. People from designers like Tim Schaefer and Elisabeth Sampat down to folks like little ol’ me spent countless hours dealing with folks who ‘just want accountability in games journalism!’ Or so they say. It’s hard to hear what point they’re making over all the abuse, the hate, the harassment, and the death threats. I got six. Zoe got thousands. Then Anita Sarkeesian put up her latest video on Tropes vs. Women and received death threats so vile and serious, she had to flee her home.

But sure. This is about ‘ethics.’

And so it went on. And still is going on today. Even though Zoe Quinn has gone online and proven that much of the so-called truths about Gamergate were created by some folks with WAY too much time on their hands from 4chan, coordinated in IRC channels that Zoe watched and recorded, the vocal offended party of gamers who believe that Gamergate is actually a thing. They feel that the games world is under attack by a group of ‘social justice warriors’ out to change their community, open it up to all kinds of games that don’t fit their definitions and aren’t what they grew up with. They talk about a conspiracy of these SJWs to take away their way of gaming and change the face of games.

It’s too bad they never got the message: that change has already been happening. And it didn’t take a conspiracy to do it.

Contrary to popular belief, the gaming world has never been what is stereotypically believed. First, gamers were never all male. Sure, they were predominantly male for a long time and of a specific demographic, but it was never universal. They were also never predominantly western/American, though that’s the only narrative we seem capable of digesting. To hear people talk about it, games only came from America or Asia, and that’s about it. And finally, despite the overwhelming discourse to the contrary, gaming was never predominantly digital. There was a whole group of gamers that did not just play digital, that were board game, card game, wargaming, tabletop RPG and LARP enthusiasts. However all these people did share one title, now so badly covered in filth that it might never recover. They were all gamers.

In a recent article by Leigh Alexander, she gives a brilliant break-down of the rank stagnation that has overtaken large portions of the gaming world. Marketing towards the perceived male demographic long ago created the idea that the world of gamers was occupied and defined by men, for men. Women and anyone outside of the normative were just outsiders, objectified, marginalized, and ultimately inconsequential to the overall market and culture of gaming. She paints the picture of Gamergate as the death throes of a festering heap of glass-eyed, vacant, culture zombies, unaware of the way they have been turned into rapt consumers of a vapid ethos backed by a marketing machine. And she’s got a lot of points about the consumerism, the lack of exploration of anything outside of the normative, the disgusting rage aimed at anyone trying to change the status quo.

But one thing about this article bothered me almost as much as the shouts of the haters on the internet. In the article, Leigh Alexander says that ‘Gamers are Over’, an idea echoed by many since this nonsense began. I get that what she means is that the long-since static culture of male-dominated, consumer driven gaming world is dying a slow death, and that Gamergate is just the death rattle. However, in the same breath as people have begun speaking about this new world of gaming, they spew victrol against the gaming community that was based on the stereotypes that have plagued games forever. And in that same breath, those declaring gamers and gamer culture as over are becoming the very gatekeepers they are railing against. Except now, the gaming world that was before, full of “young men queuing with plush mushroom hats and backpacks and jutting promo poster rolls” in their “listless queue” (quote: Alexander), is relegated in all its facets to something meant to be burnt to the ground and left behind, a relic of this new ludic century (a term created by Eric Zimmerman his a manifesto about the future of games). And the conversation becomes a shouting match of absolutes, all over one issue: what will the gaming world look like going forward?

This isn’t a conversation of absolutes. It can’t be. Because the gaming world was never JUST a world of young men in their basements banging away at the latest AAA shooter. The new gaming world isn’t JUST going to be a world where every game is inclusive and thoughtful (although wouldn’t that be nice). It is going to be complex, full of different kinds of people playing games and exploring what different play spaces have to offer their lives. It’s going to be the casual gamers and the LARPers, it’s going to be the people playing League of Legends and Magic professionally alongside the people designing personal stories on Twine and in Unity. It’s going to be Warhammer 40K and Farmville, Dystopia Rising and Destiny, World of Warcraft and Fiasco. And it’s going to be all these games in conversation with journalists, thinkers, scholars, writers and critics. It’s going to be Anita Sarkeesian and John Romero. It’s going to be Eric Zimmerman and the Nordic LARP scene. It’s going to be hardcore fans of Killer Queen rubbing elbows with NERO players and hardcore Netrunner players.

It’s everyone. It’s all of us. And nobody gets to define games because they’re all games.

And you’re all playing them. And whether you want the term or not, that makes you a game player. A gamer. What have you.

That’s the future of gaming in my eyes. That is the real ludic century.

So yes, this new world is full of a lot of different kind of people. However, mark me on one thing:

This new world has room for all kinds of games. What it doesn’t have room for is harassment. It has no room for discrimination or othering. That is the kind of socially-regressive, morally bankrupt bullying and soap-box insensitive rhetoric that we have seen throughout this Gamergate and perpetuated, hopelessly unchecked, for decades. In the past, the kind of angry internet ranting or socially unacceptable behavior that has become equated with gamer culture has been swept under the rug with a sigh and a ‘what can you do.’ Well, we can do a lot actually. We can speak out. We can create the community we want and make sure it has room for everyone to be treated well. We can make sure that games don’t perpetuate that culture by creating a hostile environment for people based on race, gender, religion, sexuality, body type, culture, ethnicity or economic standing. Those are the ground rules because they are, in my eyes, the lowest common denominator for a society that is evolving and growing in the twenty-first century.

This new expansive gaming world has no place for definitions on who can be a gamer, but it does need a golden rule. And that golden rule is: don’t be a dick.

(And it should require no explanation that being a dick includes harassment, threatening, discrimination, objectification, exclusion based on identity, or perpetuation of shame culture. But since this hasn’t been a no-brainer in the past, it bears repeating.)

These horrible few weeks, full of harassment and fear, are the growing pains of a culture long ago poisoned by its own fears of inadequacy, of a medium and its supporters struggling for legitimacy and battling for supremacy of identity. And these fights have cost us so many who just walked away, shook their heads and said ‘the hell with THOSE guys.’ Or worse, folks who have come to hate this time of change because of the fear that the good they’ve had from being a gamer in the past is now being cast in a negative light by the screeching voices of the trolls and harassers on the internet. But I refuse to look at this new age of gaming as a place where anyone, not the haters and not those shouting that ‘gamers are over,’ can take the lead to sanitize gaming of the corners they don’t like. This is a big sandbox. We can all play in it.

But just remember that Golden Rule. Because it’s the difference between rational conversations, and Gamergate. And I for one am getting tired of the latter and could do with some more of the former.

Because It Really IS A Problem: Turning A Blind Eye To Inequality In Games

August 27, 2014 by Shoshana, posted in Geek Culture, Speaking Out

Just yesterday, I watched the second part of Anita Sarkeesian’s brilliant analysis of ‘Women As Background Decoration’ in her series Tropes vs Women. It depicts the various, often graphic, ways in which women are included in games as background characters to be brutalized, demeaned and murdered in the course of video games. Her video (which I will link to below) shows examples of these female characters, faceless and often nameless, being used as props to depict scenes of extreme violence in an effort to make a game seem more ‘gritty’ and ‘dark.’ It’s not an easy video to watch, as the violence is pretty awful, so viewer discretion advised.

This video viewing came on the heels of multiple conversations I’ve had in the last few weeks about inclusivity in the gaming world. It seems that, more than ever, the divide exists between those who believe there is an issue with the status quo in the gaming world right now and those who are striving to sustain it. The more advocates stand and speak up for inclusivity within game narratives and within game design and development, the more they are rebuffed by vocal voices in the gamer population. Worse, these advocates are often belittled, attacked, harassed and even threatened for speaking out. Even those who do not advocate but instead offer support have come under attack on social media for being public allies. One needs only to look at the response to Anita Sarkeesian’s work, and the people still raging against her work, to know that the haters are still out there. And they can get LOUD.

One example: a hateful Patreon called “The Sarkeesian Effect” in which two YouTubers, Jordan Owen and Aurini, plan a slanderous documentary telling everyone about a mythical conspiracy perpetuated by the ‘social justice warriors’ to push their advocacy agenda upon the unsuspecting population. Tune in next week as they create videos about mind-controlling high fructose corn syrup and the secret of the Lindbergh Baby. Seriously, you can’t make this shit up.

We’re still having the fight about whether or not being inclusive is important in the gaming world.

And I don’t get it.

How is it by now that people STILL think that the status quo is okay? How, after all these conversations being had and stories told about people silenced and pushed aside, can people still believe that ignoring the inequality in our world is all right? I’ve heard all kinds of excuses and statements, so here’s a breakdown of a few of them.

“We don’t have an inequality problem, this is the modern day!” Yes, and there has been civil rights and women’s movements forever trying to gain reform for groups that have been pushed down and created as the minority. And in all that time, we still have women making less money and being told they don’t belong in industries like technology and game design. Anyone who looks around and doesn’t see inequality is probably not listening, as there are countless stories out there about racism, sexism, queer and trans phobia, anti-semitism, fat shaming, ect. If you don’t hear those stories, it means you aren’t trying hard enough to open your ears to another’s experience.
“Well I don’t see race (or other differences).” That’s nice for you. And that’s a way of saying “I don’t discriminate,” an homage to the melting pot that is the United States and our modern world. However, not seeing race doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It also doesn’t mean that others are colorblind and that they don’t discriminate. Also, it doesn’t mean that the identities of others should just be considered blanket ‘human’ and that’s it. Identities are made up of the things we take on as markers that define who we are. Part of that is our culture, our religion, our race, our sexuality, and so on. Those things help define us and impact the way people treat us. Some folks can’t escape those contexts, don’t want to just be seen without their differences, because that shouldn’t have to be the case. What makes a person different doesn’t make them lesser automatically, or wrong, or bad. And by denying a part of their identity by saying ‘you don’t see it,’ that means you’re ignoring it as though it doesn’t mean anything, isn’t important enough for you to acknowledge and respect, or that you are simply looking past it because you still consider it a stumbling block to interacting with the person. Please stop all of these, please. People are complex. What makes them up is potentially important to them. Step outside yourself and wonder how you’d feel if someone said to you: “Oh it’s okay, I just don’t see you as a man.”
“Well, I’m of a minority group, and I haven’t been discriminated against! So this isn’t a problem.” I’m really glad that you haven’t experienced these issues, be you a woman, a person of color, or what have you. That’s awesome and I’m happy for you! However, listen to the stories of others around you. There are others who HAVE experienced these issues. And by saying it’s not a problem, you’re ignoring their life experiences and minimizing the issue.
“People keep saying I’m privileged because I’m white or cisgendered or straight or whatever! I’ve had it hard too! I resent being called privileged!” I get that. It’s hard out there for a lot of people, for many reasons. But one has to step outside of themselves for a second to look at the system in place that we’ve existed in for so long. It puts certain people in default positions of acceptance as ‘normal.’ Consider then, in that context, whether you’re part of those groups and what that means. Then look at the story of other people of different groups, see how they’re treated differently. Compare. Contrast.
“Well how do we address this? It’s not fair to just reach out to minorities and bring them up! That’s just reverse prejudice.” Okay. Let’s get one thing straight here. There is no such thing as reverse prejudice, not as an institution. Some people of minorities can be angry and resent and even hate majority groups and their members. But the kind of prejudice and bigotry we’re talking about here is based on the long-standing institutions of racism, sexism and all the other -isms that have made minorities just that – minorities, not the majority. This othering of groups has been around for ages as part of the way society works while those who are not among the minority inherently profit from their place in society. Let me say that again: because you’re part of a majority group, you have privilege. You might not have asked for it, but you’ve got it. I as a white woman have privilege of my own because of my race. I have other parts of me that put me in minority positions however, such as being a woman in a male-dominated society, or being disabled. But overall, I have privileges I must be aware when I navigate in the world. Ignoring them do not make them less so.

Those are the major things I keep hearing about when we talk about advocacy. When we talk about the plurality of voices out there in the nerd and gamer community. We talk about how to advocate and then hit a hard wall with people who just won’t hear it. Who are dedicated to ignoring problems.

And worse, there’s people out there who are dedicating their time and effort to battling those who are trying to bring about social justice work. They label them ‘social justice warriors’ and ignore the work they’re doing. Or even worse, they attack them. They harass. They send rape, death and bomb threats. They use anything they can to discredit, shame and silence.

No, we don’t have a gender problem. That’s why we have so many women designers harassed. So many women designers who get death threats. I get them. I’m a tiny fish in my side of the gaming pond, and I get death threats. I got three when I spoke out against sex being used against someone in their professional life recently on Twitter. I stood up for Zoe Quinn having the right as a female dev to not be harassed, to not be trolled, to not receive death threats and such. And I got three emails that I buried in a folder with the other ones and try not to remember they’re there.

Harassment has no place in gaming.

It will only continue for as long as we say ‘this is just the way things are’ and ignore it.

We say it’s just 4chan. It’s just reddit. It’s just those guys over there. It’s an Over There Problem.

But there are plenty of people who aren’t Over There folks, who are the folks every day who look around and say the things I listed above and do not recognize the problem for what it is and do not engage and keep silent.

If you knew someone getting death threats for doing their job, what would you do?

If you knew someone who got emails with pictures of beheaded women in it threatening rape, what would you do?

If you knew someone who was told they have no business doing their job because of their gender, what would you do?

Well guess what?

Now you know one. And I’m not alone. And it’s time for this bullshit to end.

UPDATE: The day I post this, the horseshit gets real. Anita Sarkeesian was threatened so badly she had to flee her home to protect herself. Here’s the link to the article talking about it and before the video is a link of just a few of the tweets she received. Naysayers that complain ‘there is no problem with harassment’ or ‘where’s the proof?’ – well here it is. And this is absolutely the most disgusting thing ever.

WARNING: The image below is VERY Graphic in its description of violence. But it bears being held as an example of the horrible sickness going on in the gaming community.

Nazi Redux, Year Two: Or, It’s Still Not Okay To Cosplay As A Nazi

August 23, 2014 by Shoshana, posted in Convention Report, Cosplay, Geek Culture, Speaking Out, Uncategorized

My GenCon wrap-up post has been delayed once more to bring you this late breaking bulletin:

It’s still not okay to cosplay as a Nazi.

In case you forgot. Just checking in.

You’d think a girl wouldn’t have to put this up a second year. I had a post up last year about how it was impossible to miss the presence of Nazi memorabilia being sold at GenCon. How there were cosplayers who thought it was cool to walk down the street wearing their Nazi gear. Over the year that issue remained relevant as such instances of Nazi cosplay and memorabilia being sold were reported at other conventions, such as NYCC. Apparently, it wasn’t just a GenCon thing.

"Selling Nazi gear right across from Cap hoodies? Not cool!" — “Selling Nazi gear right across from Cap hoodies? Not cool!”

Last year’s article then got reposted in A.A. George’s post about race issues at GenCon and so the issue has come up with a huge number of people talking about it. And y’know what I’m hearing a lot of? Apologizing. I’m hearing apologizing and excuses made FOR THE PEOPLE WHO WANT TO WEAR NAZI GEAR. And not in the context of, y’know, historical reenactment where they’re going to get punched in the face by the Allies, like Captain America did to Hitler.

Some of these apologies are in two posts that have gone up in response to A.A. George’s article, found here and here. I’ll save you reading through the entire things because, frankly, they’re not all that impressive to begin with. They rely on Fisking their way thru George’s piece, going line by line to dissect terms rather than actually addressing the issue with courtesy and respect. So I’ll hone in on the salient points to THIS conversation, namely where they talk about my article.

The first article lies here and here’s a screenshot. The quoted part is the original article by A.A. George while the second half is the opinion of the article’s author:

No, but pinup girls in Nazi uniforms are. And last year there was Nazi military stuff. This year at the same booth there was vintage anti-Japanese propaganda posters. Are these really necessary to make games about bad guys at cons? Are these somehow necessary to display Nazis as the villain of some pieces? Or are they a contextless representation of racist crap, being sold to people right across from where folks are buying cool t-shirts? It’s someone using the GenCon space to financially profit from selling hateful memorabilia with ZERO context to a game. The same would be cosplayers who are walking around the con. There being zero context for their costumes in some cases, we’re looking at folks doing their shopping or playing their Pathfinder games, and looking up to see a dude sporting the old ‘fetishized militaria’ costumes.

That’s my response to THAT article. A conversation then came up on Google+ where someone defended the very fact that making Nazis a taboo subject would… create Nazis. Hang on for a ride here, folks, this is what we’re up to: (Names filed off this quote for anonymity of the poster)

Anytime you make it taboo, you plump it up, invigorate it, make it more virile. Anytime you make it off-limits, you make it off-limits to mock, you make it off-limits to parody, you make it off-limits to deconstruct, to integrate, to drain the power from it into a wider form of expression. Every time you say “no Nazi imagery is acceptable,” you reinforce the idea that just the appearance of a thing, just the visual stimulation of a thing, is so powerful that rational people must reject it for fear that they become tainted merely by association.

Congratulations, you’ve just built your own enemy and fêted on your own blood. You’re kind of an idiot.

There are very few more dangerous statements, ideas, or strings of expressions than, “that part of history is too close to home for freedom of expression.” Freedom of expression is how you contextualize history. Freedom of expression is how you get beyond history. Freedom of expression is how you make new history. So long as Austria and Germany have strict and constant vigilance against the threat presented by Nazis, they will always have Nazis. They build Nazis. They make Nazis. They have least themselves to the very idea that the Nazi has power over them, so much so that the very whiff of National Socialism is outside the purview of what can be discussed or represented.

You want Nazis? Because that’s how you get Nazis.”

First, whoa there tiger. You create Nazis by not allowing people to be Nazis? No, last I checked, people become Nazis because they choose to personally associate with the symbols, beliefs, and ideas of a hate-based party. Countries that have strict laws against the presence of Nazis, neo-Nazis, and fascists of the like are, last I checked, trying to check the creation of hate groups within their country. Which in my eyes is not a bad thing.

“But wait! What about freedom of expression! If we’re not careful, soon we’ll be treating Nazis like You-Know-Who in Harry Potter! We’ll be censored! Oh no!” Oh we could do a dance about what freedom of expression really means, and the fact that freedom of expression is in fact NOT universal no matter what we think (cannot shout fire in a crowded room, ect.) and also does not take away from the fact that when you express, you must be responsible and accountable for the repercussions of said expression. Which includes people saying you’re offensive and even potentially harmful at an event when wearing and exhibiting Nazi paraphernalia.

What’s so sad is I agree on one point: freedom of expression allows people to address difficult subject matter. It’s what makes us able to explore it. But there is such a thing as exploring it in a manner that is respectful for the nightmare that it caused. It’s all about context, as is so many things. And where, for example, games like Achtung! Cthulhu or Weird World War engage with Nazi material, as does many games that touch upon WWII, it’s the context of “UR MER GERD, NAZIS ER COOL!” that is blatantly problematic. This isn’t a question of white-washing them out of history, of a chance of us forgetting that Nazis are one of the worst evils around. I don’t feel that by saying that you can’t cosplay as a character that we’re risking future generations not knowing about the evils of Nazi Europe. It’s about creating a space in which people don’t walk into a convention hall, or past a booth, and overhear some dudes going “wow, look at this cool Nazi gear! It’ll look great in my collection!”

Which is exactly the context by which I ran into that booth the year before. I went into that booth to buy patches for my zombie-fighting LARP armor and ran smack into Nazi imagery, paraphernalia, and a couple of guys talking about adding some of it to ‘their collection.’ I fled that booth as fast as my legs would go. I wanted to be nowhere near it. Too bad it was right across from the booth of a friend of mine. I had to pass it every damn time I came to visit them. This year? It was right across from a booth I normally visit to buy t-shirts. I didn’t go anywhere near that t-shirt booth or any of those around it. That’s my business gone, my dollars not spent at any of the booths in the vicinity of the nazi gear. And maybe that’s just me. But that’s a financial repercussion: I voted with my wheelchair wheels and got the hell away from that booth for the second uncomfortable year.

This conversation, having been brought up by the Tor.com article, has highlighted some nasty, uncomfortable parts of the gaming world that seemingly think it’s benign to wear these things, to display them. That some sort of freedom of expression will be indelibly damaged by a rule against Nazi cosplay and the selling of Nazi paraphernalia at conventions. Sure, you have the right to wear these things thru freedom of expression. But there’s a big difference between you CAN wear something and you SHOULD.

Once again, I reiterate a previous stance I have: gaming spaces are shared spaces. And the impact displaying hate-associated imagery in that larger convention space, especially without the context of ‘Nazis-as-despicable-villains’ is harmful to those for whom historical Nazis are a personal nightmare. The display of such callous disregard for the feelings of others on the matter in the face of “BUT I WANNA COSPLAY!” is crude and tasteless at best and harmful and cruel at worst.

And you know what’s the worst part? I said all of this last year! Most of this post is almost verbatim what I said in last year’s post after engaging with the booth and first their sexist stuff and then their Nazi gear. This comes up again, and again. And again. And what worries me is that it isn’t going to be addressed. People who are afraid of their precious ‘freedom of expression’ being violated by so-called ‘social justice warriors’ are going to scream at the heavens when I mention that contextless Nazi cosplay and paraphernalia for sale is uncomfortable. They’ll slap that old “Oh this is just those crazy Social Justice Warriors” again on it and ignore.

Y’know what? You can’t say that you’re all about engaging with arguments when you ignore their content for the sake of saying that it’s just something brought up by social justice warriors. I loathe that term so much. It is the most reductive, diversionary tactic by those who are too lazy to actually engage with issues and want to hand wave away the credibility of anyone bringing these topics up. But for those who want to avoid talking about issues, who just want to have things their way and not consider the comfort of others, then the answer will always be “Get a thicker skin.”

Well my skin’s pretty thick. That’s how I got into this fight in the first place. To speak up for something that I find repugnant against a cacophony of apologists and excusers. And I’ll bring it up again, next year, if the topic comes up again. Which, considering our luck so far, it almost assuredly will.

A Context On Equality: GenCon, Ferguson And One Week In August

August 21, 2014 by Shoshana, posted in Convention Report, Geek Culture, Speaking Out

This past week in August, I had a lot going on. I returned from a fantastic academic conference called DiGRA in Snowbird, Utah only to take a few days off and then headed to GenCon in Indianapolis. My friends and I drove the twelve hours over two days to Indy and spent “The Best Four Days In Gaming” running Dresden Lives, being on panels, spending time with friends and (of course) gaming. I’m going to post a Top 10 Highlights from GenCon in my next post, but first I had to look at something else going on at the same time as GenCon, a moment in history occurring just a few hundred miles away that echoed a narrative going on in the gaming community with much more serious results. I’m speaking of course about the events going on in Ferguson, MO and the death of Mike Brown at the hands of police officer Darren Wilson.

If you have not heard of the shooting of Mike Brown and the protests going on in Ferguson even as I write this, you must be living under a rock. Yet for the first few days of these events, unless you were keyed into social media, you wouldn’t have heard much about the tragedy. A young man is shot dead by a police officer and immediately questions arise as to the validity of the shooting. Protests break out around Ferguson as it becomes clear the police are blatantly mishandling the investigation. And then the cops decide it’s a great idea to roll in with riot gear, armored assault vehicles, and semi-automatic weapons into the neighborhood. They tear gas whole streets of people of all ages, including young children. People march in the streets of Ferguson with their hands up, crying “Don’t shoot!” The media reports mass violence, a neighborhood out of control. Audio and video on the ground tell a whole other story, spread through social media like wildfire. The whole world is watching.

I was watching too, from GenCon. I caught news every chance I got at my hotel room, and checked Twitter constantly. I could not forget that while I was having my fun at GenCon, there was a moment in history going on, memorializing this fallen young man who was the victim of ongoing institutional racism. This kind of systematic oppression by the police has existed, apparently, in Ferguson for a very long time. Yet the stories that came out of this tragedy, spread across social media, tell the tale of an America in which people of color are treated deplorably. To many, this was no surprise. You only have to talk to folks who hear stories about PoC victimized by police, suffering aggressions of every kind. This is the world we still live in. We still have to have dialogues about race.

It’s no surprise then to me that when A.A. George wrote a strong piece about race still being an issue at GenCon, he received a hell of a lot of flack. This article came out three days before the convention and drew a lot of attention to the question of how people of color, women, the disabled, the queer community and pretty much anyone outside of the dominant narrative of the gaming community have been treated. A.A. George joined me at GenCon on a panel called “Why Is Inclusivity Such A Scary Word?” alongside Elsa S. Henry, Jessica Banks, Strix Beltran, and Tracy Barnett to talk about our experiences facing down the battle for inclusivity in the community. The comments section on A.A. George’s post on Tor grew, and got filled with some strongly worded opposition to his opinions about the lack of racial diversity in the gaming community. (If you’d like to waste some of your time you can even check out an exhausting response from someone named Louis Correia who’s willing to tell you all about how these issues don’t exist). People stood up and said that they don’t see color, that we don’t have to talk about race, that if people of other groups wanted into the community they can just come and have fun because there is no issue. And two hundred miles away from Indianapolis, the events in Ferguson were unfolding, fed directly into our Twitter stream and the slow-reacting mainstream media, all for the world to see.

Please understand me because I am going to be VERY clear here. These two situations are, by no means, equal. The death of Mike Brown and the systematic abuse of the people of Ferguson by law enforcement officials cannot in a million years be put alongside the dialogue about race and representation in the gaming world. I want to say that before someone stands up and in outrage shouts about ‘how dare I’ blah and blah and so on. Yet the fact that so many responses to A.A. George’s article claimed that issues of representation and inequality are non-issues shows a staggering lack of awareness to the national conversation of inequality. And having those kinds of responses when people are being tear gassed and arrested, their civil rights violated, only a few hundred miles away from our safe hotels and gaming tables staggered me.

There are folks who are far more qualified than I to speak about racial inequity. I toss in my hat when talking about women in the gaming world, about religious representation of Jewish culture at large, of the issues of being bisexual and seeing representation of one’s self and being treated fairly with disabilities. I stand with ears open and mouth shut and support those who are so much more articulate than I about the issue of combating racism. But with those ears open, I hear a lot of talk about a color-blind gaming world, where people are treated equally and it’s all about the fun. That’s what we came here for, after all, the fun. And there’s no need to get our stupid ‘social justice warrior’ stuff into the gaming.

How utterly, utterly absurd and totally absent of any world context.

Just because we step up to the gaming table, grab our dice, and sit down for some Pathfinder, or for a good game of King of Tokyo, doesn’t mean we’ve suddenly divorced ourself from issues of inequality. It doesn’t mean that the people who have faced racism or any other -ism suddenly forget that the world can be a hostile place if you aren’t normative. And it’s not as though gaming culture isn’t rife with the same problems of inequality as the rest of the world. We all want it to be a magical, fantastic, utopian world where we play out our fantasies and don’t have to worry about real world concerns.

Guess what? The world doesn’t work like that, and neither does the gaming world. You can’t just shuck the concerns that exist out there and pretend they don’t exist. And the folks who usually try tend to be the ones for whom those problems won’t really BE a problem. They’re the ones who are willing to ignore issues for the sake of the status quo being perpetuated.

The gaming world is a normative one, built on a history of a pretty single-group kind of community. And now, in a time when that normativity is being questioned, the backlash is staggering. It mirrors a conversation that has been rumbling up across the country about equality on a larger scale. Equality in gay marriage, in classist economic issues, in the fight for feminism against a torrent of hate, and especially in the issue of race. And just when people want to shut their ears, ignore the problem, or abuse those who would stand against such inequality, they would also turn a blind eye to the tragedy that took a young man’s life for the fact that he’s black in America. Worse, they’d scream their heads off to the sky about how we’re making an issue out of nothing. That we should just calm down. Get a thicker skin. Get over it.

Or in the context of the games world, stop trying to ruin their fun.

Once more I will say, these two situations cannot be considered equal. By comparison to what happened in Ferguson and what is STILL happening in St. Louis, the problems of the gaming world are miniscule. Nobody is losing their lives over inequality in the art in a game master’s guide, or dying for being excluded from a gaming session based on their identity. I’d be a damn fool to put the two on the same level. But there are those suffering from professional backlash, harassment, trolling, doxxing, death and rape threats, and other such tactics because of the inequality in our industry. And that provides examples that we are, despite all our claims to be colorblind and welcoming, NOT over issues of bigotry.

The events in Ferguson brought me to a place of humbled, terrified certainty that we have all missed the point. While we’ve worked hard to create fictional worlds and fun experiences, the world outside has been experiencing upheavals. Some of us have been interacting with it, but the trolls and hatred of internet tough guys and self-appointed social justice warrior bashers have distracted from issues far larger than issues in the gaming world. It gave me the context to say that while we must continue to stand up for representation within the gaming world, for inclusivity in all spheres, the attacks of the haters is almost laughable in the face of the repercussions of such hate elsewhere. True, harassment hurts a hell of a lot and no one should ever have to put up with the trolls – I stand by my previous statements regarding a zero tolerance policy on trolling, bullying and harassment. Those who choose these roads must still be confronted and rebuffed. Yet the actions of those who WOULD harass seems so small now, so petty.

Issues of inequality everywhere are serious topics, meant for serious people. They are not the place for internet tough guys who use their online anonymity to discount the experiences of others in favor of narrow thinking. And placing their behavior side by side with the events going on in the outside world put their relevance to the bigger picture in context.

I am tonight in solidarity with Ferguson and my hopes for justice for Mike Brown and his family. My solidarity also goes to those like A.A. George, who are getting hate from the outraged haters out there, and to anyone trying to bring up issues of inequality in whatever their community is and in whatever capacity. There are serious issues going on and they require serious discourse to work them out to build the communities and the overall world we’ll want to leave as a legacy. Haters and unethical harassers need not apply.

PS: Included below are links to places that you can donate to help the cause of Mike Brown’s justice fund or even to help the protesters down in Ferguson. Consider donating if you can.

GoFundMe – Justice for Michael Brown

Campaigns for #MikeBrown #Ferguson

Ferguson Support – Ways To Support The Fight

Gamora May Be The Strongest Woman In the (Marvel Movie) Galaxy

August 6, 2014 by Shoshana, posted in Comics, Film

I’m about to make a claim here that I will attempt to support with a look at the woman of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This post may have spoilers to any number of the Marvel movies that have come out so far, especially Guardians of the Galaxy. You have been warned.

I have a theory, ladies and gentlemen: Gamora may be the best independent woman of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I’m laying it out there on the line and saying it. And now, I’m going to try to explain why.

There’s no doubt that the Marvel Cinematic Universe (hereafter referred to as the MCU) has represented some kickass women characters, with large roles or small ones. Yet when looking at each of the women in the context of their own films, we might see some seriously problematic relationships that these women have with their own power and agency within the narrative. No matter how each character strives to escape from the stereotypical tropes that have plagued women characters in cinema, in one way or another they fall into those very pitfalls. These top pitfalls are:

Are introduced as love interests or sex objects,
Kept passive for most of their role or only given agency to act when commanded by a man to do so,
Are given such a minute role as to be two-dimensional or incidental.

Let me say one thing before we continue too: Just because a woman character has problematic issues in regards to their agency in the narrative or their being created as relationship fodder does not make them inherently uninteresting or valueless. Narratives have problematic characters that we can still like, and women characters that we can look at critically within the narrative structure. This is not an aim to knock ‘weaker’ women or ‘traditionally feminine’ characters. This is talking how these women stand up to the rubric of being women characters that operate with their own agency and have their own character arch outside of being a love interest.

With that said, the women that we’ll look at in this article that will stand up beside Gamora are everyone from Nova Prime to Jane Foster, Black Widow to Peggy Carter. And each time, the characters come away with something problematic. Let’s start from the top.

Women Introduced As Love Interests / Sex Objects

“It would have all been FINE, except for Iron Man 2. Sigh. Some more Whedon should fix this.”

In most male-driven films, women have been alternately introduced as associates or most often both a love interest and a sexual object to be stared at (the object of the sexualized gaze). When a woman character is introduced into the narrative this way, it is often with the intent of making them reactive to the needs of the man in the plot, or to provide emotional sway over the male characters by the woman being put in danger. This is the case for such potentially interesting characters as Jane Foster, Pepper Pots, and (unfortunately) even Peggy Carter. All of these women have varying degrees of their own character arcs, but are inevitably turned into the emotional crux upon which the man’s narrative turns. Jane Foster, the brilliant physicist, is turned into an appendage to Thor or a damsel in distress. This is true of Pepper Pots, who despite developing her own narrative for three films remains under the power of Tony Stark. Peggy Carter and Black Widow stand out as two women who nearly escape this problem, but Peggy is the developed love interest and emotional crux of Steve Rogers’ entire storyline, and Black Widow was first introduced as a sex object for Tony Stark in Iron Man 2. Though she has developed out of that original interpretation, the focus on Widow’s sexuality in the first film mars her more nuanced representation in Avengers and Captain America: Winter Soldier.

Women Without Agency

“I’ll have a TV show soon and all will be well.”

One of the points cried by many about the women of the MCU is that they represent a step forward in being ‘strong female characters.’ However much I happen to love this term, I only love it when it means what it actually says it means. This wonderful article talks more about what’s called ‘Trinity Syndrome’, or the way in which a female character will initially come across as a badass, independent, thoughtfully designed woman character with agency, when in fact they are just the same passive characters rewritten with a shiny ‘tough girl’ wrapper. I unfortunately must place one of my personal favorites, Lady Sif, into this category. She is coded to be the tough woman, a woman warrior among men, when in fact she is a completely reactive character who makes no impact on the story that isn’t in support of her unrequited love interest, Thor. The villainess Nebula from Guardians of the Galaxy is in the same situation, as she acts only upon the orders of her father or, later, the deadly Ronan the Accuser. Peggy Carter in the Captain America: The First Avenger film is very much coded this way. Though she is presented as an intelligent, brave, outspoken woman, she remains passive throughout most of the film and reactive only when spurred by the needs of the men around her. (Her television series will hopefully break her of this issue). Black Widow’s character arch is all about her attempt to find independence from the machinations around her in many ways, and the end of Captain America: Winter Soldier has her finally acting instead of reacting to everything. Yet we have yet to see Natasha really reach that point.

Women As Background

“It’s friggin’ sad when I’ve got more agency than the lead woman in the movie.”

Then we have the background characters that are simply too underdeveloped to give us a clear picture of what they are. Maria Hill in the Avengers, Nova Prime in Guardians of the Galaxy, and Frig from Thor 2 are like this. (Frig has the double issue of not only being a background character, she is also killed to induce emotional impact on her son’s Thor and Loki, invoking the often-used Women in Refrigerators trope).

There is one background/sidekick character given agency and movement, and that is Darcy, Jane Foster’s assistant. However she is such a background character that her impact on the story is nominal. Yet she perhaps is one of the closest to defying these pitfalls, and would be a great representation if not for the fact that she was a background character.

So who does break these patterns?

Enter Gamora

Gamora as written in Guardians of the Galaxy operates within the confines of what is expected of an action movie heroine and then defies those expectations. She has a character evolution over the story, acts as the catalyst for the action by acting with her own agency, emotes without being forced into the role of the emotional crux of a love interest storyline, and is not overly sexualized in the film. Instead, she exists in a place in the narrative as a woman who is respected (even feared), is competent at what she does and is never belittled for it, and who shows emotional depth and vulnerability as well as unbelievable strength and will.

“I’ve got a universe to save. Try to keep up.”

Gamora is the adopted ‘daughter’ of Thanos, who kidnapped her as a child and turned her into a killer for him. Seems he does this a lot, because he has other children who do his bidding. Yet Gamora, despite her position as a killer for her ‘father’, retains some ethical lines that she will not cross. When she discovers that Thanos has promised he will destroy a planet for Ronan the Accuser, she turns against her father to save millions of lives. She operates with her own set of moral and ethical boundaries and intercepts Peter Quill with the orb and ends up tossed in prison when she, Peter, Rocket, and Groot are caught fighting by the Nova Corp. Despite the fact that she is in prison with people who want to murder her for her former allegiance to Thanos, she remains composed and focused on her mission. She never backs down from her ethical choice: to help stop Ronan from destroying that planet. Unlike Drax, whose mission to stop Ronan comes from his own personal vendetta, and unlike Quill and Rocket (and Groot?), she isn’t in it for a payday. She genuinely is fighting to stop a genocide from happening, one woman condemned by those she is trying to protect. Each time she is put in a position to make a choice regarding continuing with this deadly course of actions, she remains steadfast in trying to stop Ronan’s plan, and in fact sways Star Lord towards a more altruistic choice by her own continuous conviction.

“Ahem. You know you’re not getting any of this, right?”

Gamora also stands as a woman who defies the stereotype of a female love interest in an MCU film. There is no doubt that GotG codes the ongoing relationship between Star Lord and Gamora as a flirtatious one. Yet from the minute she meets Peter, Gamora is inured to his charms. Every time he flirts with her, including the scene where he introduces her to music through his headphones and tries to get her to dance, Gamora revolts against Star Lord’s moves. She calls him out for basically thinking that space girls are easy, a fact that Star Lord has proven early in the film with his randy escapades. And she does it with flare too. I mean, come on, pulling a knife and saying she won’t fall for his ‘pelvic sorcery’? Throughout the movie, Gamora might start finding Star Lord a little more attractive, yet never does she become ancillary to the plot in order to simply be his love interest. Far from it: Star Lord is the reactive one, who cedes the power in decision making to Gamora’s drive to save the universe. Gamora explores her feelings as an equal, capable of remaining active and in charge of her emotions and even physical wants (if those exist) without losing her agency, identity, and integrity.

Gamora also defies the stereotype of the hyper-sexualized comic book heroine. Sure, she’s dressed in tight leather in the film, but so is the frickin’ raccoon. The camera does not linger any longer on her body than it does on the equally attractive Star Lord. While there may be one shot that could be considered questionable (it lingers on her ass for a moment), its intent seems more to focus on the weapons on her hip than on her rear. Gamora is not created in this space as a piece of flesh to be stared at, but a woman who carries her beauty as just another part of her, and certainly not as a part of that is coded specifically to be stared at as a sexual object.

(And yes, at the very end she wears a little dress. Women wear those without being sexual objects on screen, and the manner by which she is cinematically presented in that scene indicates that the dress is not meant to showcase her sexually but present her as simply… wearing a dress. Which is something women do. To indicate that she can’t like a dress or wear as skirt is prescribing what a strong, independent woman should and should not wear outside of concerns of how they are being presented for viewing. And that, friends, is sexist in its own way).

“We were all just looking for each other.”

There are some that say that Gamora’s plotline is contrived, that she turns too quickly towards the heroic path. And indeed, another article about Gamora points out that so does the entire cast for the sake of the speed of the film. I will push it one point further. I will say that Gamora, like all the other Guardians, is at a crossroads in their lives. They are each searching for some place to belong, or something to believe in, and are at a turning point where the events of the movie produce a profound change in them and bonds them to one another. I believe Gamora, of all the characters, transforms the most gracefully. She had already made the choice to betray Thanos and Ronan before meeting the other soon-to-be-Guardians. She had made her own choice to go it alone against some of the most powerful men in the galaxy because of her ethics. Yet when offered aid, she respects the growing trust between herself and the other characters and has the emotional acuity to transform from loner to reluctant ally and eventually friend through the course of the film.

Guardians-Of-The-Galaxy-Zoe-Saldana-gamora — The Most Dangerous Woman In The Galaxy.

Its that emotionality that also sets Gamora apart, as she is given the room as a character to show a full range of emotion. She can show vulnerability, rage, indignance, confusion, and even heartbreak. Her relationship with her sister Nebula is a tumultuous one that, if it can receive any criticism, perhaps could have used more screen time. Yet Gamora shows how much she cares for her sister, even when she has to fight her to protect the universe. This is not a woman pigeon-holed into one emotional mode, but given range to be complicated. You know, just like any great male character.

In the crucible by fire that is the events of Guardians of the Galaxy, Gamora emerges a graceful, nuanced, fleshed out character that drives the plot and exists outside the stereotype of sex object in leather. Gamora escapes being pigeon-holed as a fake ‘strong female character’ by actually BEING a strong female character. And in that way, Gamora sets herself apart from the lip service paid to strength in other MCU characters who all fail to escape being pigeon-holed into traditional women-in-film tropes in various ways. The success of Guardians, driven by Gamora, will hopefully signal to not only Marvel but to other filmmakers that a woman with such a well-developed role outside of stereotype can and should drive films in equal measure to male counterparts. Meanwhile, Gamora stands not only as the most dangerous woman in the universe, as she’s known in the comics, but as the most dangerous woman to sexist portrayals in film in quite some time.