Category: Speaking Out

I Have A Mouth, So Why Aren’t I Screaming? (Or Where I’ve Been)

by Shoshana, posted in Random Aside, Speaking Out

Been a few weeks, hasn’t it? Don’t worry, I haven’t dropped off the face of the planet. Indeed I’ve instead been all over the place doing lord knows what in graduate school. I’ve been working hard at my thesis (which will have a website face shortly). I’ve been spending time at great game design opportunities like Practice at NYU (which I’ll have a breakdown of too). I’ve been working hard. But one thing I haven’t been doing lately is blogging. And there’s a reason why. So here’s the story I’d like to tell about how criticism can steal your voice.

I wake up in the morning. I have a long schedule ahead of me. I write things down, you see, because if I don’t I forget half the things I need to do. So I have a list. And on that list is things like ‘pay this bill’ or ‘do this homework’. I go ahead and take out the trash, do laundry, all the things one needs to do. I answer emails. I do what is needed. And on that list is inevitably the reminder: blogging. Every day, my eyes would slide past it. Every day, I’d say ‘that can wait.’

And it waited. And waited. For weeks.

After a little while, I wondered just what was going on. I, like anyone else, can be avoidant of things I didn’t want to do. But the real question is: why didn’t I want to blog? I had so many things I wanted to talk about! Yet something was stopping me, something that was making me balk at the notion of putting my ideas down on the internet for all to see. So as I am want to do, I posed the question to my friends online, almost rhetorically: why was I suddenly nervous about posting up blog posts?

A friend and brilliant young woman came back at me with an answer in the form of a question: did this problem start after you started receiving those threats about the content of your talks and posts?

Ahem. I believe the word I’m looking for is duh.

I’ve been pretty vocal about things on my blog, on other blogs, for the last few years. I believe that standing up and speaking out is an imperative if you see something that needs discussing. “If you see something, say something” is used by the cops, but it isn’t just a slogan for the NYPD. It’s an idea that the world is only improved when people use their powers of communication to make changes to situations they encounter. Yet a lot of people who have spoken out recently have received backlash of the most toxic variety. I got only a little bit of it. But what I did get startled me. And frankly, it shocked me more than I originally understood.

I’ll share a little secret here: I’m a fairly squishy-centered person. Down deep beneath the ‘raaar!’ that often comes out of my mouth beats the heart of someone who honestly wants us all to have what we need in life, with people who care about us, so we can make awesome things that we can share and that make us happy. Idealistic? Sure, and why not? There’s nothing wrong with idealism except that perhaps these days it’s considered naive and nay-sayed by those who are bitter and cynical. But when that ‘can’t we work towards a better tomorrow?’ me is met with rampant douchebaggery (yes, that’s a technical term), it tends to wall up for protection. And it gets tired.

I got tired of getting yelled at for a little while.

I got tired of people asking me why it’s necessary to talk about women in the gaming community. I got tired of having to explain that just because you speak out about women’s rights doesn’t mean you’re blaming all men for the inequality in the world, or that you’re demonizing the men who are trying to help too. I got tired of being accused of being a fence-sitting feminist for not embracing more radical ideas. I got tired of being told ‘I’m tired of hearing about this’ from people who, for them, the issues we’re talking about seem so large and so all-encompassing that they don’t know what to do with them. Or else they’re tired of hearing about it because, to them, it isn’t an ongoing reality that needs to be addressed over and over.

I got tired of speaking up when I would get comments like ‘fat pig’ sent my way.

A person only has so much bandwidth and for a while a little bit of it behind the scenes was negative. Most of it was overwhelmingly positive. But that little toxic bit got to that little squishy center and, well, I got tired. A part of me wants to apologize for that, but I’m not going to. Instead, I’m going to say this: turtle-time is over. I’m back.

We don’t create things in a void. Getting used to the voices out there that will fling awful at your feet is part of creating things. It seems like a skill needed more and more every day. I’m cultivating it. But in the meantime, I can’t let myself be afraid of putting words to paper (or blog) for fear of what might fly my way. The awful, insulting crap being slung around the internet is NOT okay. Trolling is not okay. But if I’m going to exist as a creator then I will need to remember just what it means to have the courage of my convictions and stand by what I say.

I’m also going to be trying a radical new approach: I’m planning on creating a lot more than commenting these days. I realize a lot of my time had focused on commentary about other work out there – be it comic books, television, movies, ect. And that’s great, commenting and criticism is awesome – having opinions is what we do, provided we put it out in the world in a respectful fashion. But I’m a writer and a designer. I want to be making things of my own to be the creation I want to see in the world. And if I’m so busy commenting, I don’t have as much time to do what I want. So there’s going to be a little less of my usual ranting criticism goodness for a bit. Why?

I have projects. And they’re good ones. And that’s what you’re going to hear about for a while.

So that’s where I’ve been. That’s where I’m going. Let’s keep in touch more, shall we?

I Won’t Forget: Spirit Day, Anti-Bullying and the Power of Hope

by Shoshana, posted in Speaking Out

As of right now, I’m celebrating a little victory.

In my last post, I talked about the body shaming that is rampant within the cosplay world. I pointed to several websites that made their bones out of making fun of ‘fat’ or ‘ugly’ cosplayers. The whole explosion of blogginess happened because of a Facebook page called Fat Cosplayers, in which some internet troll decided to post up photos of people for the sake of making fun of them. Me and tons of other people on social media went to Facebook to report the page.

Less than twenty-four hours later, that Facebook page is gone.

And in my mind, I’m saying: We won.

I’m celebrating. This is a minor thing in the grand scheme of the universe, but before I go back to my work at grad school or my freelancing today, I had to celebrate. Because that’s one against bullies. That’s one against the insensitivity of the world. We take what we can get.

Today is known as Spirit Day, a day when people speak up about bullying and stand up against such behavior for the future. So let’s have a little story time today about why anti-bullying is important. We’re going to open up and be super, completely honest.

Let’s tell a little story about Shoshana.

106509Kessock
That’s my “Yeah, what now?” face.

Hi. This is me. I’m fat. I’ve been this way more than half my life.

I’ve been fat since I was eleven years old. Before that, I was a horsey-limbed little colt of a thing, running around playing sports. Then puberty hit and, wouldn’t you know it, I grew to nearly 5’11” in one year and developed all those women-parts that cause you to suddenly look WAY older than you actually are. I also gained nearly one hundred pounds in a year. It didn’t hurt that I was super depressed that year and took to eating as an answer. Why was I depressed, you ask? Because I was bullied pretty hard. There was a girl in my class who hated me for some reason who made it her business to make my life a living hell. She broke into my locker in school. She slammed a window on my wrist. She called me names. When I spoke about being adopted, something that was very difficult for me, she came out and said: “The reason you can’t ask for money from your folks [for a school trip] is because you’re not their real child.” Years later, this girl swore up and down she didn’t mean anything by any of it. But I remember her. I remember her name, all those years later, and I remember how she would always say her hair was auburn and not red. I can’t forget.

I went through high school being teased. I had no friends. I ended up dropping out of high school and staying home because I was so depressed, I couldn’t walk down the hallways. I got nailed for not being as religious as the kids around me, for feeling uncomfortable with some of the bigoted nonsense in my community. I felt alone in my skin, with nowhere to turn. It didn’t help that I was developing what we later discovered was bi-polar disorder and my mood swings were awful. But I discovered the internet, stayed home and stayed online. Why? Because it was easier than dealing with the terrible things that people would say to me. I ate because I was sad and because, frankly, I didn’t give a damn anymore. I figured there was no reason to take care of myself. I should enjoy what I could because there was no being happy in life. I was depressed, suicidal, and eating to forget. I thank God I never discovered drugs or alcohol during that time period or MAN would there have been issues.

I pulled myself out of it to go to college. And there I discovered a world of diversity. Of people who looked like me. I discovered the world was big, wide, and full of all kinds of folks. Still, I had trouble. You train a person for years that anyone, at any time, can come up and hurt you, you’re going to get someone who doesn’t trust easily. I joined a sorority, tried to have friends, tried to date. And this is where I got some of the most harsh lessons in what it’s like to not be like other people. I was a bi-sexual, bi-polar, terribly sheltered Jewish fat girl. I was like the slow moving gazelle in the herd- easy pickings for bullies and the chronically insensitive.

I still remember the first guy I had a major crush on. His name was David. He liked video game music and was Jewish. His dad went to synagogue with mine. My father thought for sure I’d met someone finally that I might get together with- happily ever after. I thought this guy was hilarious and, during a party at a local bar one night, I asked him out. He was pretty wasted and we were joking around. He turned to me and laughed so hard and said he didn’t think he’d ever go out with me. I asked him why not. He said: “You know how people like certain kinds of porn? I don’t like fat people porn.”

I remember where I was standing when he said that. I remember how cold it was. I never spoke to him again. That was over ten years ago now. I can’t forget.

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Me at Stonehenge 2005

I went on in college. I left school to get my life together. I did martial arts as my profession for eighteen months, starved myself on a practically liquid diet in the hopes of losing weight, and always felt awful that I wasn’t in the same shape as other people. I would run in class until I thought I was going to throw up and faint. My martial arts master would always frown at me as though I were a disappointment. I left that school and went back to college. I went overseas and discovered that if you need to buy clothing in London and you’re fat, you are going to have a hard time. I had people on the London Tube say I was too fat to sit on the seat with them. I went to France and had a woman there call me a “fat kike” (a Jewish slur I’d never heard to my face). I ended up in the hospital and nearly died from a stupid gallbladder failure and decided, right then, that I wanted to fix up my life. I made new friends, who I loved and adored. But who would still say things like:

“Sometimes I see the beautiful person trapped inside all that fat.”

“You could become a vegetarian, that would fix all your weight problems.”

“You just need to stop eating all that stuff. I mean, you can’t eat like normal people. You have to try extra hard.” 

I remember every name. I remember every person, what they said, where I was. I can’t forget.

I remember my female friends, who would make mouth noises about being accepting and loving of everyone no matter the body type, look at me sideways when I would say I was into someone. And if I said I was interested in the same person they were, I would watch them shrug that off, as if to say: “It’s not like you have a chance.” I would call them on it, too, and watch them protest. “But that’s not what I was thinking! Of course not! I’m so sorry I made you feel that way!” Yet the next time the issue came up, the exact same thing happened. I was the fat girl, the invisible one. And it was a bitter joy that at least, to them, I was invisible in certain ways and yet acceptable as a friend. At least I wasn’t alone anymore. But I still remember each of those moments, and each of the hurts. They mark a long list of bullying tactics, insensitivity and invisibility that has plagued me all my life.

This is me now, in my LARP costume for Freya at Dystopia Rising 2013.
This is me  in my LARP costume for Freya at Dystopia Rising 2013. Photo by Catie Griffin.

I’m not invisible anymore. I’ve created for myself the life I always wanted, where I have good people around me and the opportunity to create as a way of life. I no longer accept bullying in any forms. I don’t accept ‘it’s just a joke’ as an answer from those who say that they are ‘really nice people’ and ‘would never want to hurt someone else.’ I call it out as I see it. I learn to let things go and to forgive because people aren’t bad, but they can make stupid, apathetic, hurtful decisions.

But I don’t forget. I can’t forget that to some people, I am other because of how I look. That to many, I’m invisible unless I open my mouth and the power of my voice carries me beyond their prejudices to validate me as a human being. I will never forget those sideways looks, the pity in people’s eyes, and the years it took for me to not give in to just bitterness. I won’t forget how hard it has been to hold onto hope.

Hope lives. It lives in every friend who has given me a supportive hand, who has never judged me when I put a fork to my mouth in their company, or who stood up for me when some ‘well meaning’ asshat on the street says how sad it is to see a young woman like me ‘in my condition.’ Hope lives in the lovers who have called me beautiful and made me believe them, and no matter how we parted company, I won’t forget their names either. Hope lives in friends who have commiserated with me, and who have supported me, and treated me like a person who exists and is relevant.

Hope lives and I live because of hope every day.

That’s my message for Spirit Day, folks. Hope lives for those on the receiving end of bullying. And hope even lives for the insensitive, the chronically hurtful, the bullies out there. There’s hope enough for you too. I believe that, I’ll never forget it. I just hope you can find that too.

Too Fat To Join The Fun: Body Shaming and Cosplay

by Shoshana, posted in Geek Culture, Geek Social Fallacies, Speaking Out

Update (10/4/2014): I was recently contacted to clear up a misattribution in the article below. Please note that the quoted transcript of the Heroes of Cosplay episode 2 conversation previously stated that Jessica Merizan was one of those speaking. It has since been corrected after I was contacted by Ms. Merizan and the proper speaker was attributed. My apologies to Ms. Merizan for the confusion and any trouble it may have caused. 

As it is the week after New York Comic Con, I am spending my time recovering from my heady infusion of nerd culture. Yet instead of happily recounting various wonderful experiences I had at NYCC this year, I am writing this article. And it starts with an apology.

I’m sorry. I didn’t know, guys! You can’t hold it against me. I’m simply a busy woman who doesn’t have the time to keep up on all the tiny bits of minutia and unwritten rules that make up parts of the geek world. It just isn’t my fault that folks didn’t tell me right off the bat that there are rules about who can and cannot cosplay. I wasn’t informed that, if you are fat or ugly, then cosplay is just not for you.

I’m glad I found out! I mean, what would have happened if I’d started my upcoming cosplay plans only to discover all that money had been spent for nothing and…

Wait. Wait, what was that? Hang on. Let me get this straight: there aren’t any such unwritten rules? Cosplay is open to anyone who might want to be involved, regardless of who they are or what they look like? That it’s a culture based upon geek celebration and creative displays of fabrication and not the perpetuation of horrible beauty stereotypes that we encounter in every part of our society? You mean there’s a place in cosplay for someone that looks like me?

Really? Because to listen to some people, you could have fooled me.

Heroes-of-Cosplay-logo-wide-560x2821Case in point: Syfy channel recently showcased a new reality series called Heroes of Cosplay. This show followed the antics of several well known cosplayers as they went from convention to convention with their costumes, entering competitions and generally getting into the dramatic hijinks one expects from a reality TV show. I was excited to sit down and watch this show despite my nearly allergic level aversion to reality TV because I was excited to see how these supposed ‘heroes of cosplay’ went about picking their projects and making their costumes. And while there was a great deal of that going on, I was also treated to a good look at some 100% home grown USDA brand body shaming. The first episode showed a young woman struggling with her confidence over how she looked in her Merida costume. That was excusable. Here is a young woman feeling self-conscious, something anyone can identify with. The fact that later on in the episode she made it clear she believed she lost the competition because of her weight started to be a little uncomfortable.

By episode two, we had spiraled directly into body shaming. During a meet-up between all the contestants, several of the women agreed that if you are bigger you shouldn’t cosplay. In the uncomfortable silence, only Chloe Dykstra spoke up to defend the right of anyone to cosplay. If the editing on the show is to be believed, she was largely disagreed with or either the subject was ignored. The transcript of what was said goes as follows: Yaya Han started the conversation “Cosplay pet peeves.”

Riki LeCotey: People are obviously, like, ‘well, I’m really big, what can I do?’ And it’s like, if you’re a big muscular dude, go be Superman.

Chloe Dykstra: I think anybody should be whatever they want to be, whatever.

Riki LeCotey: But the thing is, if a three-hundred pound person wears Superman, and they put themselves out there, and then it gets on the net, how is that gonna help?

Chloe Dykstra: I mean, I guess, but do you think because of that they shouldn’t dress up as Superman?

Monika Lee: I think a lot of people can’t handle that criticism.

Yaya Han: I feel like as a cosplayer you have the responsibility to know what you look like. You have to really look at yourself in the mirror and know, you know, if my boobs are out I’m going to get **** comments.

Must be so hard, thinking you're the top of the game and dumping on other people.
Must be so hard, thinking you’re the top of the game and dumping on other people.

It is important to note that the conversation was heavily edited by the production staff. It seems clear that the conversation was lead so that these women would give statements that could be edited out of context. However, it is important to note that these women signed on to put their names to whatever came out of the production to represent them in the public eye. Moreover, they signed on to become known as a ‘hero’ of the cosplay community, a representative on camera of the ideas that make up cosplay.  Whether these statements were manufactured by the production company after the fact or not, these reality TV stars were willing to be associated with the sentiment. This, coupled with ongoing commentary during episodes by ‘celebrity’ judge Yaya Han regarding overall body shaming (slut-shaming another big-name cosplayer Jessica Nigri over what she thought was showing too much skin) makes Heroes of Cosplay a train wreck of an example of the cosplay community. ‘Heroes’ indeed. I’m not impressed.

The outcry from the cosplayers I have spoken to and seen online has been heated about the show. Many have pointed out that these so-called ‘heroes’ don’t speak for the cosplay community and that it is largely a place where people can come to just have a good time. Yet despite that outcry, there is still the lurking specter of fat shaming. There are blog posts around the internet about situations in which overweight cosplayers are called out, publicly embarrassed or harassed online. ohnoes

And if that wasn’t bad enough, there are the websites dedicated to fat-shaming folks for just trying. Because I feel like this is bad enough to warrant some public attention, I’m going to simply point to the worst of them out there in their troll-laiden glory. I’m calling out that putrid little website Cosplay Train Wrecks under their ‘fattie’ category. Then there’s this gem, called “Americans Fail At Cosplay, So Stop!” That’s right, America, just stop cosplaying. We’re all doing it wrong.  There’s Your Cosplay Sucks that decides to pick on… well, just about everybody.

One particular heinous example got my attention this week. It’s the reason I’m writing this article in the first place. It’s called Fat Cosplayers and it’s a Facebook group. The photos put up are taken from other cosplay sites and tagged with comments including calling people ‘whale’ and equally offensive things. (I urge folks to take a second and report the site to Facebook if you can). The creator decided to mark it as ‘a joke’ as if that makes it better. Because that’s what trolls do to make everything okay again after they say offensive things. They remark that ‘it’s just a joke.’

Let’s get one thing straight: this is not funny.

Body shaming was something I was made aware of the instant I became aware of cosplay. I was told it’s part of ‘what to expect’. It’s one of the reasons I balked at the very idea of putting on a costume at conventions. I’ve personally witnessed fat shaming as well as ‘ugly’ cosplayer shaming from folks at conventions of all kinds, from snickering behind hands to flat-out snarky, nasty comments aimed at people while they were in earshot. It was upon examination of a lot of these situations that I hit upon the heart of the matter. While there may be those within the cosplay community who are critical of other people’s work and their representation of characters, the predominant amount of body shaming and ridicule doesn’t seem to be coming from other cosplayers. It’s the cosplay spectators doing the shaming. It’s everybody else. The rudeness out of people’s mouths are from photographers, media of all kinds, lookie-loos and fellow con attendees who come to gawk or take photos with cosplayers, as though they were some kind of wildlife attraction, and then often trash the people they don’t find appropriate.

Excuse me, cosplay audience, but let me ask the question: who the hell are you to judge other people’s fun?

It takes a lot for someone to stand on the sidelines and point at someone and laugh. It’s high school bullshit, immature childish behavior at its worst. And it honestly has to end. This kind of bullshit body shaming is something I have zero patience or tolerance for in the rest of the world, and I certainly wouldn’t want to see it in a geek community. Thankfully there seem to be plenty of cosplayers, including and especially plus sized cosplayers, who are standing up and speaking out against all the negativity. And right now, I’m saying this: I’m going to be one of them.

And this is going to be my first costume. Ellierender Yeah. That’s right. Ellie from Borderlands 2.

For a long time, I was afraid to cosplay because I didn’t want to deal with whatever negative attention might fly my way for being heavy. I was afraid of the comments and I let it stop me. That’s not going to happen anymore. I’m going to cosplay. I’m going to cosplay stuff that isn’t just Ursula from the Little Mermaid (though I plan on doing a kickass 80’s punk Ursula because screw you, that’s why, haters, I’m going to make her more badass than before). And with every step of doing it, I’m going to say the same thing: I’m not here for the haters, but the haters gonna hate. And if they hate in my general direction, they’re going to hear back from me.

To quote Chloe Dykstra on Heroes of Cosplay:

I don’t know who made up these rules. There’s like some grand cosplay lord who’s like, “You shall not cosplay something if you are overweight!” That’s ridiculous. Cosplay is about having fun and being who you are and who you want to be.

Call that naive all you want, Yaya Han, but that seems to be the real spirit of the cosplay community, not the elitist crap being tossed around. And I for one want to be part of THAT community, with that spirit of inclusion. That’s where I’ll be with my cosplay, my support, and my war face for anyone who wants to step. Until then, I’m going to make my costumes and have a good time. Haters, slink back off to the anonymous internet holes you crawled out of – that’s where you belong.

The Agunah Problem and Secular Public Opinion

by Shoshana, posted in Speaking Out, Uncategorized

Warning: this post is a departure from my typical games/geeks/feminism/media/design posts. This is going to switch over into a dangerous topic for most people – religion. You have been warned.

Today, an old colleague of mine shared an article from the New York Times onto my Facebook feed. In between posts about New York Comic Con, I read an article about Rabbi Mendel Epstein, who was busted by the Feds in a kidnap-for-hire scheme. Federal agents posed as women in the Jewish community in a sting operation and caught Epstein selling himself out as a kidnapper and torturer. Now why, you’d imagine, would a rabbi do this? Well, he’s not just kidnapping and torturing random guys, folks. He’s kidnapping guys who won’t give their wives divorces.

Let me explain how this works.

Traditionally in Judaism, a man is in sole control over whether or not a marriage may end in divorce. A woman may wish to get a divorce, but the husband is the only one who can actually grant that a divorce will occur. Try to think about that for a second. No matter the situation, no matter what may be going on within the marriage (infidelity, abuse, ect.) a woman may not be divorced from her husband less the husband wants it to happen. Should a man refuse to give his wife a divorce, that woman is not free within the religious community to get into another relationship or, especially, get married. She is trapped in limbo, sometimes with her children in tow, until her husband can be convinced to grant her that divorce. She is known as an Agunah.

This situation wasn’t always as a result of men in the relationship just being heinous louts. The classic stories of women left as Agunot (that’s the plural) in history come from women left in that horrid situation when their husbands went on a long journey and never returned. A more modern example is a husband gone MIA during war. In both cases, a divorce was not granted and no one could be sure that the man was dead, so the woman was stuck as an Agunah either until the situation was resolved… or for the rest of her life. Yet the modern problem has arisen that men have used this structure to effectively extort their wives for the divorce, or else hold them hostage in the relationship entirely. Men in these relationships often demand cash, cars, houses, or even the kids in divorce proceedings before they’ll grant the papers to the wife. And if she can’t pay or won’t give over what’s wanted, she’s trapped.

Enter folks who want to help. They run the range from organizations that try to advocate for Agunot, like ORA (Organization for the Resolution of Agunot) or Agunah International, who advocate for helping resolve the plight of these women.

But you also get guys like Rabbi Mendel Epstein. And some tazers.

Rabbi Epstein - Photo credit: The 5 Towns Jewish Times
Rabbi Epstein – Photo credit: The 5 Towns Jewish Times

I read through the article on Rabbi Epstein’s exploits with a cringe. Why? Because this kind of behavior isn’t an unknown story. I’d heard stories growing up about guys who would try to ‘convince’ a man to give his wife a get (a Jewish divorce). I’d heard stories about the women in question trying everything they possibly could to convince the community, the man’s family, anyone possible, to use what influence they had to help her get a divorce. If you want to read a story about one woman in this horrible situation, check out the webcomic called Unmasked: The Ariella Dadon Story. Heck, even the alleged knee-breaking rabbi himself put out a call over the internet, asking folks to support a Women’s Bill of Rights that would modernize a Jewish woman’s rights within her marriage. While organizations try to resolve things and offer support, and advocates try to get laws changed in religious courts (which is exceptionally, almost impossibly, difficult), some guys drive out there with baseball bats or whatever is needed and take matters into their own hands.

They could help the situation, too. Or else they might end up busted by undercover Federal Agents. Go figure.

Now, there’s a lot about this that is awful. The fact that Rabbi Epstein allegedly took a great deal of money to do this disturbs me, no doubt. Yet what bothers me more about this situation was reading through the New York Times article and feeling the weight of the almighty secular view coming down on the community. “Look at that backward culture,” it seemed to say. “Look at their odd ways. The Feds had to step in and stop a man from kidnapping and tazing members of his own community! For shame!”

Ah, let’s feel some of that good, old fashioned, out of context judgement. Long may it reign.

jokeragunahstory

It is fantastically problematic that Rabbi Epstein allegedly committed multiple felonies (and crossed over state lines to do it!), all the while supposedly getting paid tens of thousands of dollars. But it is more problematic in my mind for the New York Times to write about the arrest without providing cultural context for the Agunah epidemic in their article. Reading the text as written, it is almost impossible to explain why a man would randomly hire himself out to women in the Jewish community as a leg-breaker. Why he’d put men in cars, take them into New Jersey and effectively torture them with tazers. Does it matter why he did it?

Why yes. Yes it does. It provides context and a window into one of the biggest social injustice epidemics in the Orthodox Jewish Community. One that deserves the media indigence and outrage that is being leveled towards this rabbi. Where is the headlines about women being abandoned by their husbands, often without any of the financial support needed to provide for themselves and their children? Where is the outcry articles about women in abusive relationships unable to get away from their abusers to continue their lives because they are trapped by this religious law?

Please understand: I am in no way condoning what this guy did. Although it is SO tempting to me to say ‘I LOVE that this guy took a taser to guys who trap their wives in an unending level and religious nightmare’ I’m also not advocating vigilante, knee-breaking justice. What I’m really talking about here is hopeless misunderstanding and external-culture privilege. The article is a textbook example of a complex religious issue tackled by an external force with no deep understanding of the culture it’s dealing with. As someone who grew up Orthodox, I saw the problem of the Agunah first-hand in women I’d met, and I can say that even I cannot possibly understand the horror of the situation fully. Yet this article doesn’t even brush the surface of explaining things to an audience that doesn’t get why this crime even happened. It’s journalism without context and (perhaps unintentional) spinning of the facts to make the situation look bizarre, and out there. Look at the crazy rabbi, it almost screams, look how backward.

Where are the articles about the Agunot of America in the New York Times? Guess their story isn’t as sexy as kidnapping for hire. Still, even those articles would probably mirror a lot of the ideas I heard from secular friends of mine on the topic. Namely: why don’t the women just leave? Forget the religious divorce and just GO. Well now that’s also a culturally unaware viewpoint. Sure, a woman can up and go. She can leave her culture, her community, her religion, go out into a world where she might not know anyone or at least be unfamiliar with the secular culture. She can abandon her heritage, her beliefs, and therefore be free to do… what? To change her whole life drastically? Speaking as someone who left the community, it isn’t that simple. And more than that: why should these women have to?

The fact that men still hold the power over these women within the community is deplorable. It is a backwards horror, a right as archaic as the notion that a man should control a woman’s future in ANY culture, anywhere, on this our modern earth. If this article brings anything to the surface, it’s that people within the community are willing to literally commit felonies to try and rescue these women from lives of harassment and isolation. And while we should not raise up those who are committing assault to resolve what is a heinous misogynistic law, we certainly can use this opportunity to raise awareness to the plight of these women. So perhaps in the future we won’t need the knee-breakers in the first place.

NOTE: If you want to know more about the situation of Agunot in the United States and the world, please visit the following links:

Agunah International

Organization for the Resolution of Agunot (ORA)

National Suicide Prevention And Hard Conversation

by Shoshana, posted in Speaking Out

Warning: This post contains talk about suicide, self-harm, depression and a boatload of other issues. Viewer discretion is advised. 

Here comes some straight talk on some personal, hard topics. Bear with me, if you can. If not, I’ll see you next post.

This is a time of year I’m not so comfortable with. It was National Suicide Prevention Week last week and everyone is reaching out and talking about, well, suicide prevention. There are phone numbers offered and thoughts and prayers and online offers to listen to each other talk about issues. There are ears offered and hands outstretched. And I for the life of me can barely listen to the conversation. Why, you might ask? Because honestly, it’s a wee bit triggery to me. But today, inspired by many brave posts online that have gone before me, I’m going to give it a shot.

Hi, my name’s Shoshana. I’m bi-polar. Suicide thoughts and me have been pals since I was twelve.

If that sounds a little bit flip, it’s because that’s how I talk about these things. That’s how I keep them at arms length enough for me to talk about it without getting really, really maudlin. I’ve been suicidal since the age of twelve. It comes and goes. It comes in the hard days and goes most of the time. And ninety-nine percent of the time, the thoughts hardly get a second look. They skim through my surface thoughts like a fin through water, reminding me still here and then disappearing. That’s the nature of depression and managing the symptoms.

I’ve gone into doctor’s checkups at the university and they ask the ubiquitous question: “Have you had suicidal thoughts or made any plans?” I can always answer no to the second part. Plans would mean that they’re more than a blip on the mental radar. Plans would be bad, and that’s when Contingency Plan Mode goes into effect. Call up friend, make contact, reach out, talk to someone. I have steps to follow to make sure that that fin doesn’t become the whopper shark roaring up outta the water like Jaws. Steps are what keeps me healthy. But when the doc asks me that question, my only answer can be “I’m bipolar, suicidal thoughts are part of my normal.”

I won’t die because of suicide, but I live with it every day.

I know how awful that sounds to people. And I don’t think its going to be like that all the time, or forever. I’m in treatment and its changing every day. As a friend said lately, I’m getting healthier by the day. But can I say that the fight’s over? No way. That’s not a fight that’ll ever end for me, I believe. Being bipolar isn’t something you cure. You accept this as a part of life and come to terms. You learn that every day, you wake up, and you go on with things.

And you teach yourself that no matter what, no matter what, that voice doesn’t win.

That doesn’t mean the conversation about these things is easier. People talking about it, you know, makes me focus on those thoughts more and giving them more mental space is not always a good thing. However, I know that talking about the issue of suicide and suicide prevention is vital, not only to providing help for others but in removing the stigma that many still put on mental illness and treatment. I’m still coming to terms with talking about my own suicidal thoughts, but not for the reasons that you think. It usually hard because it makes OTHER people uncomfortable. Folks don’t like to think about this, or start to get all shocked and shaken and worried. They don’t get how it can work for a person to exist in this state on a regular basis. I just try to explain that its been with me for almost as long as I can remember, but that doesn’t make folks more comfortable. Ah, well. You can’t live for other people’s comfort.

Why am I sharing this? Just to say this: for those reading this that have had these experiences, you are not alone. There are people in this world who have that place in their heart that has gone to this place and come back again. There is no stigma or at least there shouldn’t be. You stand shoulder to shoulder with more people than you can imagine who have walked this dark road some nights and found the way back out to the morning. Some nights you can do that alone. But should you feel the need to seek out help, do so. Go and talk to the people who can help you. Make the plans you need for Contingencies should you find yourself having the thoughts that lead down a dark path. Seek out ANY and all help you need. Because just cuz a fin’s in the water doesn’t mean it gets to take a bite. You can head that off at the pass.

You’ve got it in you. C’mon. I’ll do what I need to do, if you do it too. We can do it together.

If you need help, here’s a place to reach out:

National Suicide Prevention Hotline

1-800-273-8255

Quiet and MGS 5: The Phantom Pain In My Neck

by Shoshana, posted in Game Design, Geek Culture, Speaking Out

Oh, Hideo Kojima, what are you up to with Metal Gear Solid 5?

Fans have been waiting for the latest installment of the Metal Gear series to catch up on what Solid Snake has been up to since we last saw him. So when Kojima got on his twitter earlier this week and started releasing information about the new character to be included in the series, I was excited. Her name was Quiet, she’s a sniper, and that alone made me happy. Until Kojima started talking about the art design.

kojima1

I’m sorry, what was that now? More erotic? I thought maybe you meant exotic? But nope, it was erotic. But of course, as a thoughtful designer, there had to be a good reason why a video game designer would want to make the costume of a female character more erotic. Especially in the age of discussions about sexualization of women in video game design. A follow-up tweet gave us the real details:

kojima2…Oh. Because that just makes it a whole lot better. I can’t wait to see the tasteful little one piece Snake will be wearing for the game too. For all those cosplay guys out there who want to go to conventions in a speedo.

Metal-Gear-Solid-5-QuietKojima announced that the design for Quiet’s costume was going to be released this past Friday. And he sent ahead a little photo to give people a head’s up what it was going to look like. Or rather, a butt’s up. Because this is the pic, folks, of a part of Quiet’s outfit. The news about this announcement and the picture went viral just about everywhere, and folks started tweeting up a storm about the costume design. Or rather the lack of costume. And why wouldn’t it? In a time when the industry is positively a-buzz with discussions about sexism, misogyny, equal representation and sexualization, this was just additional fuel to the fire.

I particularly found it amusing in the face of a fantastic panel at PaxPrime, which spoke about the representation of female military officers in video games. The panel pointed out important issues about how women are usually presented as only romantic attachments for male characters or either cheesecake characters wearing utterly impractical outfits. This pointed towards an issue brought up by one of the panelists, namely that the misrepresentation of military women in such degrading light can port over into the real world and translate to a disrespect towards women in uniform (check out a great recap here on PlaywithPixels). Whether or not you believe that the view of oversexualized and two-dimensional female characters in games can lead to consideration of disrespectful treatment in reality (and I believe there is a correlation, though more evidence is needed), these women held a panel on the eve of this wackiness right here.

Friday came. And Kojima put out his photos. Ready folks, cuz they’re a kicker.

Meet Quiet.
Meet Quiet.

….where do I start?

You know what. I don’t have to. Because that photo does all the talking in the world. But I’ll just add this one to help out.

quiet-rendered-mgs5
“I know. I’m not happy about this either. I’m going to catch my death in this thing.”

I’ve said a lot recently in a previous post about over-sexualization in game ads, and the same argument is about video game art in general. But this one REALLY takes the cake. They don’t even leave her stockings alone, those have to have holes too. I don’t know if I have to reiterate this, but I don’t have a problem with sexy. Sexy is different then blatant over-sexualization and impractical. And this, folks, is the height of both.

Where do I start with this? Where do I begin? With a long, heaving sigh, a roll of the eyes, and a slow clap at Kojima’s perfect plan.

Because folks, he got us. He trolled us so hard it’s not even funny. And we’re going right after it.

Check out some of Kojima’s tweets after the explosion happened online about QuietGate 2013:

kojima3

You see, internet? You’re just wrong about MGS 5 – it’s all about proving how wrong we all are about differences in culture, custom and preference! If I’m reading this correctly, then the reason for a lot of the choices Kojima is making is to point out that there are differences in our perspectives based on all of the above (language, race, custom, culture and preference). And once he makes that point in a game about military folks shooting the heck out of each other, then we will understand the wisdom of why a woman is dressed like her dryer shredded all her clothing. Really, there’s a secret reason and we’ll all discover it when we play MGS 5.

Seriously. Just go buy the game and you’ll get the hidden meaning. You’ve got the sixty bucks to drop on the game to get let in that secret. That’s all you need to do.

Well done marketing strategy there. Well done. First, you point to the cosplay community and use them as a marketing tool (“I’m releasing this for you, you sexy girls, who are going to dress up for me in these outfits! You like doing that anyway, right? So I’ll just pander to you in the hopes you’ll help me sell this game!”) Then next, you stir up a little internet controversy with a sexy costume to get folks fighting about it. Next, you reveal on Twitter that there’s a hidden meaning about why these things exist, and state that you just have to play the game to understand. I see what you did there, and I’m slow-clapping at the sheer guts it takes to do something like this. Because if seen one way, Kojima is just hopelessly out of touch with or doesn’t care about the discourse going on about women’s representation in games. Or else he’s purposefully baiting the supporters of that cause, and cosplayers, and his own fans, to raise sales on Metal Gear Solid.

Now, Kojima has never been known for being subtle. I mean, this is from the designer who brought us THIS:

THEBOX
Adorable and hilarious, but not subtle.

So in a lot of ways, this whole thing isn’t surprising. What is surprising to me is how much this whole thing is doing to bring Metal Gear Solid 5 into the discussion about video games. It’s doing exactly what it was supposed to do. More people are talking about the game than before. Will this stunt boost sales? Probably. Will some of those sales be because Quiet is wearing what is effectively dental floss? Probably. Will there be a secret meaning in Metal Gear Solid 5 about tolerance and cultural understanding? Sure, maybe, who knows. But does it even matter? Kojima is blatantly using the conversation about women in video games and the cosplay community to garner attention for this game game, and that makes me all kinds of sick to my stomach.

Other industry folks have started responding to this, like Alex Kertz from the Battlefield 4 series (his tweets are kind of spectacular). But as a last parting thought, I’ll just walk away, shaking my head. While I appreciate this situation giving me something to write about this week, we could have saved all these words if the MGS 5 team had just trusted their product to attract fans without the reliance on sexism and marketing tricks. This just comes across the way it should – as a blatant cash grab that’s using the very market that they calls fans.

In a recent Q&A in which Kojima attempted to explain this situation further, Stephanie Joosten (who is the voice and motion-capture figure for Quiet) was quoted as saying this about her character:

“Of course, I was surprised to see Quiet’s outfit at first,” said Joosten. “But, you know, it fits in the Metal Gear universe, I think. I don’t think I’m allowed to say a lot about this, but, well, Mr. Kojima has his reasons for deciding why Quiet [is] wearing what she’s wearing. Players will just have to look forward to that.”

Of course there’s a reason for what she is wearing. It’s called dollar signs. And it’s pretty blatantly obvious.

I’m done with this discussion on principle alone. But I’ll just leave this last one here, for the road.

800px-A1C_Gonzalez_377th_SFS_-_Kirtland_AFB1
What actual military women look like.

And my personal favorite:

Mass-Effect-3-the-real-female-shepard
Didn’t need sexism to make a point. Or money.

Pax, You’ve Gone And Done It: An Open Letter

by Shoshana, posted in Convention Report, Geek Culture, Speaking Out

Dear Penny Arcade,

I don’t honestly know where to begin. You’ve really gone and done it now.

Let’s start from the top: Dickwolves. Dickwolves were a thing a while back. You remember dickwolves, right? It was the huge controversy about your sometimes funny comic strip offering up rape jokes as part of your attempts at humor. I won’t go into the madness that was the entire issue because, frankly, it is like one giant labyrinth of PR nightmare meets the worst insensitivity high school locker room humor can offer. (If you need the long description, this exhaustive timeline chronicles the Dickwolves madness). Suffice to say, the dickwolves controversy is just the tip of the iceberg of a serious problem I’ve come to recognize about Penny Arcade and its Pax conventions. Penny Arcade and it’s creators Mike and Jerry (aka Gabe and Tycho) have a serious problem:

They’ve become part of what’s wrong with geek culture.

And its not funny anymore. In fact, it’s goddamn insulting.

First it was “The Sixth Slave” comic that kicked off the dickwolves. Then it was the guest comic about the non-consensual breakfast cereal. Then came the ridiculous Twitter implosion of Mike Krahulik regarding using the term cis-gender and generally being an insensitive human regarding the trans community. Should we toss in the case of the Pax Enforcer that was involved in a sexual harassment case that was all-but covered up? Each time, creator Mike Krahulik has come out with new and wonderful ways to explain support of rape jokes or transphobic speech, or has sat by while those who spoke up against his particular brand of ‘humor’ have been threatened with rape and death just for speaking out. And each and every time this has happened, there has been a controversy and Penny Arcade has ended up back in the geek news sphere long enough for people to get riled up. Then an apology is issued and everything calms down for a little while. Still, folks sit back and wait quietly to see if Krahulik will say something else, do something else, that shows off just how tragically out of touch they are with the evolving geek community. And BAM, it happens again.

Switch over to my side of the tracks for two seconds. I am a game designer, a video game fan, a creator and a panelist. I get invited to go to Pax East to speak as a woman about everything from women in game design, women’s representation in video games, and of course female harassment in convention culture. People look at me sideways when I say I’m attending PaxEast. “But Shoshana, what about the dickwolves? Why go somewhere that supports this kind of rape culture? Why go to the middle of dickwolves central?”

Because, I responded, it can’t be all that bad. And besides, shouldn’t that be where the conversations about women in video games should be happening? Isn’t that where these battles should be fought?

Oh, Penny Arcade – look at me, trying to give you the benefit of the doubt. Look at me, trying to have a discourse.

imagesPax East was difficult. There was trolling I personally had to put up with in my life. But in the end, we had a good time there and were treated with respect for the most part. In fact, things go so well, you invited us out to PaxPrime. Then came the wonderful cis-gender conversation from Krahulik on Twitter. And people brought it up again. “Shoshana, you can’t possibly be going there! Look at what he said! Do you still think that you should be attending the convention?”

Yes, I said, because that’s where the conversation about these things should be happening. Take the conversation right to PA’s door and talk about how we are folks who use the word cis-gender without snickering, without being insulting. People were very receptive, the audience was great, this is where the conversation should go on.

Oh Pax – look at you, giving me hope that things wouldn’t devolve into something ridiculous FIVE MINUTES AFTER THE CON.

Do I sound frustrated to you? It’s because I am. Pax Prime gave me a little hope, you see. I counted the number of panels you had on diversity and inclusion, on women in gaming and on LGBT representation, and I rejoiced. See, here were the conversations I was hoping to see! There were tons of them, hosted by people from tabletop and video games, from cosplayers to the female employees of Bioware. Here were the inclusive community discussions I was hoping to see at a convention that has been plagued with a reputation for misogyny and sexual misconduct. This was the kind of community reform, from the inside, that I love to see. I got on a plane after spending the weekend meeting people and talking about these issues, happy to have attended. I got off the plane to this exchange in a Q&A panel where Mike and Jerry answered questions to Robert Khoo, their business manager. Here’s the video (with the exchange in question at 2 hours and 35 minutes) but enclosed is the offending transcript:

Robert Khoo: I mean, speaking of, I know the three of us have like, a really great working relationship, like, probably the best given the circumstances that we were thrown together in, given our personalities, it really is sort of a dream scenario, I couldn’t have written any better. But, is there anything you wish I would do better, or anything you resent me for doing or saying, or um… besides this panel. Outside of this panel.

Mike Krahulik (Gabe): This is honesty time?

Khoo: Honesty time, yeah. Absolutely.

Gabe: I… You know that I don’t hold grudges.

Khoo: Alright

Gabe: Like, I can be incredibly mad and then fine the next minute, so long as I get it out.

Khoo: Okay.

Gabe: And I feel like we got this out, so I’m not mad about it anymore.

Khoo: Alright.

Gabe: But…I think that pulling the Dickwolves merchandise was a mistake.

Khoo: Clearly, had I known the falling steps that would follow after that move, I would never have brought it up to you. Course I wouldn’t have, because I did not know… I mean, I don’t wanna say “Alright, well, because of this, this happened, people said this, I said this, you said that, clearly it would have just been better to just like, not say anything. That’s sort of our policy on all these types of things now where it’s like, it’s just better not to engage. And in fact, pulling it was, in a way, enga-

Gabe: – engaging –

Khoo: – A way of engaging. And then, then you actually engage. That was a direct result of pulling. And I totally agree. I totally agree.

Gabe: Okay.

Audience Member: Bring it back!

Khoo: No, that’s a terrible idea.

Do I have to go on, Penny Arcade? Do I have to say a damn thing else?

apology

After the last piece of sludge that fell out of Krahulik’s mouth (the cis-gender issue), he issued an apology for what he said. I was pretty critical of that apology because of the language used there, namely where Krahulik made it seem as though he couldn’t stop himself from being, using his words, ‘a dick’. Well apparently that is the case! Because right here, in the above transcript, we have it: ‘Gabe’ saying it was a mistake to pull the dickwolf merchandise from their shelves.

Let me reiterate: he said it was a mistake to pull merchandise referencing a rape joke off of their website. It was a mistake to stop making money off of rape jokes that offended, hurt, and insulted members of the gamer community. This was the statement made by Mike Krahulik. And Robert Khoo agreed to it. And audience members cheered.

Three strikes. You’re out.

I have no more excuses for you, Penny Arcade. I have no more excuses for how you imagine you can, in one breath, invite people to your conventions with promises of a ‘safe space’ and in the next support rape jokes and rape culture. I cannot imagine how you presume to invite professionals from across the country to speak on your panels, broadcast across the internet on your Twitch stream, about the very issues you are helping to perpetuate and then have your leadership say things like the above transcript. Have you looked up the definition of hypocrisy lately? Because I believe with this last statement, Krahulik and Penny Arcade has used up their last piece of ‘oh well, you know, he didn’t mean it like that’ cred that might have ever existed for ‘Gabe’.

So what now? Now, I say this: Pax was fun. Both of them were fun. I have great memories of both. I won’t forget the faces of the people I spoke to at the panels, or how great it was to chat with the game devs and representatives and the wonderful fellow nerds. But fact is, what the hell am I supposed to do when faced with a statement like this? Do I go to a convention that is headed by people who regret engaging with the fans they hurt, who regret taking down merchandise that supports rape as something to be joked about? Who haven’t seemingly learned a damn thing about being respectful to all parts of their audience, but instead continue to cater to the lowest common denominator of juvenile, offensive humor in an attempt to stay relevant? Sorry. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me a third time, and I gotta have my damn head examined.

sorrynotsorryIn my eyes, as of this statement, Krahulik has proven finally how grossly out of touch he is with the evolving gamer world. This is a geek community that is socially conscious and responsible, that takes into account the feelings and considerations not only of the ‘mainstream’ demographic but of all its membership. This is a community of peers that is demanding, not just asking, that offensive content be reconsidered and shelved to be replaced by content that doesn’t make folks feel hurt. That asks creators to consider whether just because you can create something potentially harmful (not just offensive but downright harmful), does it still mean you should. This is the evolving geek community, and Penny Arcade’s frontman has once again proven he’s got eyes shut to those changes.

No, I’d say its worse. This latest garbage is a slap in the face to every Pax Enforcer or employee who has gone out of their way to try and make the environment at the conventions friendly and safe for all. It is an insult to anyone who attended the conventions to bring about talks about inclusivity and gender/sexual/racial equality in games and gaming culture. It is the comments of someone tragically unaware of the changing face of the gamer world, whose actions are supported by their business team (remember Khoo in the above transcript supports Krahulik’s statement) and therefore indelibly intertwined with the Penny Arcade brand and its subsidiary, Pax.

Do I sound pissed off, Penny Arcade? I am. Because I attended your convention in good faith. Good faith that the voices of people like me, who went to your convention to speak about these issues, were welcome. Instead, I feel as though whatever voice I bring was just used to give legitimacy to your convention. ‘Look,‘ you could say, ‘we have some women talking about these issues! Now maybe they’ll ignore our rape jokes and other nonsense.‘ Do I sound like I’m feeling a little used? Probably because I do. I feel used. Insulted. Frustrated at your misuse of your cultural clout in the geek community. And sad for all those who believed in your corner of the community more than I did.

You’re going to ask, of course, what does it matter if you feel betrayed? Sure, I’m just one tiny game designer, Penny Arcade. But funny thing: there’s a lot of folks out there right now who have read that transcript. Or saw the video. And a lot of companies and individuals who are questioning their consciences about whether or not to continue supporting you. I might just be one. But there’s plenty of ‘ones’ out there. So congratulations – you’ve proven today how tragically out of touch you are and because of that, I’m taking my time, money, attendance and support elsewhere. And I think a hell of a lot of others are going to do the same.

Hope that was worth the price of a few dickwolves.

Signed, Shoshana Kessock

Other articles about this issue:

Gaygamer- Pax Honesty Time: Pulling Dickwolves Merchandise Was ‘A Mistake’

Elizabeth Sampat – Quit Fucking Going To Pax Already, What is Wrong With You?

Leigh Alexander – Still Never Going To Pax

Lillian Cohen-Moore – Why I’m Quitting Pax

Make Me A Sammich – Gabe: We Made A Mistake Removing Dickwolves Merch

Kotaku – Penny Arcade Artist: Pulling Dickwolves Merchandise ‘Was A Mistake’ 

I AM A Game Designer: The Attack of Impostor Syndrome

by Shoshana, posted in On Writing, Speaking Out

imposter

“Hi, my name’s Shoshana Kessock. I’m the creator of Phoenix Outlaw Productions, an indie gaming company out of Brooklyn. I’m also an NYU Game Design student at the Game Center. I’m also a nerd blogger and fiction writer.”

That was sort of my introduction at my recent panel at PaxPrime during the You Game Like A Girl panel. I was nervous. Nay, I was very nervous. There were lights in my eyes. The audience was full of people. There was even a podium for Anja Keister to stand behind. I was having a little bit of a panic moment – and then I let my introduction go. It was a mouthful. It was a textbook example of a problem I found I’ve run into over and over again since I joined the game design community: I keep reciting my resume to people.

In the airport on the way back from Pax, I asked a friend of mine what he thought of my panel. He sort of froze for a second, then said, (and this is paraphrasing): “Do you want some criticism? You said too much in your introduction. You don’t need to justify why you’re up there. You could say ‘I’m a game designer’ – BAM, that’s it. But you’re always trying to prove why you deserve to be there.”

Ouch. Hard to hear. But he was one hundred percent correct.

Hi, I’m Shoshana Kessock and I have a wicked case of impostor syndrome.

Impostor Syndrome, for those that don’t know, is “a psychological phenomenon in which people are unable to internalize their accomplishments. Despite external evidence of their competence, those with the syndrome remain convinced that they are frauds and do not deserve the success they have achieved. Proof of success is dismissed as luck, timing, or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent and competent than they believe themselves to be.” (Thank you Wikipedia for a great description). Call it fraud complex or impostor phenomenon, I’ve got a whopping case of it and I don’t mind admitting it.

Example: Sunday morning I was interviewed after the successful panel the night before to be part of a documentary on Polaris, a YouTube channel. The gentleman doing the interview was wonderful and started out asking me my name and what I do. I tossed out the same long-ass line of introduction. And then he asked me to talk a little bit more about what I’ve done in game design. And I positively froze. Why was he asking? my brain asked. After hearing that, does he not believe I belong on camera? Maybe he’s not interested in what I have to say? Maybe he’s figured out I don’t belong here. Maybe-

It goes from there, folks. The internal monologue of self-doubt and concern. And the end question: maybe I haven’t earned calling myself a game designer after all?

What the heck does that even MEAN?

imposter-434It’s only recently that I’ve started talking about these feelings in a public forum. A lot of people believe that talking about your issues and your psychological states while working is weak, or embarrassing, or simply something one doesn’t do at all. Why that is? Society’s got a history of trying to cover up perceived weaknesses in what I can only imagine is some kind of sociological throwback to caveman days, where we believed showing weakness would get us automatically predated upon. This can be reenforced by those ass-hats out there who DO act like haters, who do treat creative industries like some kind of Wall Street, greed-is-good hunting ground where there is only so much awesomeness to go around, who sling their jealousy and their own self-doubt at others to perpetuate the battle for success. (To which I say: hey guys, this isn’t Highlander, there doesn’t need to be only one! Put the claymores and backbiting away!)

As much as this world can be a rat-race, with everyone battling for their piece of the pie, I’ve embraced the notion in my life that our post-caveman world can be a place of honesty rather than obfuscation, compassion versus pure competition, and community versus blatant adversarialism. So I started to talk about my feelings, my issues, and my wicked case of the ‘I don’t belong heres’. And you know what I discovered?

I’m not alone.

There are so many other people who feel this way. So many other creators who have found success who are steeped in this demoralizing idea that they were ‘just lucky’ for having what they have. Mired among feelings of self-doubt, self-consciousness, and lack of self-confidence, this impostor syndrome tries to tell folks who have worked hard and have talent that we don’t belong where we’ve gotten. We look around at other people who are successful in our field, sometimes people who we have put up on a pedestal to admire, and we say ‘I can’t walk with these guys, I’m not in that pantheon.’ So we disbelieve success or our own self-worth. We don’t believe we’re good enough to succeed.

I have this issue in spades. I have been able to recognize how fortunate I am for the chances that I have been given, for the opportunities that have come my way to get where I am. I thank the folks who have helped me find the path I’m on and trusted me with collaborating on projects or partnering with me for events. Yet often when I consider the things I’ve done, I see them as happy luck and forget one thing: I did work to get there too and part of that accomplishment is mine. So when someone asks me about what I do, I still feel the urge to look around furtively, as if someone is going to show up, point to me in a dramatic fashion like that monkey from Family Guy and declare: “She doesn’t deserve that accolade! She’s only lucky she got here! Look, a fraud!”

My brain is also a terribly dramatic place full of B-movie dialogue. But you get the idea.

Where the hell does this idea come from? How does it get in your head? I track the idea back to the notion that has been perpetuated by a lot of society that if you’re successful in creative fields, it’s because of luck. It’s difficult to be a creative person, says the world, and there’s a million of you out there who want to be successful writers/artists/dancers/ect. You have to sweat and work your way up, pay your dues, and then if you’re lucky (there’s that word again), you’ll get the breaks and you’ll ‘make it’. As if making it comes with some kind of ribbon that tells you that you’ve arrived. As if all the hard work nights are just some kind of quick montage sequence that you go through in thirty seconds, only for the important part of your life narrative to be gifted to you in some kind of lucky happenstance. It’s all very Disney-movie, the uplifting inspiring story of the artist who struggled but finally made their break because of a gift from a patron that just fell into their lap. That’s the repeated story we see presented to us: the artist is recognized because some magical godmother/godfather comes down and recognizes talent, christens us ‘worthy’, and suddenly fame and fortune follow.

Worse than this bizarre made-for-tv-movie mentality however is the piece of sage advice handed down by lots of people when aspiring creators ask them how to become a ‘professional’ creative. The answer almost always begins with these damning words: being a ____________ is really hard and it’s really difficult to work your way in. That discouragement comes with an almost implied subtext that I believe works its way into our view of being a creative professional:

Being creative is hard, the world says, and there’s a million like you. So what makes you special?

And of course, the also implied: what makes you worthy?

tumblr_l996sh1Qvy1qc3besThe answer to all these questions can be a little difficult to hear at first, but here goes: you’re not special.

You’re not special, or lucky, or a unique snowflake. There are a lot of people out there who are working hard to become creatives, and they’re not special either. They’re all however capable of awesome things, just like you, and you are part of a community of talented folks who are striving to bring their talent out into the world. You are distinct in your vision and your use of your talent and the vision you bring to your creative drive. You are distinct in the hard work you put into your work and the way in which you recognize and seize opportunities to put forward your efforts. You aren’t special in some ephemeral, capricious way that is gifted by some nebulous authority. You’re worthy because of the way you strive to make your vision a reality. You’re worthy because we’re all worthy and the only thing that sets us apart is how much hard work you put in to hone your craft. You’re worthy then because you have the skill to back up your talent, born of your drive to succeed.

That’s my antidote to this impostor syndrome problem. Have I yet achieved a state of zen with the problem? Nope. I still get flustered and confused when people come up to me and say, “Hey, I really liked that thing you did” or “thanks for that game!” I can’t seem to get my brain to accept one basic premise: you worked hard, now accept the praise. 

It’s a work in progress. Until the day when the notion of that finger-pointing dramatic authority appearing out of nowhere finally disappears out of my head, I’ll just spend my time reminding myself that I am worthy and I work hard. And I will keep thanking the folks who like my stuff because hey, there’s still appreciation. But I’m also going to work on not reciting my resume everywhere and instead just saying:

“Hi, I’m Shoshana Kessock. I’m a writer and game designer. Thanks for listening.”

Can’t Swing A Con Badge Without Hitting A Nazi

by Shoshana, posted in Convention Report, Geek Culture, Speaking Out

21805945Welcome back from GenCon, fellow gamers! To all those who attended as part of the nearly 50,000 gamers who hit the Indianapolis area… are you as tired as I am? Good lord, it was a heck of a convention. I will talk more about it in my next post. First, however, I’m going to riff on a different problem. Let’s talk together, shall we, about Nazis.

Nazis are the bad guys in so many games its hard to make a list. They serve as the ultimate expression of evil given form. Nazis represent the boogeyman of human devastation, of dehumanizing monsters in uniform who have no consideration for their fellow man. They are the perfect example of a person divorced from their empathy for the ‘other’ in the world, willing to destroy lives based on their rhetoric. It’s hard not to see a Nazi in a piece of work and not say ‘that is purely evil.’ That is, in fact, what most game designers count on when they add Nazis into their work. Need a villain that everyone can rally around kicking around? Make it Nazis! Want people to feel comfortable with walloping the crap out of a person in a game with, say, a rocket launcher? Make the villain a Nazi and suddenly people don’t feel anything anymore because, well, it’s the personification of evil. That’s what Nazis have become in games – the shorthand for a villainy so vile there is no explanation needed. It is #evil with a capitol hashtag. And for some people, that’s all Nazis are.

For other people, they are the nightmare of our grandparents’ childhood. They are the stories we heard growing up about relatives we’ll never meet. They’re the reason our relatives never felt safe all the remaining days of their lives, and named their daughters and sons after children that were no longer alive. They were real boogeymen that crawled out of history and into our lives. And to some, they’ve become a media punchline.

I won’t go into how difficult that can be for me. After seeing my third product in the dealer’s hall at GenCon, I may have exclaimed loudly that I could use a moratorium on Nazis for a little while. I could go one year without seeing Nazis used haphazardly in a game. Then I considered that thought and moved beyond it. Nazis being used in games might bother me, but they’re contextualized in those games as the villains they are and ought to be in media. I even saw games that treated the material well, such as Ken Hite’s book Nazi Occult and realized that not all Nazi representations were created equal. The content might be difficult for me but that is me. I can avoid those games, or choose to appreciate them from afar.

Then, I encountered the Nazi cosplayer.

I wish I had a picture of this person, walking down the street past the noodle shop in downtown Indianapolis. I was sitting with a friend, talking about how wonderful the convention had been so far, but not five minutes before I had been discussing how tired I was of seeing Nazi EVERYTHING lately. Then, no sooner had we moved on to another topic but BAM. Here comes a Nazi down the street. I got a good look at the whole outfit and even as I tried to place what he might be cosplaying from (was it a video game? an anime? a film?) my brain came up with the only answer that counted: NOT OKAY.

Context is a very important consideration when looking at difficult content in media. If there is, say, racist content in a piece of media, is it contextualized to represent that racism as acceptable or unacceptable? Is it historically placed? What does the piece of work say about racism through the events going on around it? All of these things provide context. However, cosplay is one of those mediums that offers very little context. Unless someone is crystal clear what that person is costuming as, there is no context between a cosplayer in a Nazi outfit and, say, just someone wearing Nazi regalia and walking through a convention. And left without the context, I couldn’t tell what the hell this cosplayer was intending. Was he intending to just represent the villain of some piece of fiction, or was he glamorizing Nazis through his pristine costuming? I had no idea. All I saw was a Nazi walking down the street past where I was eating and I couldn’t drive that image out of my mind.

Say what you want about freedom of expression. Say what you please about being able to wear what you want. But when you put on a swastika or the whole regalia, death’s head and all, you are taking on the symbology around that and the context that comes with wearing the uniform of one of the most reviled groups in the 20th century. And you carry that around with you into other people’s lives. Is that what you want to bring to a convention of 50,000 people who are there to have fun? Is that what you want people to see?

Now let’s talk about retail. There’s been a lot of talk about what I like to call UnderwearGate 2013. A booth called Belle and Blade (adorable name) put up some underwear that was some of the most ridiculously offensive merch I’ve ever seen at a con. One of the undies actually said “I could use some Sexual Harassment.” Gareth Skarka pointed it out and I got a photo of it out on Twitter, which got folks talking, and there were complaints about it. It’s all chronicled here on Skarka’s blog. But here’s the other part: did you know this booth, which makes its bones selling military movies and gear, also has tons of Nazi stuff?

Previous to seeing what kind of awfulness was available, I went to buy a ‘zombie killer’ patch from this booth for some LARP costuming. It was only after I paid that I turned around in my half-exhausted state and saw boxes with Nazi symbols on it, Nazi signs, and even Nazi pin-up posters on the inside of the booth. That is ALONG with the underwear. So in one shot, Belle and Blade became one of the most egregious examples of what not to represent at a convention by repping sexual harassment AND Nazis in one cash grab.

“But Shoshana,” you might ask, “isn’t it freedom of expression? Isn’t that his right?”

Actually, not entirely. See, the sexual harassment stuff is straight up against the terms of GenCon’s policies on convention harassment and reports were made. But the Nazi paraphernalia is more of a grey area, just like Nazi cosplay. The policies say something about not being able to costume anything that resembles a uniform from the 20th century, but that certainly didn’t stop Nazi cosplayers that I saw. That didn’t stop the stuff from being sold in a booth.

Freedom of expression is the backbone of so many conversations about offensive content. However just as it might be someone’s right to go out and walk the streets of a convention wearing Nazi gear (barring any rules at that event that says you can’t), it’s my right to feel that is unacceptable. It’s my right to question what that person is trying to represent or express. And it’s my right to say that maybe you ought to consider the time and energy you’re putting into so meticulously glamorizing such a symbol of human evil.

 

Note: In my consideration of the situation, I want to make clear that I don’t blame GenCon for the situation. GenCon is a wonderful convention that I enjoy very much and that puts on a hell of a show every year. Take that as a disclaimer.

Video Game Ads: When Sexy Is Just Plain Ridiculous

by Shoshana, posted in Geek Culture, Speaking Out

Sexism in video games. The conversation has echoed through the internet and the halls of game development companies for months now, as it has seemingly become the topic whose time has come. With women like Anita Sarkeesian doing her best to get the message out there (despite heinous threats against her person), there finally seems to be some serious critical attention being paid to the choices designers make in creating their female characters. If you aren’t familiar with Sarkeesian’s work, I would point to Feminist Frequency and her video series Tropes Vs Women to get some background.

Part and parcel with the discussion of character design has been questions of how female characters are depicted in game advertising. However even in a time when companies are examining how to reach their audiences, there are still some stellar examples out there of blatantly sexual advertisement that is ignoring the conversation altogether. They just seem to be skipping the discourse completely in return for one thing: boobs.

This article is brought to you by some late night reading I was doing that was interrupted when this advertisement caught my eye:

"IN CASE YOU DIDN'T KNOW WHO THIS WAS FOR, WE KINDLY LABELED IT FOR YOU! YOU'RE WELCOME!"
“IN CASE YOU DIDN’T KNOW WHO THIS WAS FOR, WE KINDLY LABELED IT FOR YOU! YOU’RE WELCOME!”

Well, if that isn’t a way to interrupt what you were doing. Ironically I was actually looking up an article on sexism in games when this little jewel popped up. After I finished staring, I then went from laughing my butt off to horror back to laughing. Because – really guys? REALLY?! In the face of such ridiculousness its hard to not laugh because such ads just jump the shark from sexism into plain preposterous.

Once I’d recovered from my laughing fit, I got down to looking this gem up to find out what the heck it’s all about. Wartune labels itself as an “Epic Strategy MMORPG” that secretly seems to wish it was World of Warcraft. But since it isn’t, I suppose its advertisers wanted to find some way to lure in players. So they decided to just forget about, you know, TACT and went for the obvious advertisement choice. With a pop up ad so tacky that it might make some porn execs roll their eyes, Wartune is just another example of the silliness that goes on.

Now, you might think that this is an isolated case of the silliness of internet game advertisements. But it’s not.

"Come play, my Lord." Yeesh, I've seen better dialogue in porn.
“Come play, my Lord.” Yeesh, I’ve seen better dialogue in porn.

Remember these, folks? For a while, you couldn’t log into a website without tripping over the awful advertisements for Evony. It was a city builder that promised it would be “FREE FOREVER!” and decided to use heaving breasts as their primary way to draw people to their game. The amusing part was the game was clearly aimed at a fantasy audience, but as their advertisements went on they just plain through out the premise of sexy elves and went right to modern-looking women on display. The thing became such a huge internet joke that Plants Versus Zombies made a great parody of it for their own game, with a boob-showing zombie asking you to “Save Your Lover!” It was so ludicrous as to become a joke. The game still exists, though now the woman shown smiling at you from their front page is in a Renn Faire style gown and far more covered. As you can see, the precedent was always there for Wartune to build on.

But surely these are just internet games, right? Nothing so egregious could exist in mainstream-

Sorry, nope. Couldn’t even get through the sentence. It isn’t just the tiny online games that do it, folks. The nigh ludicrous objectification lives and breaths in AAA games and has for years. There are so many examples I could give, but let’s just put out a couple here to give some context to the conversation:

958232_121065_back
Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior – 1987 – Palace Software

Here’s just an example of the historical context. This is a Commodore 64 game called Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior. This is in fact the back cover of the game. The front shows a giant muscle-bound male Barbarian standing over the above woman as she reclines in his shadow. At least on the back they let her stand up and hold a sword. Remember, this is a Commodore 64 game. All the characters are on wee little pixels so basic they make your Super Nintendo look like Star Trek technology.

Want to get more mainstream? Let’s have a conversation about some ads for Soul Calibur. Now I’m a huge fan of this fighting game series but the advertisements for Soul Calibur 5 made me wonder if they forgot they were marketing a game and not skin care products or butt floss. Meet two characters from Soul Calibur 5. Who are they? I can’t tell because no distinguishing features of theirs are actually showing!

Now look, I get it. Sex sells. But there are lines sometimes that just seem so ridiculous that you can’t help but laugh. And then maybe get mad. Mostly at such blatantly over the top examples, however, I have to wonder how worried the designers must be about the weakness of their product that their answer is: “We just have to have boobs! More butt! Whatever you do, don’t put a face on it! Just maximize the sexy factor and they’ll come and play!”

And the sad part is that it kind of works.

Take Dragon’s Crown. This game created a whopping controversy by first creating characters with such gravity-defying proportions that they made people across the industry cringe.

Hi there Sorceress. Nice to meet you. It must be really hard to concentrate on magic with the massive back pain you must have.
Hi there Sorceress. Nice to meet you. It must be really hard to concentrate on magic over the massive back pain those must cause.

Then it made even more headlines when the designer tried to explain away the ridic proportions of his women by pointing out the guys are just as bad, and then turned the whole thing into a bad gay joke. It was kind of a nightmare all the way around PR-wise but the game came out. And all the gravity defying boobs did their job – they got the game the PR it needed to garner more attention. Am I saying that is why they designed it that way? Maybe not. But maybe it sure didn’t hurt either. The game’s out there. It’s part of the discussion now. And no amount explanation can justify the chiropractic nightmare that is that character design.

Not all examples of bad representations of women in game ads are so blatant of course. These just stand as the eye rolling, knee slapping, I have to laugh so I don’t get furious examples of the egregious sexist representations in games. They exist, I believe, so that when people come out to say that there isn’t a problem with sexism in the industry and that women should just calm down, I can pull these beauties out of the drawer. I keep them around so as to provide juxtaposition to other examples of sexist ads to ask ‘how very different are they?’

Case in point the comparisons being made between how the female characters are portrayed in two of 2013’s biggest AAA titles, Bioshock Infinite and The Last of Us.

article-1354611852557-16578a76000005dc-551795_466x310

 

Now I’m a huge fan of Bioshock Infinite but when the cover to the game came out, there was an uproar over the design. Elizabeth, our female companion to the hero Booker DeWitt, is relegated to the back cover of the game box. Sure, she’s clothed as heck (thank heavens for small favors) but she’s on back. Heck, even the Barbarian bikini woman got to be on the front too! Kenneth Lavine, lead designer of Infinite explained his choice as meant to appeal to the “uninformed” consumer. He described actually visiting frat houses to find men who hadn’t heard of Bioshock and then designed the cover based on their suggestions. Dude on front? Check. Gun? Double check. Woman relegated to somewhere less important? Done!

TheLastOfUs

By comparison, The Last of Us placed lead character Ellie front and center in the advertisements for the game despite pressure not to do so. In fact, designer Neil Druckman reported in the above linked article that their company Naughty Dogs was under lots of pressure to take Ellie out of the ads altogether. Still they stood their ground and right now, you can’t throw a stone in the game industry without hitting praise for The Last of Us and its brilliant Ellie. This was a conscious choice that Naughty Dogs made about how they were going to present their female lead and it paid off big time. 

Comparing the over-the-top T&A show of the above ads to the more subtle question of representation in Infinite versus Last of Us does nothing if not to point out how insidious the problem really is. While critics can discuss the problems of the big name titles, though, and the more subtle choices designers are making, sometimes it bears pointing out the blatant ones too. Otherwise stuff like this might slip us by:

51107And really, we can always use a good facepalm in our day once in a while.