Speaking Out – Page 5 – Shoshana Kessock

How To Insult Your Readers: Geek-Hating In Reviews

August 7, 2013 by Shoshana, posted in Random Aside, Speaking Out

It’s that time again. Time for me to make a little comment on commentary. Why? Because who watches the watchmen, really. Who critiques the critics? Well apparently I do, and this week I’m aiming my sights at those who critique nerdy things for the media. I’m specifically looking at you, Linda Stasi over at the New York Post. She recently wrote up a review of the upcoming SyFy television show, Heroes of Cosplay. And let me tell you, this review is a positive stinker.

Right off the bat, Stasi opens up her review admitting something: she doesn’t understand cosplay. She admits she doesn’t get it in the least. Then she spends the next few paragraphs trying to describe cosplay to the uninitiated viewer who might not be familiar with this subset of geek culture. Hopelessly floundering, Stasi falls back on sayings like “Renting is so last decade!” and “What the hell is that?” I’m sorry, Ms. Stasi, but this isn’t Sex in the City and you aren’t Carrie Bradshaw. What you are, however, is clearly attempting to cover up your ignorance with cute quips that don’t quite do the job. The reviewer here was clearly unfamiliar with the material and therefore went for the cheap joke. No surprise here, since reviewers have been falling back on the stereotypical ‘point and laugh at the nerdy folks’ trope for their commentary since geek chic began.

Newsflash: there are more television shows on about supernatural/fantasy elements than ever. Game of Thrones is winning Emmies. Lost was a thing for ages. The Avengers blasted down the doors at the box office. The Big Bang Theory (like it or hate it) is HUGE. NERDS ARE IN. So why are we still accepting nerd-hater reviewers throwing their ‘cool kid’ crap all over the place?

Folks, it is no secret that reviewers have to watch a lot of crap. They sit through television shows, books, movies and plays that they might think are great, but a lot of the time they’re going to get stuck with things they hate. At the end of these drawn out experiences they have to fill up column inches or blog posts or even on-air commentary about the pros and cons of said piece of work. Yet if the reviewer has any familiarity with the material, has done even the slightest bit of their homework on the piece they’re reviewing, and was approaching the material with the least bit of respect, it shows in the work. Those reviews at least give honest critique and commentary on a piece of material, citing points and facts about it rather than falling back into little snide jokes.

It’s not as if audiences aren’t noticing the difference. Just last year was the awful One Girlfriend’s Guide to The Avengers debacle, in which a Moviefone review (purportedly satirical, but only indicated as such after the fact) not only insulted women but anyone with an IQ about who would be interested in seeing The Avengers film. That movie went on to break records in the box office and prove that comic book movies can not only rock, they can kick the crap out of earnings reports. Reviews, screw with that at your peril.

What is even worse about this kind of review is that its once again laugh at the nerd day. Reviews like this come off as superior, smug high school cheerleader nonsense at its worse, and yet they are perpetuated. I’d like to remind folks of something: nerds spend money on these products and are a huge part of the commercial audience. Embrace the geek or risk alienating key portions of your audience. Media outlets that splash pictures of sexy cosplayers during New York Comic Con week and then publish reviews like this (I’m talking to you, New York Post, you had your NYCC coverage too) have very short memories indeed about how popular geek cultural items have become and how they draw readership both from geek communities and from everyone else. Instead of embracing that, some outlets have clung to treating geek media and culture like it is some kind of sideshow attraction rather than actual valid popular culture.

Worse yet, these outlets ignore an incredible resource they could be utilizing: the geek community themselves. There are vital, vibrant, passionate commentators within the geek community who know their business both as enthusiasts and as critics and would do a much better job presenting informed media review. It’s the outlets that have embraced the geek – like MTV and CNN to name two- that understand just how much cultural capitol geekdom has right now and find ways to welcome rather than alienate, to include rather than ridicule.

Meet the new Doctor, Peter Capaldi - instant media sensation. — Meet the new Doctor, Peter Capaldi – instant media sensation.

This week saw news outlets reporting on a major casting choice for the upcoming television season. No, it wasn’t who was going to be on the next Bachelorette, or the replacement of someone on CSI. This was an announcement as big as the fanfare over who will be the next Bond, and came from the same part of the world. It was the fantastically geeky Doctor Who announcement of Peter Capaldi as the Doctor and it rocked news outlets everywhere. If a single one of those outlets had a reviewer going “God, this is so nerdy!” they’d be laughed out of their britches by the number of Whovians across the world and the power of a single fandom. Media outlets instead recognized the cultural capitol at work here and offered it the respect that power is due. And you know what? That’s the way it should be.

The time of snarky, dismissive reviews of nerddom are over and those who don’t get geek culture better grab some internet time on Tumblr or Buzzfeed to catch up or risk finding themselves extinct. Because nerds can do their job better, folks, and we’ll do it without being insulting.

Internet Toxic Shock Syndrome: How Don’t Read The Comments Doesn’t Work

July 30, 2013 by Shoshana, posted in Geek Culture, Speaking Out

(Warning: This will not be language safe. Because frankly, this whole argument demands a little bit of four-letter wording).

In one moment, I’m going to show you a video that I saw in a recent Penny Arcade article about the recent Phil Fish / Fez II meltdown that occurred this past week. If you’re not familiar with the situation, let me give a breakdown so you understand what set off this post in the first place. Here’s a little context:

Phil Fish is an indie video game designer who created a game called Fez. He was in development of a sequel to Fez called Fez II when Marcus Beer of the GameTrailers podcast went on his show and verbally ripped Fish fellow indie creator Jonathan Blow a new face. For what reason? I can honestly not pretend to care. It was mostly about the fact that Fish and Blow (who Beer decided to nickname BlowFish) decided not to answer questions about the upcoming indie games offerings on X-Box Live. So Beer decided to target his self-confessed “bitch and moan session” at these creators for not answering questions.

That’s when things went mayhem. Because Fish shot back over Twitter and the two got into a heinous fight over the internet – which as everyone knows, always ends well. And in the end, Phil Fish quit making his game Fez II and who knows what will happen from there. Now, forgetting the fact that this turned into an internet slap fight of epic proportions, let’s step back for second. A guy who is out there making a thing completely lost his shit because, effectively, he was getting slammed by folks in the media. The response from a lot of people have been, “Big deal. The media hits folks all the time. The internet is an unforgiving place. Don’t read the comments, suck it up, walk it off, get back to work.”

Then I saw this video and read this article from Penny Arcade. The video is Dave Chapelle of course being the bastion of goddamn wisdom that he can be:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OniNubupbQ4&feature=player_embedded]

Then I sat back and I thought about all the things I’ve been seeing on my own Twitter feed recently. A woman helms a project in England to get Jane Austin, arguably one of England’s greatest female authors, on some currency and receives rape threats on Twitter. She stands up to try to get the people prosecuted for threatening her and sparks a controversy. All this over work she’s done, and it comes in over YouTube. Feminist Frequency’s own Anita Sarkeesian, on the same day, tweets about the fact that she had to report two particularly heinous rape threats and she was curious if Twitter would do anything about it. I watched a YouTube recording of Reza Aslan, a twenty-year religion scholar and author of a new controversial book on Jesus, school the HELL out of a Fox reporter because she couldn’t get over him being Muslim long enough to engage him as a human being over his work and made the mistake of looking at the heinous comments section below. It was enough to make me slightly ill to the stomach.

All of it together has got me wondering: what the hell is wrong with people?

Folks, I am a critic. I am. Part of my job is writing reviews of things. I have reviewed books, television, movies. I’m not as famous perhaps as this Marcus Beer (I have no idea, I had never heard of him until this BS exploded) but I have people who have read my stuff. I’ve even written reviews that were heated and sometimes I’ve gone back and questioned whether or not I was entirely too unfair towards a personality involved. Still. I do not remember where in my undergraduate classes on film and media criticism my professors told me it was okay to blast the shit out of someone in a bitch session. I don’t remember where in my raising since childhood someone told me it was okay to take someone to the woodshed for their creative choices by attacking them personally. I don’t remember that being part of the job.

Now I might not be a big deal reviewer but I know some things. Let’s start with this:

One: Calling people ‘toss-pots’ and ‘fucking hipsters’ for doing their jobs in the indie world is not professional. Its shock jock provocateur behavior at its worst. Its third rate Howard Stern armchair quarterbacking. Its two steps above being that guy on Reddit yelling ‘yur mom’. Because you’re not critiquing the actual work these guys are doing anymore, you’re just taking shots at who they are. You’re that guy chasing the Kardashians for a picture of their belly fat and making up new ways to talk about celebrity nip-slips, only you’re doing it about the gaming industry. I don’t care how hurt your feelings are about not getting the quote or not getting the story you want. Learn to live with disappointments.

Two, here’s my question: where’s your game? Where’s your work? What movie did you make? What have you put out there? And how would you like it if someone went all over the place and called you names? If that sounds a little too touchy-feely and kindergarden teacher to you, that’s because that’s the place where people learn those lessons about how to talk to their fellow human beings – in PRE-SCHOOL. If you’re going out and being a critic, you better do one of two things: be prepared to be a human being about how you critique other people’s work or else you better be able to say ‘I’m a creator too’ when people ask you where your work is, and then you better be ready to take the same slings and arrows. Because if you want to sling, you best put your own hard work out there to be slung at too. And if you don’t care, if you can take that kind of muck-raking and don’t see that it is hurtful, then I don’t understand you. I don’t get where your empathy lies.

Phil Fish put this up on Twitter and it resounded so deeply in me, along with what Dave Chapelle said in that video:

So here’s a guy. He made a thing. He put it out into the world and he gets comments all the time. He gets garbage. And finally, he gets one last straw dumped on him and says he’s done. He’s out. And people are saying that he’s crazy or lost it. Think about what Chapelle said there. Think about how it feels when you get criticized and then imagine what kind of magnification a thousand fold this guy is getting. I’m not looking at what kind of a guy he is or whatnot. I’m looking at the stimulus he has to deal with constantly in his face for the simple sin of trying to be a creator in an industry he likes. He’s the ant under the magnifying glass. Eventually he’s going to burn up. Who wouldn’t?

Now I’m not going to lie. I’ve had shitty interactions with people who are creators when I’m press. Hell, I had a shirty interaction with a comic book writer who is SUPER well known that made me so grouchy that I basically still think he’s a douchebag ages later. But I realized something recently that made me think that maybe, just maybe, I owe that guy an apology: he is not my bitch. Neil Gaiman said that of George RR Martin recently to some folks and it bears repeating. These guys ain’t our bitches, reviewers and interviewers and fans. And treating them that way makes us the bitches. Does it suck when someone is shirty with you? SURE. But get over yourself. They don’t owe you shit, even if you’re media. They don’t.

The internet can give you some serious toxic shock if you step out there and try to create, or say a thing, or do a thing. I’ve seen it myself. I’ve had people put up videos calling me names. I’ve had rape threats sent to my inbox because I spoke up against that BS Grope Crew stuff happening on Twitter. I’ve been called names. I’ve had friends called names I wouldn’t call my worst enemy. I’ve seen reporters chase Anne Hathaway through a protest she was attending like a regular person (not a celebrity) shouting at her that she owes him and she’s a bitch for not giving him a quote. I read Wil Wheaton’s recent experience at ComicCon and I start to really think that some folks have lost their ever-loving, self-entitled little minds.

Every time people speak up about this kind of behavior going on, the answers are the same: don’t pay any mind, just let it roll off your back, don’t read the comments. Don’t read the comments? It’s not just in the comments anymore! It’s in the self-entitled disrespectful way people are treating one another on the airwaves, across the internet and in person. The only way to get the hell away from it seems to be to just shut down and get out now or just stop doing anything that gets other people’s attention. At all.

I had to go thru recently to see if I could track down how things got this bad. I think I got it. This is the process:

The internet gives us anonymity to say whatever the hell we want. Then folks step out who aren’t hiding but put themselves out as creators, voices, whatever, and they become targets. They become that way for a billion reasons – either someone has an opinion that differs, or someone is just having a bad day, or someone has some angst they want to vent at another target. They hide it behind things like freedom of speech and ‘this is my opinion’ and ‘you put yourself out there so you want the attention so here it is!’ And then they spew. And the good voices, the people who just come to have decent conversations on the internet or speak their opinions and criticism with respect and humor and community in mind get drowned out by waves of absolutely rancid garbage. Or worse, they get drowned out by voices of critics who use their own self-created voices to spew the same trash, except under the guise of journalism.

The Newsroom this week had a quote come out of the main character Will’s mouth. “I’m against censorship but I’m a big fan of self-censorship.” That means that just because you have an opinion doesn’t mean it SHOULD be said. And when you say it, you have a responsibility to consider what kind of impact it has on another human being. Just because you CAN say something a certain way doesn’t mean you should. It’s a matter of respect and empathy and we as an internet society seem to be fighting an uphill battle against a landslide of poisonous garbage that cuts a path through good people who are just trying to do what they love.

I don’t know Phil Fish. I don’t know a thing about him personally, about his behavior, and I have no opinion one way or another about him as a person. I don’t know Anita Sarkeesian. I don’t know Reza Aslan. But I know folks who have gotten this treatment. I have burst into tears over things said to me in hurtful, hateful internet crap. I’ve had people discount all the writing I might do or anything I’ve said on a panel to slam into me for being ‘a loudmouth bitch’ or ‘fat disgusting slag’. I have looked at my computer with open-mouthed disgust and thought, “Who the hell told you it was okay to say such things?”

And I decided it wasn’t okay. And I decided to try to do better, to be more careful about how I addressed others in my criticisms and treatment. I decided to work on examining people’s actions and output in my criticism rather than who they are as people because glass houses world, glass frickin houses. But I also decided not to keep quiet about the phenomenon. If the trolls and the nasty critics and the hopped-up internet bullies get a voice, so do to the folks who say that this isn’t okay. So I’m going to use that voice and say it loud AGAIN. Because, you know, it seems to need a reminder every five minutes.

This shit is not okay. Not anywhere. I don’t care who the hell you are. Learn to talk respectfully to one another again or put down the microphone because your attitude is not welcome in a community of creators, whomever they may be. I’m not prepared to stand as a creator in a community I’m brand new to and say its okay when creators are bullied and heckled and hurt. Or if that is the way the gaming community works, it best come to realize that not all of us signed up for that – I certainly didn’t – and I won’t stand for it in my interactions. I’m holding others to a higher standard now.

So seriously, come to argue, come to be critical of work, come to discuss. But for the love of everything holy, learn to keep a respectful, civil tongue in your head or count yourself as part of the sea of toxic crap that floats along the media stream. Be quality or be part of the problem.

Wendy Davis, SB5 And The Night The People Screamed Out The Clock

June 26, 2013 by Shoshana, posted in Speaking Out

1016140_10152977695405374_2136397538_n — Senator Wendy Davis. Because c’mon, she’s kind of khaleesi right now.

The Texas Senate on June 25th. A senator I never heard of before today started a filibuster. And the internet exploded.

This is what democracy looks like. This was a night of surprising political drama. And I was watching.

It started with some chatter on my Twitter feed. Apparently, the Texas State Senate was voting on a bill to limit abortion rights in the state of Texas, a bill called SB5. Senator Wendy Davis took on the monumental task to filibuster in an attempt to hold out the Senate until the 12PM deadline. She got up to make her case in front of the State Senate at about 11AM. And she stood there for ten hours. During that time, the senators that wanted the bill passed found a couple of instances to call her on violating the rules of a filibuster. Those rules state that a person must continue speaking or else they cede the floor. They cannot sit down, or lean on anything. They cannot take a break or eat anything or go to the bathroom. They just keep talking.

So Senator Wendy Davis talked. And talked. Until nearly 10:30 when she was called on some BS infraction. At this point the Senate tried to call for a vote. And a miraculous thing right out of the West Wing happened: the other senators opposing the bill jumped in with every bit of Robert’s Rules of Order and parliamentary procedure they could to try and stall. It was like watching every John Grisham film crossed with every good episode of The West Wing.

To watch the live stream of the Senate, it was the most riveting thing. Here were people struggling against the intentions of other lawmakers to push through a bill to deprive women of proper medical support. And they were doing everything they could to find the words, to find the questions and precedents, to keep the discussion going as long as they could. Two senators along with the heroic Senator Wendy Davis deserves a call out. Senator Kirk Watson did his best to take the points that Senator Davis got called out on and tried to hold the floor.

But it was Senator Van de Putte, who came from her own father’s FUNERAL to get into the fight, who got the most amazing quote of the night. When the President refused to hear her point of order, she said: “At what point must a female Senator raise her hand or voice to be recognized over her male colleagues in the room?” Boom. Mike drop.

Those trying to kill the bill made it until fifteen minutes to midnight. It was nail-biting. And at thirteen minutes to midnight, they looked set to lose the fight. The President of the Senate started to call the vote. It looked hopeless.

And the people screamed. The gallery above the Senate erupted as one and started cheering, shouting, screaming, no matter what. State troopers and cops came into the gallery, lining the walls, and started trying to clear them out but to no avail. They locked the doors to the gallery, witnesses state, and kept them in there. The President of the Senate tried to quiet them but they wouldn’t be quiet.

They shouted. They cheered. They screamed. And they RAN OUT THE CLOCK.

A bunch of Senators stood on the floor, confused and looking lost as the people in the gallery showed just how much they cared about making sure women’s choice was protected. And the clock hit 12PM. The people ran down the clock on a Texas Senate and blocked the vote. At least, that’s what we thought. As it did, the President of the Senate was trying to get everyone to vote. He gathered the senators up close to the podium so they could hear correctly and then called the vote.

Let me be clear. I was on YouTube with over 100,000 other people watching as the senators called a vote after midnight when they should not have been able to do so. As soon as that happened, democratic senators called them on it, stating: “It’s after midnight.” Twitter and Facebook exploded into madness over it and people began shouting it down from the gallery. The senators disappeared and for a while, nobody knew what had happened. Was it legal? Wasn’t it? We online went to Twitter to follow what was going on, scouring for information. Sources began tweeting that the official legal record of the vote stated that it was held on 6/26 – that is AFTER midnight and therefore it would not be a legal vote. Only nine minutes later, the same website record stated it was 6/25 after all – someone had changed it! But the internet was watching, folks, and that doesn’t go unnoticed.

Time stamp states the vote came in 6/26…

...then magic, 6/25! — …then magic, 6/25!

And in case you needed a physical example:

Meanwhile out in the rotunda, a livestream captured everyone staying put with shouts of “Hell no, we won’t go!” The democrats were pulled back into a closed session to decide if the vote was legal while around the country, everyone waited.

BNqnmXhCUAA1gwC — Senator Wendy Davis, presumably reminding the GOP leadership how to tell time.

At nearly 3AM it came down from Wendy Davis’s twitter, passed to the people in the rotunda. The bill was recorded as coming in at 12:03AM. As of my writing this at nearly 4AM, the bill is reported to be dead.

And that is because of the people. Those people in the gallery rose up in a voice I had never heard before, the energy electric, to shout down a bill they did not want to see get passed. For the good of women’s health, they blasted it out with thirteen minutes of screaming and shouting and cheering. And of course, there is Wendy Davis.

Senator Wendy Davis started this yesterday with a filibuster I had never heard about. She got up on her feet and for ten hours, she didn’t sit down or stop talking. She did this because she believed that this bill needed to be stopped and she was willing to sacrifice her comfort to do it. She was willing to stand up and have her voice heard to be the face of people across Texas and even across the country who believe in a woman’s right to choose control over her own body. Because of that choice, she did what few people have the guts to do – she spoke truth to power and she helped her cause win. Wendy didn’t finish the filibuster out at midnight but the people did it for her.

There are few times I can say I’ve seen political moments that captured me to the core. This was one of them. I shouted at my computer, tweeted more than perhaps I ought to have, snarked with people on Facebook and joined people across the internet in solidarity with the folks in Texas. Now, at 4AM, I can’t imagine having gone to bed. I got a chance to watch democracy at it’s best and watch as people tried to steal a vote and lost.

It’s also important to note that while this historic moment was going on, while this political drama that is integral to our nation was going on, the mainstream media sources had absolutely nothing going on. Nothing about this. They were not on the ball at ALL. Instead, information came through Twitter, shared from person to person through hashtags. When the livestream on YouTube inside the senate floor went down, it was a Ustream by a gentleman named Christopher Dido that got the world the information. When the announcement came down that the bill was killed, he was there. When Senator Wendy Davis came out to thank everyone, he was there. He was the only eyes for the 15,000 or more folks watching. So thanks to him, people could see what democracy in action looked like, while CNN was broadcasting stories about Paula Deen being a racist, the latest Kardashian story, rehashing old news cycles, and then reporting on muffins.

Congratulations internet. Texas Senate GOP, nice try attempting to reset the rules of time and invent an extra hour on 6/25. You failed. Let that be a lesson what people can do.

Let’s Talk About Fear

June 23, 2013 by Shoshana, posted in Random Aside, Speaking Out

This is a personal post. For that I make no apologies because this one ain’t going to be easy.

When I first read Dune, I thought I was going to get myself into a story about blue-eyed alien folks, spices and giant worms. I had no idea that when I picked up that book I would learn one of the most important lessons in my entire life.

Let’s talk about fear for a moment, shall we? And let’s get a little personal.

I know a lot about fear, as many of us do. Growing up, I wasn’t especially brave, even though I wanted to be. I read comic books and science fiction books and all kinds of adventures about children who did amazing, wonderful things against unbelievable odds because they could be brave. I wanted to be brave. But I wasn’t. I grew up in a place where fear was the watchword, where people believed that everyone out there was going to be bad to you. Either they would treat me badly because of my religion, or because I was a girl, or just because. Only behind protected walls could I be safe, with my family as the only people to trust. That’s what I learned growing up, and I learned it so well that I carried it with me all the days of my life. I spent a lot of years afraid: afraid of people’s judgement, of the dangerous world outside, of losing things and of not being accepted. I was scared for a long time of a lot of things. And that fear was a paralytic. It still is.

It isn’t easy unlearning fear. Fear itself can take on so many forms – self-consciousness, doubt, guilt, rage – that if you have to find it, it hides very well behind lots of masks. You have to spend time stripping back those masks to really get at the heart of things. Growing up, I didn’t know any of that. I just knew that things were terrifying in the world and I wished it wasn’t so. I wished I could be powerful, like my heroines in the books I read. But mostly, I wanted to be able to trust people.

I remember reading The Chronicles of Narnia and marveling at Lucy Pevency as a character. (I thought she had a funny last name but never mind that, says the girl whose last name sounds like kissing socks). She always stood in my mind beside the characters I wanted to model myself after because she was not only clever, but sweet, and caring, and gentle. And she trusted others. She wasn’t foolish in her trusting, though she would sometimes make mistakes, but she understood what it was to give others another chance. She believed inherently that no matter who you were, you could always be better.

I tried to learn that lesson. I tried to hold it in my heart. And for years and years, I failed.

Let’s talk about fear. Let’s talk about what happens when fear gets reinforced.

Live a sheltered life and then come out in the world, and you learn quickly that things aren’t what you were told. First, the whole world isn’t full of horrible people who are different from you. You learn that folks are just folks. But you also learn that along with the good folks, there are bad folks too. And even when you’re careful, folks can still hurt you. If you grew up in a place where you don’t believe in trust, when someone hurts you that little voice rises up and says: You see! You were right all along! You were right! You can’t trust them! And that’s where bitterness comes from, folks, and anger, and lots of resentment. Enough to choke you straight into the ground.

Let’s talk about fear. And what it has to do with business.

If you’re afraid, you can’t create well. If you’re afraid of what will happen, of what the future will hold, of what people will think about your work, how you’ll be received – then you’re focusing in the wrong place. You’re focusing on a future that might never be and things that might never be said. You worry so much about what people will think about what you do that you’re not concerned with what you’re doing. You’re not living in the present. You’re not creating something good, but tainting it instead with your fear. And you mire everything you do in it. And if you think people don’t notice, they can and often do.

That’s not a condemnation. Far from it. It’s a sympathetic nod, an ‘I know’ from someone who does know. I know what it’s like to keep one eye to the future and think I’m being wise, and instead turn to look back at where fear has passed through me to see what is left behind. And after some consideration recently, I don’t entirely like what I’ve seen. Fear takes on lots of faces, folks – and sometimes it takes on the mask of your own face, saying ‘You’re just being smart, you’re just being careful’ when what you’re really being is afraid and self-protective. And that self-protection can drive you into nasty behavior.

Let’s talk about fear and how it can sometimes make you into the ass you never wanted to be.

I’m excited by the work that I’m doing. I’m excited about the projects I am working on. More than that, I’m excited by the path that my life is on and the people I’m spending my time working with now. Underneath all of that, for the last couple of years, has been a nagging fear that I couldn’t outrun, outwork, or outpace no matter how hard I tried. It whispered in my head, “You just have to keep moving, or else-” Or else what? What was I afraid of? What would happen? Would people forget my name if I stopped producing for five minutes? Or if I did one thing ‘wrong’, would people turn up their noses and laugh? What was I afraid of?

Failure. Ridicule. Mistakes. Suffering. Ruin. Being nothing. All of these things.

What’s at the heart of all these things? Fear. Fear is at the heart of them all. I was afraid of fear. I was driven by it.

And it has meant that I haven’t always been the best person I should be.

This isn’t an apology to individual people. I think I owe that to a few folks on a one on one basis. There are folks who haven’t deserved my doubt that have gotten it, whose motivations I’ve questioned without thinking about why I was questioning them because in my heart I can’t stop thinking: be afraid of that person, you don’t know what they want. Be a big scary dog and they won’t think to mess with you, won’t hurt you. Forget that it makes you sound like an ass sometimes. Forget that it’s a wall a thousand miles high between you and others, a wall almost impossible to climb. You’re afraid, you need that wall.

I don’t need that wall. Not really, if ever. Not anymore.

This isn’t some kind of manifesto, a way to cure your problems or mine. This also isn’t some resignation to always be a smiling, happy, shiny ball of love and peace – I wasn’t made for that. I’m still the snarky, loud-mouthed, opinionated woman I always have been and probably always will be. This is something else, an identification and inspection of intent behind actions that have been tainted by fear for way too long. This is an identification of a problem, in the hopes that it helps to keep me honest going forward. I have a lot of great people in my life, and great work I want to do, and great stuff I want to share with people. There are a lot of folks who might read this blog, who might see me on Twitter or Facebook or at a con, and I want to share and talk to them and create with them some amazing, wonderful things. But I don’t want to do it from a place of fear. I don’t want to mistake caution for fear, or fear for supposed wisdom. I instead want to remember that fear is the mind-killer and let it pass through me so that I can be left behind and smile instead and say ‘whatever’ when my heart beats too fast out of anxiety for things that haven’t yet come to pass.

Let’s talk about fear, and how bravery isn’t its absence but the sum of what you do while it’s present. Let’s be ready to forgive myself for the days when I do fail and be prepared to apologize and course-correct when needed. More than anything, let’s see what I do from here.

“Mistakes Were Made” Aka The Front Person Problem

June 23, 2013 by Shoshana, posted in Geek Culture, Speaking Out

This article is about being the Front Man. The Front Woman. The Front Person. Please don’t look at the gender-use in the term and say I’m forgetting folks? Just getting that part out of the way now. Plus, this is going to be kind of long. So, on with the show.

This is an article about the Front Man and How to Apologize. I was on my way to writing an article about being the Front Man in an organization when the very smart Chuck Wendig pointed out some comparisons on Twitter that I could not ignore. Much appreciation for the inspiration here to Chuck because he had a good point.

This week there have been lots of apologies, and not all of them have been good.

The world of media seems to be the week of scandals the last few days. Paula Deen throws around racist slurs and then apologizes about having to apologize (in between still being a racist). Kickstarter has to shut down a ‘seducer’s guide book’ (aka how to be a creepy creeper in three easy steps) and has to apologize when they don’t quite get to it in time. And then there’s Gabe of Penny Arcade, apologizing for blowing his stack on Twitter over being one of the least trans-sensitive human beings in the public geek eye that I’ve ever seen. It’s been a week for apologies, folks. Or rather, for attempted apologies.

So let me pose a question: did folks forget lately that people are listening?

In the age of the internet, the world isn’t just about sharing information, it’s about sharing opinion. With the touch of a few buttons or keys on a keyboard, people can share their opinions on whatever comes up in the media. More than that, media is now created on different platforms than every before. I am old enough (brace yourself, that’s right!) to remember a time without the internet, when you couldn’t just turn around and get an immediate response from thousands of people on what you’ve said. However those days are way behind us and now, one word in the wrong direction can get someone negative responses all over the internet. For some people, that’s only negative responses within your own friend circle or community. For others, your reach is a lot larger.

The Front Person for a company, or a company in itself, has a public image it cultivates. And if it’s run by anyone savvy at all in the ways of business, that public image is crafted around the brand someone wants others to perceive. Sound calculated? It is, but just as calculated as how an individual wants to be seen among their friends. A Front Person or a company just has a lot more people watching, and are held accountable for their words and actions by lots of folks either as fans or consumers (or both). To understand that is to navigate the waters of business with reputation intact.

And what reputation? Whatever one a person wants to cultivate. Some folks just want to be themselves and be out there in the public eye as themselves, barring little to no agenda outside “Hey, I want to do cool things and share them!” or “My company is making quality products to share with our consumers, take a look at the great stuff we’ve got!” I won’t get into the more negatively calculating (aka: manipulative in the bad way) folks or businesses, because we’d get off topic. The point here is, with the internet as a forum, the message people put out there reaches so many more folks. And if that message includes something hateful, or even ignorant, or badly spoken, you will get in a whole lot of trouble. Fast.

Unless that’s the image you want. Unless you want to be ‘the dick’. Or the provocateur. Or just ‘that guy’.

In an age when it takes a lot to cut through all the noise of a million voices all jumping for social media attention, inflammatory views will certainly rise to the top. Is that person being inflammatory on purpose? Who knows. Unless you’re privy to strategy, you can’t know for sure. But a good hint is to look at how the person or company handles their apologies after something ‘bad’ happens. If an apology happens at all.

Example 1: Paula Deen gets caught spewing racist garbage. She puts out a forty-five second video that isn’t about how what she said was wrong. Instead, it’s about how sorry she is about having to apologize. An article recently pointed out that she’s like the thief who isn’t sorry they stole, but rather sorry that they were caught. That is the perfect analogy for this kind of response, and gives a hint to how this person does business in the first place. They aren’t apologizing for their actions, but for the fact that their public image has taken a hit. PS: People don’t seem to be falling for it, and Deen was let go from her Food Network contract.

Example 2: Kickstarter had a project funded on it that was, essentially, a guide on how to seduce women. Among it’s creepier implications, along with it just being kind of ridiculous and desperate to begin with, its a book written by a person whose Reddit posts have been tracked back to include implications of forcing women into sexual contact against their will. I’ll say that in plainer terms: the guy has implied previously that it’s okay to aggress on women sexually to get what you want. The book was funded but Kickstarter backers raised red flags just before the money was about to get sent through at the end of the project. Kickstarter didn’t stop it and the money went through. However, they issued a very seriously worded apology to their audience, recognizing that the project itself was a problem. They not only amended their terms to keep such ‘seduction guides’ from being put up on Kickstarter in the future, they also donated money to an organization that helps those harmed by sexual assault. They didn’t mealy mouth. They said it simply: we were wrong.

A pro tip on knowing when folks don’t mean their apologies? Check for the passive language. “Mistakes Were Made” is my favorite. Nobody there is pointed to to take responsibility whatsoever. Mistakes were made? By whom? Who made them and how? What is being done to fix the problem for the future? Beuler? Anyone?

Example 3: And here’s where things get complicated. In the geek community, Penny Arcade is a serious powerhouse. It’s a web comic, a brand of it’s own, and also the power behind the Pax conventions around the world. It has clout, not only in financial sense, but in influencing thought among it’s fans by view of the mouthpiece of their web comic, con and blog. So when one of it’s frontmen, Gabe (aka Mike Krahulik), goes ahead and says things that are hurtful to the trans community – after having a history of opening his mouth and hurtful things falling out- people take notice. He has self-proclaimed himself ‘a dick’ in blog posts when talking about how he speaks, so in his choice to just say what he wants, he insulted a hell of a lot of folks. And probably cost his company a lot of business in the process. Many who were previously unimpressed by the Pax frontrunner’s handling of the unimpressive ‘dick wolf’ controversy (if you don’t know what that is, check this out for a breakdown, or don’t if you want to avoid face-palming at the impressive insanity) have said enough is enough over this, including the Fullbright Company (creators of the video game Gone Home) who has chosen not to attend Pax over this. They won’t be the only ones.

So Gabe came out and apologized. And that assuaged a lot of folks. Now for me? I sat back and read the apology and something bothered me. It was a single line at the bottom. Gabe says that he should have stepped away rather than continuing to engage when he was angry, because he was angry at being called names. That’s effectively what started this. He didn’t like being called a name, and got mad. In the wake of the reaction to his words, Gabe then says he’s worried about how this will affect other businesses attached to his name, saying:

I know personally I’m an incredibly damaged individual. I’m not really sure I’m the best foundation for all this other stuff. I don’t want to be the reason people don’t go to PAX or don’t support Child’s Play or don’t watch the shows on PATV. I hate the idea that because I can’t stop being an asshole I hurt all these other amazing things.

It was that line that made me take pause. Can’t stop being an asshole. Can’t. Not won’t. Can’t. As if the option has been taken out of his hands. That, sadly, is not the case. It is not the case for anyone. People choose what they say, even in the heat of anger. People choose how they act, even if they are damaged. People choose to be hurtful or to hold their tongues.

Mistakes were made. I can’t. Passive language.

Being a Front Person is hard. You’re in the public eye, you’ve got folks watching your every move. You have the right to freedom of speech, just like any other person in a free country. Yet if you build something, build a brand, and use that as a place from which to launch your fortunes and then build a fan following from it, you are responsible for the words that come out of your mouth. You are responsible for what you put forward, for better or worse, as any human being is responsible for their words and actions. Except you have a wider audience you’re reaching and therefore, in my opinion, cannot afford to be passive in considering your choices. Mistakes were not made – you made them. And you can learn from them, as Kickstarter did in their respectful and graceful apology, or stand by what you’ve said and be held to account for it by people who disagree with you. There isn’t such a thing as I Can’t and that doesn’t stand as an apology.

Now you might ask: where do you get off saying these things? Well, it all comes back to one thing. I’m now a writer, and a blogger, and a person out there writing things that lots of people read. Sure, not like Penny Arcade, no way like that. But apparently, folks read this blog (hi out there!) and they’ve read my work. I have people I talk to at conventions, on Twitter, on Facebook and in my personal and professional life. And every day, I craft my own image as Shoshana – a writer, a game designer, and a person just trying to be a geek in this crazy geeky world. And I don’t believe in the word can’t as an excuse if I hurt someone with my words. I speak about a lot of topics: game design, larping and feminist thought especially. If in any of those conversations I hurt someone, I hope that I will have the where-with-all to stand up and not say mistakes were made in a defensive way or I couldn’t help myself, but instead say the words hardest but most important to say in this world sometimes:

I am sorry. I was wrong.

I can only expect the same from people whose voice rings louder than my own.

UPDATE: I’ll point out one update that came in while I was formulating this article. Gabe has added an addition to his apology. He’s also donated $20,000 to The Trevor Project in response to the people his words may have hurt. And that’s a start in the right direction, just as Kickstarter responded by recompense to a charity called RAINN. I’ll let that stand for what it is and not beat the dead horse. Let’s hope this kind of thing stops staining the Pax community again and again.

You Game Like A (Fat) Girl – Trolling and Haters Gonna Hate

April 12, 2013 by Shoshana, posted in Geek Culture, Geek Social Fallacies, Speaking Out

It took me a little while to write this. Why you ask? Because the topic tends to get my blood pressure up. So here goes.

PaxEast was by and large one of the best convention experiences of my life. I got a chance to get up in front of an audience of people and talk about one of my favorite topics of all time: gaming. I got a chance to look women in the eye and say “this is an industry for you and by you” and be supportive of others. I got a chance to talk about representation of women in games and voice my opinions.

It was also my opportunity to get trolled. Very hard.

The forms of trolling came as follows:

First, during the actual panel, we were being live streamed on Twitch.tv. The stream has a chat room associated with it that was live even before our panel’s cameras went hot. As we sat on stage, discussing what we would be saying, text messages began to fly to my phone. “Don’t open the chat!” they warned. “Don’t look at it.” Another told me that everything that is wrong about women’s treatment in geek culture was being spewed into that chat room. To this day, people have warned me not to look at that chat log. Why? Because we got nailed by every bit of filth spewing out of the internet. I’m going to spare everyone the trash because that’s what it was – trash. But there is one thing I’m going to comment on. And that’s how I got smacked around for my weight. So I’ll let folks who haven’t met me in on a little secret?

I’m fat. Heavy. Obese. Whatever you want to call it. I am a nearly six foot tall large woman.

Apparently that point, obvious to anyone with eyes and cognitive function, turned off the hearing receptors in some folks’ heads the minute I started talking at the panel. And suddenly the trolls thought it was amusing to find how many ways they could call me fat. Because engaging with the actual material of a discourse was too difficult perhaps? Who knows. Anyway, I got this told to me second hand because I was too busy, you know, being on a panel to pay attention. Later, I was told to shake it off.

Then someone passed me a YouTube video commenting on the panel. It’s from a woman who decided to spend thirty-four minutes bashing the hell out of our panel for everything from the content to the audio quality (which by the way is not something we have control over?). Now I don’t mind a spirited debate about panel format or content – several blogs commented on the content of our arguments and I’m cool with that. But it was the introduction she gave to each of us that made me sit up and take notice. See, this YouTube responder decided to make little sketches of us and, as opposed to using the internet to look up our names (printed in the PaxEast schedule on their website, given at the end of the panel on a slide or clearly said aloud at the beginning of the panel), decided to give us little nicknames instead. Here’s mine:

Big. Yup, couldn’t even come up with a better one than a three letter word. No complicated grammar here. Just BIG.

What does one say to that?

Well, let’s start here with this:

YES. Congratulations. You have eyes. So, can we move on now?

The internet is known as a place where you need to have thick skin. The level to which people will put their hands on a keyboard and spew the most horrific, rude, ridiculous shit in the world amazes me. What also amazes me is the way people seem to believe that the instant a person who is fat goes out in front of a camera, or up on a stage, automatically the discourse is about their weight. As if there’s no way to restrain from spewing out the obvious as a way to shut them down. Like being fat invalidates who they are.

Hate to tell you, cats and kittens, being fat isn’t who I am. Nor is it what I stand for. It’s a part of my life and it’s my body. It’s a part of what I struggle with every day. But it’s not ALL of me. And it certainly doesn’t invalidate my work, my words, or my existence. And it certainly can’t be used as a way to shut me up or shut me down. Why? Because it doesn’t make me less of a person.

Say and feel what you will about obesity, but being fat does not mean I have an obligation to disappear. That’s the baggage of people pointing fingers and calling FAT the way someone would have called LEPER in a medieval town. That’s their insecurity, their easy way of spewing their angst at a target. Because hey, trolling is just something we accept, and how dare that fat person try to stand up and be something besides a fat person? How dare they have the confidence to be anything except embarrassed or ashamed of who they are? How dare they be a professional or a creative type or anything else besides miserable? How dare they be a person?

Well, hate to say it folks: I’m a person. I’m a fast talking, game designing, story writing, ass kicking female fat person. I write games and fiction, go to grad school, blog, love puppies, have friends and relationships and on weekends I go out and lead battles in which I kick the crap out of LARP zombies. I get up on stage and I speak my mind about the state of women in the game industry, female representation in games, live action games and their place in game discourse, and geek culture. And just because I’m fat does not mean I’ll sit back in a corner and hate myself because you want me to. Ain’t gonna happen. Just because you call me fat won’t ever make me stop. Because until you can bring up your discourse to something that includes disputing my points with an organized argument that can be respected above a fourth grade level? You got nothing on me or anyone else who has the courage to stand up and be counted as a creator, an innovator, a speaker, and a force for change. And that counts for calling someone any other pointless insult that you come up with, be it physical, racial, religious, gender based or sexual orientation bashing. You and your purposeless crap have no place in an actual conversation and until you realize that and step up your game to actual discussion levels? You’re just the sad representation of the worst the internet and this world has to offer.

Haters gonna hate. But they’re going to have to step up their hate to reach me. Or at least step to me with more than the word BIG.

Cuz really. There are thesauruses people.

In the weeks since PaxEast I debated whether or not to write about the trolling that occurred. I questioned whether or not the negative feedback I received deserved even an ounce of my recognition. After all, this is the internet and we are taught on a regular basis not to feed the trolls, not to read the comments, not to care about their responses. We’re taught to ignore, ignore, and keep on keeping on. This time, I won’t keep my mouth shut. Why do you ask? Because last night a friend of mine went on a YouTube interview and got trolled about his weight too. And I realized that this is just going to keep going on until people kick back and say “Hey, jerks? I get that you want a forum for your angst against the universe. But take it somewhere else. I’m busy with being a professional. Go be something besides a professional asshat.”

And since PaxEast, I’ve been busy being a professional – writing a book, organizing the company I run, planning large scale LARPs, interning, doing grad school classes, working on a video game, preparing for an awesome trip to Norway to Knutepunkt, talking about whether or not I want to do a PhD and spending time with loved ones. And that’s what I’ll keep on doing, despite the trolls. But I won’t be silent about them again. I won’t sit back and say ‘trolls will just be trolls’. Or ‘you just have to put up with them’. I’m forced to interact with them. But I don’t have to condone garbage behavior. And neither do you.

My First PaxEast and “You Game Like A Girl”

March 29, 2013 by Shoshana, posted in Convention Report, Game Design, Geek Culture, Speaking Out, Uncategorized

This past weekend, the Boston area hosted thousands of gamers rolling into their fair convention center for PaxEast, a major east coast gaming convention. Triple A companies to Indies in video games and tabletop brought their best to show to consumers and panels were held on every subject imaginable. This might have been enough to bring a gamer like me to the Boston area for the con, but I was lucky enough to be involved in one of the panels this year. And let me tell you, it was a heck of a time.

First let me start with saying that as a convention, I found PaxEast to be really enjoyable. The Expo Hall is chock full of video games to try from every company imaginable. I particularly enjoyed discovering a few new independent video games that I am looking forward to, like Red Barrel’s terrifying Outlast and Compulsion Games’ Contrast, both of which I wrote up for Tor.com this week. I also got the chance to get a look at Transistor from the creators of Bastion and I’m going to love putting my hands on it. The Indie Megabooth section was a chance to straight nerd out on great independent companies that are doing stellar work that, I dare say, is competitive with the quality coming out of the Triple A’s.

That, however, wasn’t even the best PART about the convention. PaxEast fostered an open gaming section where you could turn in your ID and take out whatever board game you wanted to try out. This section was open from 10AM until nearly two in the morning, letting gamers just get together with their friends for a good time. I had the privilege of spending most of that time with Rob Donoghue and Fred Hicks from Evil Hat productions, and we got to try a few amazing games that I never would have checked out otherwise (Cockroach Poker, anyone?) I could wax on about the convention, but let’s talk about the major event for me that weekend: the panel.

I was privileged enough to be invited by Anja Keister of the D20 Burlesque troupe to come in and speak as a game designer on a panel called “You Game Like A Girl: Tales of Trolls and White Knights.” The idea of the panel was to tackle the fraught issue of women in the gaming and geek community, spanning from the treatment of cosplayers to the representation of women in video games. We had a one hour slot on Sunday morning and the panel featured Susanna Polo from the Mary Sue, Stella Chu (professional cosplayer and burlesque dancer), Iris Explosion (burlesque dancer and sex educator), Anja Keister (founder of D20 Burlesque) and myself. For those who missed the panel you can find it on Twitch.tv here (hint: our panel starts at 3:05:00 – that’s hour three folks!) and check us out talking about the issues facing the female community.

From my perspective it was a surreal day. I got to the theater to see a line of people in the room next door. I asked what they were waiting for, and the Enforcer at the door said: “That’s the line for your theater. It’s already out the door.” I was positively floored. We got into Naga theater and set ourselves up on the stage and they let our audience in. And this? This was our audience.

The audience at "You Game Like A Girl" — The audience at “You Game Like A Girl”

I cannot explain how honored I felt to be in the presence of EIGHT HUNDRED of my fellow gamers who came to hear us talk about the topic of women in gaming. It was an incredible experience as people came up to the microphone and asked us questions or lit up Twitter on #Paxlikeagirl to express their support. A tradition was started too when Iris Explosion got so mad at misogyny issues that she launched a plastic cup off the stage, inspiring others who came up to the microphone to throw cups too. Soon we had the ‘we hate this!’ cup launching going on, which was hilarious and light fun.

The panel went off beautifully with only a modicum of trolling (which I’ll address in another post coming up soon), and the experience was overall super powerful and empowering. After the panel people came up to us to share stories and ask questions. I personally got to meet some women who are going into game design and who had questions about how to engage with problematic team situations or content. I’ve never quite been so humbled to have women ask if I’d be willing to mentor them going forward.

People brought up their badges and had us autograph them and asked us to autograph cups that had been thrown! It was a strangely surreal experience for me in general and we stuck around to talk to people as long as we could before we ran off to head back to New York.

From a game designers perspective, the kind of things we spoke about were just the tip of the iceberg of issues I wanted to talk about. But you only have one hour sometimes! I was really glad to be able to bring up the way men have been spoken to in the ‘fake geek girl’ debate, about people raising children to be the next generation of gamer girls, and about pushing back in unhealthy/uncomfortable situations for women in game teams. There was only so much time and so much we each could have spoken about from our particular specialties, but I think it was a great start. And it will be just a start, because there’s plenty of other opportunities for conversation.

Meanwhile, back at home, there’s more game design though to be done. So I’m back into writing and doing work. PaxEast, was a pleasure, hope to see you next year.

Hope You Don’t Mind, Got A Little Misogyny On You There…

February 8, 2013 by Shoshana, posted in Geek Culture, Random Aside, Speaking Out

Note: I want to start this post by saying that this is by no means the only article out there, or the only opinion, about the culture of misogyny in the gaming/geek world. This is one post in hundreds of thousands, shouted from the rooftops and put out into the internet world for all to see. There are good people out there doing good work to counteract these horrible actions that have othered women in places across the internet and across the planet. And the talk about misogyny isn’t just one to be done within the gaming or geek world. But that’s the subculture in which I party, so that’s where I do my talking. With all that in mind, read on.

This past week I had a phone call from a friend, John, who talked to me about misogyny in the geek world. He sounded startled about stories he’d heard, things that had happened, issues that had come up in the geek and game design community. He sounded surprised that stories that might be considered sensational were true and happened to people he knew. I was, sadly, not surprised. I was weary when I said, “No John. That’s true. That happened to someone I know. It’s not an urban legend. That happened to a girl I know.” The worst one I didn’t mention was, “That kind of thing happened to me.”

See, John had a stellar last Sunday in which he got confronted with some craziness in the gaming world that happens to womenfolk. And he blogged extremely eloquently about it here. And then he asked me to boost the signal. So I am. And on top of that, I’m not just boosting. I’m adding my piece too.

The gaming world for a long time had a culture of silence. Nay, I’ll say, the geek world. Lots of different fandoms and geek corners of the globe had a cone of weirdness up when it came to talking about the way women were sometimes being treated. About boundaries that were being crossed from the ‘hey, people might be socially awkward’ into the downright criminal. You’d bring up the issue of something that happened to you, or to a friend, and you’d get a shrug and a ‘what can you do?’ Why? Because gamers and geeks and their ‘subculture’ are seen as laden with folks who don’t know boundaries, who have social issues, and the community is seen as a place where these are just a part of life. What comes with that is a place where people can be themselves in a welcoming atmosphere. What also comes with that is those that push the limits of social awkwardness into impropriety and downright disturbing activity.

And for a long time, it was a ‘what can you do?’ response. Because I believe people were afraid that if the community started policing its own for bad behavior, then the beautiful utopia where geeks could come together away from persecution or whatever it is that we’re supposed to be fleeing would dissolve. I hate to say this, folks, but this issue was tackled by a critical list called the Five Geek Social Fallacies that I love to look back on. And what are these fallacies that geeks often fall back on, in short?

Ostracizers are Evil
Friends Accept Me As I Am
Friendship Before All
Friendship Is Transitive
Friends Do Everything Together

We’re going to focus on the first two as the dangerous ones in terms of bad behavior. Fandom theory (which I’m studying this semester, so bear with me) came in a few waves and the first age of fandom basically thought of “Fandom as Utopia”, where outcasts came together to gather and create utopias that their lives could not be like. This theory of fan culture creation and subculture creation was disproven after they were big in the 60’s and 70’s (think Star Trek era) because these societies created ARE NOT UTOPIAS. People within subcultures are still mean, or petty, or aggressive. They still break rules. They still harass. And this is where those fallacies come in and where the culture of silence, I believe, held reign for so long. And still kind of does. Because a lot of folks come to subcultures, and to gaming and geekdom, because of wanting to feel included, then they feel uncomfortable by the notion of ostracizing anyone. They believe that friends ought to accept them for whoever they are, however they are, unreservedly.

In a perfect world, that would be fine. In a world where people still harass, manipulate, bully, demean and molest? Nope. Utopia does not exist. Sad to say it, folks but true.

So when people threw up their hands in the past and said ‘what can you do?’ when stories would come up about girls harassed at conventions, about women who had to walk the ‘casting couch’ to get work as a game designer, or who put up with sexual harassment at work just for the sake of working on a project, or were gas-lighted by menfolk they worked with when they spoke up, it wasn’t a case of ‘what can you do’? It’s a case of what aren’t you doing.

The last few years have given me hope. The internet has exploded with posts by brave wonderful people, both men and women, who are standing up and shouting that ‘we can do something’. That the geek fallacies are FALSE and that people who break the rules about treatment of the opposite gender, who sexually harass and use the geek community to do it will be called out and will be prosecuted. I use that term: prosecuted, not persecuted. This isn’t about persecuting and making witch hunts but prosecuting actual criminal behavior, or enforcing guidelines against socially unacceptable behavior in public and communal atmospheres. And it does not just have to do with women, as has often been pointed out to me: there is plenty of bad behavior from women, enacted upon men in the community, that goes unspoken about and ignored. But there are people speaking out.

There are also people standing up. When they see bad behavior being done, they are working to correct where they can. If a company chooses not to employ women and the issue comes up, as it has, about the lack of women in the gaming industry (such as during the conversation of #1reasonwhy), companies who stand for equality have stood to offer more work for women. They make known their beliefs through their actions to correct the situation by bringing what equilibrium they can, and to them I always say thank you. And there are those who stand up to act to create new spaces, such as the Different Games conference that is being organized, to give people who have been marginalized a place to represent. There are those who act in small ways, by offering support and care to those who have been on the receiving end of bad treatment. These are the folks you probably never see. They deserve credit. They stand up.

John’s post this week was full of outrage, and mine would be too – if I wasn’t so intimately familiar with the problem. I’m a woman, I’m a geek, I’ve been at this for years. So long I think that sometimes I run out of rage and instead fall into cynicism. But I’ve had opportunities instead lately to take that cynicism and turn it into action and turn it into a voice for support. And I’m going to keep doing that because that’s the way we combat fallacy, and combat those who believe they can hide their horrid and even criminal behavior behind a community I love.

To them I say, sorry, buddy or lady. It’s no longer ‘what can you do?’ or ‘well, y’know, it’s just that…’ It’s now ‘this is our community too, and you’ve got no place to hide from eyes that are attached to people empowered to act, and speak, and enact change. Your sandbox was never just yours. It’s all of ours. And we don’t want it to be a place of harassment and inequality and shame.

And hate to say it, but the new way’s here to stay.