Sexism in Gaming

Oh my. You ladies are gonna LOVE this one. Especially my fellow geek ladies. Brace yourselves. This is a doozy.

Behold, an email from Gamestop that was sent (not to me) with the subject line: "Send her flowers so you can game!"

(Click to enlarge)

Yes men, that's right. Don't worry about your pesky girlfriend keeping you from gaming on Valentine's Day. Just shut her up with pretty flowers and game away! Because you obviously have to choose one or the other. You can't have both. Silly men!

I...

I don't even know where to start. The misogyny is ASTOUNDING.

I already hate GameStop. Amazon has much better prices. So boycotting them is a start, but it doesn't change much for me. I can't even begin to think of a proper way of punishing them for this drivel.

When I was single for the first time in 6 years, I wasn't sure where to start. I don't do bars or clubs. I didn't have a way to meet new guys. So, I turned to online dating. I wasn't ready to pay for a site yet, nor could I really afford it, so one of the sites I used was Craig's List.  I posted the following personal ad:

Hello! I'm a positive, confident, outgoing Wiccan woman. My religion
is important to me, but I don't need to date another Pagan
necessarily. I'm 4'11", curvy, long brown hair and brown eyes. I love
singing, reading, computer games (WoW, D2, AOE, etc.), nature, animals
(especially cats, rodents, and reptiles), and lots of other random
stuff. I'm very easy-going and down to Earth. I'm looking for a guy
with some similar interests, a good sense of humor, around age 25-35.
I'd like a LTR eventually. So drop me a line, and a pic if you have
one, just cuz I'm curious. =)


One of the responses (among the dozens of truly horrid ones) was my now-husband Simon. He was intrigued by our shared interest in gaming. After a few dates, the first time I came over his house was to play WoW together. We even had WoW-dates from our own homes where we chatted on Vent while playing. I guess you could say our relationship is based on gaming. TOGETHER.

There has never been a time where he's need to bribe me to "let" him game. I even went to a LAN party with him and was the only girl there. I had a BLAST. I may seem unusual. I may seem like a dying breed. I AM NOT.

If you visit my Twitter and see some of the ladies I follow, you'll find a WHOLE LOT of women gamers. We exist. We are normal. And we're AWESOME. So guys? Ask us to game WITH you. Don't bribe us, don't sneak off, don't exclude us. We're here, and we LOVE to game.

GameStop? Seriously, STFU. That email was so full of fail I can't even properly express my rage. Sexism FTL.

UPDATE:

I sent the following email to GameStop:


I would like to complain about a recent email sent to Gamestop customers (presumably just your male ones) with the subject line "Send her flowers so you can game!"

This is the most sexist, misogynistic, and misguided email I have ever seen. It purports a number of fallacies:

1. Girls don't game.
2. Girls don't like it when their boyfriends game.
3. Girls have to be bribed to LET their boyfriends game.

Is that really a message you want to be sending? You do realize that almost half of gamers are female, right? Obviously you had no idea.

So on Valentine's Day, instead of spending ONE DAY with your significant other, you need to bribe her to "let" you play a game. Men aren't allowed to game WITH women? Men can't take a day off from gaming? Men need to ask PERMISSION to game? I'm not sure what kinds of relationships your advertising department has had, but they can't have been healthy.

My husband and I started dating because we both love to game. We are now married and continue to game together. There are also women who watch sports, drink beer, and do all kinds of "manly" things you think we aren't interested in.

Neither my husband nor I, nor many of our friends, will ever be shopping at your store again. You obviously don't appreciate your female customers, or even acknowledge that you have any. I am disgusted.

Sincerely,
Sarah Nelson

P.S. - Feel free to read more of my rant in my blog, which is making its way around the internet so everyone knows how sexist your company is.

http://geekdomprincess.blogspot.com/2012/02/sexism-in-gaming.html

SPAM

We all hate spam. I'm not talking about the meat product (some of you may like it, who knows), but that sneaky email demon we love to hate. It's bad enough when it comes from random vendors. It's far worse when it comes from people you know.

If you have my email address and the only thing I ever receive from you is commercial in nature, you're doing it wrong. If you want to tell me about some new website, or something you're selling, AND we're friends on Twitter and Facebook? DO IT THERE. I get enough crap in my email. If you share it on Twitter and Facebook, I can just keep going if I'm not interested. And if you know me, you know I'm on both sites constantly. Trust me, I'll see it.

Unless we are VERY good friends (not, like, we met once and got along and exchanged contact info), NEVER assume I want to be invited to, signed up for, or subscribed to ANY website, blog, sale, etc. Not your Avon, not your Scentsy, none of it. If you're not sure, send me a quick tweet first. Or even an email! I'd much rather reply to your email and say "No thanks" than have to unsubscribe from some mailing list that I can't guarantee hasn't already sold my email address.

I have a lot of people's email addresses. I have a few businesses I run. I even have every email address of everyone who's ever purchased something from me. I will NEVER email them a sale, site, or anything because it's intrusive. We're at a point in society where we get SO MANY emails every day. All it does is piss people off, unless they themselves signed up to receive updates and such. I will NEVER assume someone wants email from me. If I have your email address, I will use it to communicate a friendly message or send information you requested. THAT'S. IT.

This is basic Internet etiquette, people. Remember when those chain emails were all the rage and your inbox was flooded with "OMG FORWARD THIS TO 5 ZILLION PEOPLE OR YOU WILL GET A BLOODY NOSE IN FRONT OF YOUR CRUSH"? Yeah, those sucked. Most people have realized how very annoying they are and have stopped. This is the next wave. I know we're ALL selling something online these days, or you entered a contest and you get more entries if you email the contest to your 100 closest friends, or you REALLY think I need to know about the latest cancer risk (PLEASE check Snopes.com first!). I know you mean well.

But please. STOP.

Body Shame

This post is the result of YEARS of suffering, not any one recent event. Just in case someone gets it in their head that they sparked this...you didn't. Don't worry. :)

I was always small. I stopped growing at age 12, topping out at 4'11". At my senior prom, I weighed 95 lbs. and wore a size 3. I was TINY.

Believe it or not, I had body issues even then. My little pooch of a tummy shamed me. I focused on my big nose, overbite, braces, acne...you name it, I was ashamed of it. I was almost never single. I certainly was attractive to SOMEONE. But I hated myself.

Fast forward through six years of college. I put on 60 lbs. The cafeteria offerings were atrocious. I didn't party; I can count on one hand the number of times I actually got drunk in college. With age and food choices, the weight started adding on. I was horrified. I'd go to the gym for a few weeks, then get tired of it. It was easier just to get fat. Looking back, I think I looked better in college than high school.

A month after I graduated college, my mom died. I packed on another 20 lbs. seemingly overnight. My boyfriend of 4 years moved in with me. We were poor and lazy and ate horribly. My weight fluctuated constantly. I finally broke up with him after years of emotional abuse, and moved on.

I met Simon. :)

We moved in together after 8 months of dating. We went out to eat a lot. He was on Jenny Craig and I joined it too, until I decided I'd rather cook and save us the money. $800 a month for Jenny food for two! Crazy! But once again, the weight crept on as life got busy. Simon proposed to me when I was at my heaviest: 200 lbs. (Unrelated, just pointing out that he loves me no matter what size I am).

We were engaged for a year and a half, and for the first few months, I planned on losing weight for the wedding...later. Suddenly it was 2010 and we were getting married in 10 months! I freaked. I worked my butt off and lost 30 lbs. in 6 months. I slowly lost another 5, then gained it back, then 5 more as the stress of planning a wedding got to me. At one point, I was told by a relative that my gown would look perfect if I "just dropped 5-10 more lbs." She meant well, she meant to encourage me, but I got pissed. I got married at 175 lbs. I hated myself for it at the time, but I know now that I looked beautiful.

After the wedding and honeymoon, we eventually tried to get back into eating right and exercising. I mentally rebelled every step of the way. 2011 was a constant struggle. I finally started seeing a therapist about my self-esteem issues. I went back to counting calories and tracking exercise, then gave up. All it did was depress me. Toward the end of the year, I stopped tracking, stopped weighing in. I've gained a bit back. I'm probably not back up to 200 lbs., but I really don't want to know.

You may have seen this picture circulating the internet:

At first, I was righteously proud of it. Yeah! Real women have curves! Embrace your body! But then I think about my skinny best friend who never could gain weight. The one who got stretch marks just from passing 100 lbs. She's beautiful too! We all are! We're all "real" women. Who's to say the skinny ones are "fake"? No one! No one has the right to judge us!

Then I saw this:

THIS struck a chord. THIS is the message I was looking for. THIS makes me proud.

My Twitter friend Danya jumped on this. She understands my struggle. She understands body shame. And she's sick to DEATH of it. I helped her create this logo:

She put it on t-shirts. We're spreading a message, a truth, a BATTLE CRY.

We REFUSE to be ashamed.
We REFUSE to conform to some arbitrary body standard.
We REFUSE to accept judgement from others.
We REFUSE to be told we're not healthy.

Health at any size. HAPPINESS at any size.

From now on, I will eat when I'm hungry. I will try to eat healthful foods. I will eat "unhealthy" foods sometimes. Because I FEEL LIKE IT. I will exercise when I can and when it's enjoyable. I will be ACTIVE, not just for the sake of burning calories. I will buy clothes that fit NOW, not ones I want to fit into "later." I will wear what I want. I will be happy with ME. NOW. Not later. NOW.

Please also read about the body shaming of children in Georgia, and visit Marilyn Wann's Tumblr of images combating the body shaming campaign.

It starts young. It cuts deep. It's so very hard to let go of.

EDIT:

I'm pretty sick with a bad cold right now, so I may not have come across the way I wanted to. Let me add a few things.

If you want to lose weight, that's your right. If you want to be healthier, more active, stronger, faster, etc., then AWESOME. I wish I had the strength you do. I wish I could count calories or track my weight without falling into depression. I admire you.

This was about my personal journey to acceptance. I want to be happy where I am. If you're going to be happier losing weight, then do it! All I want to say is to do it for YOU, not society. That's all. We're all beautiful. You're beautiful now, you're beautiful pregnant, you're beautiful when you lose 50 lbs. I am NOT against weight loss or being healthy.

All I want is for you to love yourself.

My sister is getting married

My sister is getting married!

She's 24 years old and works as a brain injury unit nurse in a rehabilitation hospital. She met her fiance through a singles meet-up group and they've been dating for almost a year.

Her fiance is 35, divorced, and has a 6-year-old son that's mildly autistic. He's a super sweet kid who adores my sister.

My sister's fiance works for the USDA and just got a promotion to move to an office closer to my sister so they can move in together.

They are blissfully in love and it's a joy to see them together. I could not approve more of how happy my sister's fiance makes her.

Her fiance proposed on a beach and presented her with a custom engagement ring with their birthstones. They're getting married on a beach in June of 2013. I will be my sister's matron of honor.



My sister is gay and her fiance is a woman. Would you have known if I hadn't said it? Is their love really any different from a straight couple's?

Not.

At.

All.

End this madness. Support gay marriage. It's as simple as that.

Luckily, they can get married here in MA or in NY where my sister lives right now. They could get married in four other states than those two. In the other 44, they could not.

Please visit and "Like" Straight People for Gay Marriage and Straight People for Gay Marriage Massachusetts on Facebook. Thank you.

Rape Jokes Aren't Funny

WARNING: This post contains rape triggers.

So, I was going to start this post with a screen shot of the tweets that inspired it, but of course he deleted them. Can't say I'm disappointed though.

Therefore, here are the tweets almost exactly as written; as they happened just a few minutes ago, I recall them very well.

Random guy retweeted by MothPete: No matter how many times I tell them "Sshhh," I can't get girls to stop screaming with excitement when I give them surprise hugs in a parking garage.
Me to MothPete: Wow, a rape joke. Classy. Unfollowed.
MothPete to me: Sshhh.

Not only did he RT a rape joke, but he felt the need to throw the punchline back at me. I then blocked him. I don't want to hear another word from him. I wonder if he thought better of his actions though, as he deleted both of those tweets soon after.

Not only is the joke tasteless, but it's a HUGE rape trigger for unsuspecting followers, and makes a joke of something that has ruined countless women's lives. How is that funny? Why is that worth sharing?

When I was 11, I was babysitting my 5-year-old sister one summer afternoon while our parents were out. Our neighborhood was full of kids, and we visited her friend Raymond's house to hang out with them. Raymond was her age, and he had a 17-year-old half-brother. The little ones played in the playroom, while myself, the 17-year-old Billy, a 14-year-old boy, two 13-year-old girls, and a ten-year-old girl hung out in the living room and decided to play Truth or Dare. Yes, it was an odd assortment of ages, and unfortunately these kids tended to be quite cruel to me, but I desperately wanted to fit in.

The game started with stupid things: standing on your head, admitting crushes, etc. I should have known it was out of my league when I was dared to kiss the 14-year-old and he shoved his tongue so far down my throat, I literally gagged. That was my first kiss. I don't count it as such, but it technically was. Disgusting.

Not long after, I was dared to go into Billy's bedroom with him and let him go as far as he wanted until I said "Stop." Yes, I kept choosing Dare, because the deep parts of me they were trying to get at with Truth questions were even harder for me. Plus, picking Dare was "cool." So I did it. We went in his room.

He locked the door behind us, which immediately worried me. He gently pushed me and I fell on the bed in shock. I immediately said "Stop," but he laughed and said that's not how it works. He climbed on top of me, lifted my shirt, and started kissing my stomach. I again said "Stop!" and started to struggle. He got angry and tried to hold me down, but I was tiny and wiggly and squirmed away, unlocking the door and running out of the room before he could stop me.

I immediately grabbed my sister and headed home without saying a word to anyone else. I was still in shock. Even at that age, I knew it was disgusting for a 17-year-old to even WANT to do things like that to someone my age. I felt sick to my stomach and finally realized what messed-up kids these were. Spoiled rich brats that always got what they wanted and played with my life for entertainment.

I never told my parents. My father either wouldn't have believed me or would have tried to kill the kid; I had no idea. My mom would have been livid but too scared to do anything. It was easier just to forget about it. After all, I wasn't "really" raped, I told myself.

That fall I attended a friend's birthday party; a group of kids all my age that I trusted. They started playing Truth or Dare and I ran into the closet and cried. I couldn't play the damn game again till college.

Yes, I was lucky. I wasn't raped, my virginity wasn't ripped from me, I didn't have to endure someone unwanted inside of me. But I was violated, body and mind. I was hurt. I was damaged.

This is the tip of the iceberg of what rape does. I can't even imagine what it's like for others. I tell this story because it wasn't my fault and I'm not ashamed. Rape is never your fault. And it's NOT A JOKE.

Dreaming of Spring

It's almost here.  It's so close I can taste it.  It's nearly...SPRING!

You know what that means?  MOTORCYCLE WEATHER!

Since last year was my first full season riding my own motorcycle, this winter has been particularly hard.  And long.  And depressing.  Some days all I wanna do is go RIDE.  But I can't.  :(

It's so close now.  Weekend trips up to New Hampshire to try some new restaurant.  Quick evening jaunts to Woburn to hang out at our friend Mark's ice cream shop Nanabette's.  Aimless rides into western Mass. with our cameras in tow for scenic shots.  CAN.  NOT.  WAIT.

In the meantime, I'll do what I do best: shop online.  ;)  Or at least "window shop."  I've found a new site I really love called RevZilla.  They have a shop, forum, contests, and you can earn TeamZilla cash toward future purchases.  I just created an account, entered their current contest, and started browsing around today.

It actually turns out my husband bought his helmet from them last year.  Unfortunately he didn't clue me in to what an awesome website it is!  ;)

They have a pretty extensive selection of women's gear.  I've been lusting after the leather jackets, since mine is too big on me.  This is a particularly gorgeous one:

http://assets0.revzilla.com/product/river-road-womens-basic-leather-jacket

It's a STEAL at only $159.95.  I love the waist buckle and multitude of zippered pockets, and it's available all the way up to a 3X, which is rare.  I often only see up to L, sometimes XL.

I like my bright red helmet but always dream of getting one with a really fun design.  This one is too gorgeous:

http://assets0.revzilla.com/product/scorpion-exo-700-dahlia-helmet

I have a thing for red.  ;)

So here we are.  March 1...staring down the barrel of the equinox.  We just got some more snow, but it looks like we might finally be done.  As soon as the roads are 100% clear and the temp hits about 60...we're off!

The Etsy Drama

I'm sick of arguing about it on Twitter, and 140 characters cannot allow clear expression of my thoughts.  I just want to make my feelings clear and put this to rest.


I believe in free speech.  I also believe that:


...a privately owned store or marketplace has the right to refuse to sell something.
...a store or marketplace whose Terms of Service state: “Use of mature, profane and/or racist language or images in the public areas of your Etsy shop is not permitted. This includes your username, Public Profile, item titles, tags, avatar, banner and/or shop selections” and “Items that promote or glorify hatred, racial, religious intolerance" has a RESPONSIBILITY to uphold those terms.
...nudity and swearing are not automatically inappropriate or offensive.
...anything glorifying rape IS and always WILL BE automatically inappropriate and offensive, no matter the circumstances.
...glorifying rape or making fun of AIDS or Down's Syndrome is hateful and has no place on Etsy.
...other sellers suffer when Etsy refuses to shut down a horribly hateful and inappropriate store. People will boycott Etsy, and innocent sellers suffer.  Etsy still makes money off our listing fees, and do not suffer with the rest of us.
...banning a store that glorifies hatred and makes fun of tragic diseases and birth defects will not start a "slippery slope."  There is nothing slippery about this situation.  It will not lead to the banning of artistic nudity. It will keep Etsy the loving, supportive community it was meant to be.

In my opinion, this is appropriate:
(Caution, nudity)
http://www.etsy.com/listing/64890651/pastel-drawing-of-raven-haired-woman-on

And this is NOT:
http://www.etsy.com/listing/65234494/congratulations-card-youve-got-aids

That's the best way I can explain how I feel about this.  For a much more eloquent explanation of the situation, please see this PRBreakfastClub blog.  Thank you.