I'm a Feminist, and I play games.

When the various "controversies" started in regards to gaming, women and feminism started, I basically just read the various articles and kept my mouth shut, except on Slashdot, where I got the usual SJW/faggot/pussy epithets applied to me.   I eventually set up one of my little TV-tray style tables  (which I use while gaming for books/notes/printouts) and put a few things on there that show how I feel about these issues.

Look, there's Vivi from Final Fantasy IX, and a Creeper from Minecraft, and the Dual-Shock 4 for my PS4.  And there's a copy of "The Beauty Myth" and Fire Against Fire" by Naomi Wolf, and Julia Serano's "Whipping Girl"  All sitting on my Hello Kitty throw blankie.

So let's just say I am not overly fond of the GamerGate types. In otherwords, I'm a feminist, I game, and I have utter disdain for them.  What I think about them has been said better by others, Salome (SalStrange) in the GamerGate thread on SLU,  Jesse Singal on Reddit and The Boston Globe

Gender juxtaposition, and what it says about us.

I was talking on FE about mesh hair, which is a whole 'nother topic I'm not going to get into at this time, and it was suggested I check out a hair store I'd never been to. Now I'd seen prim hair from this place on other people and it looked fine to me, I had been meaning to go there anyway sometime.

I did the usual thing, checking out demos and whatnot, hobnobbing with fashionfolk, but as I was looking around I realized the hair display vendors bothered me for a reason.

This is the guy hair. This place has some VERY nice guy hair and if you're a guy avatar, GO now! You won't be disappointed.



Those are attractive guy avatars in my opinion. They look like adults, old enough to buy alcohol and even old enough to have graduated college and have jobs.

These are some of the female hair displays:





Putting it bluntly, those avatars look a LOT younger than the male displays. The bodies may have boobs, but the faces look to my eyes chubby cheeked young girls wearing a lot of makeup, not even old enough for high school. And most certainly not as mature looking as the males.

That bothered me...to me it was a sort of "Toddlers and Tiaras" effect. Now I know that in certain SL communities there's a trend of dressing and looking like a part Japanese cutesy anime inspired girl, and there's nothing wrong of that. It was the juxtaposition of the two, manly adult and cutesy girl face with knockers that bothered me and what it said about the fashion community of SL. I think that if the guys has been your standard slender Bishonen anime-inspired guy/young Bieber type, essentially the male version of the female displays, it wouldn't have bothered me so much.

But it did. But it's not like I didn't think the hair wasn't nice hair, it was...sigh.

My Name is CC and I'm a Girloholic. (with props to Salome)

My former Boss at Linden Lifestyles, Salome strangelove has written a very thoughtful post in regards to her feminism and her "Squee" over SL fashion.

I could tell epic stories about my angst in trying to reconcile my feminism, with my love of femme-y things, and my Transgenderedness. And I do mean epic. I have several threads, one of them 18 pages, on a message board I frequent that are basically all about that issue.

It wasn't till relatively recently, May of Last year, that I got over it...mostly. You see, for many years, I thought that because I was a nerd, I couldn't be a woman because I was nothing like a woman. Also for many years, I thought I couldn't be a woman because I was attracted women (I didn't know that lesbian MTF Transsexuals existed). And there were times that I believed that because I'd go squee over some RL pair of shoes like these Christian Louboutin Anemone's (even if I couldn't actually walk or afford them) that I wasn't "really a TS".

Dear readers, did I ever tell you that I'm amazingly low self esteemy? Even in SL! Just last week I was thinking that perhaps my avatar wasn't pretty enough.

What helped me the most was my friends on the Internets, and the Visible: A Femmethology Volumes.

Am I a feminist? Yes, yes I am. I've identified as such for years. Lets see, I think it was before Anita Hill, somewhere between 1988 and 1990. I began identifying more strongly with feminism with the rise of Third Wave feminism. In fact, it was a series of articles and interviews in Glamour magazine about and by Naomi Wolf and Susan Faludi that did so.

I would describe myself as a pro-porn, pro-choice Third Wave feminist. I'm a practical feminist, I don't go for that deconstruction and theorizing, it hurts my head. I like to keep it simple.

I don't refer to myself as a "girl" or "woman" yet, I feel like I haven't "earned it" yet, but when I was young, I played with my sisters dolls, read her YM and Seventeen, played with her makeup. But that doesn't mean I didn't like Dungeons & Dragon's (got my first set in 81), playing with the Brix Blox Lego knockoffs, and playing video games.

I also sometimes sing the chorus of "I Enjoy Being a Girl" from the Musical "Flower Drum Song", sometimes ironically, but sometimes not, and I have done it while shopping in SL:


When I have a brand new hairdo
With my eyelashes all in curl,
I float as the clouds on air do,
I enjoy being a girl!