Today, I’ve learned how to use raw_input() in Python. However, learning scripting can be slightly taxing on the brain, so I took a break and I caught this little gem via Jenny Haniver on Twitter.

The quote below is from a reddit thread in Girl Gamers.

No. The guy IS a dick, and what he said was wrong. However, she can avoid that by just playing the darn game and not bringing in political correctness or gender equality into an online breeding house for violence and insults.
Whatever though. All the posts on this sub are the same. It’s people like these who give the rest of us who JUST WANT TO PLAY THE DARN GAME a bad name and a hard time

You know, I used to think like this too. I used to be pretty tough on women and girls in general. I was even harder on myself when I tended towards being feminine. My lack of make up, my hairy legs, my lack of concern for how I dress etc, is actually a rejection of what I experienced should be what it was to be a woman.

Let’s do that sentence over, shall we?

When I was younger, it was SO important for me to be accepted as one of the boys, that I didn’t use make up. That’s something that women do, and I didn’t want to be a woman, because being a woman was bad.

When I was younger, it was so important for me to be one of the guys that I didn’t shave my legs. That was something women did. I was not a woman. Women were not as cool as men.

This way of thinking is internalised sexism. What it means is basically that I was playing along with the patriarchy. I was playing into the hands of male privilege, because I thought that men were better than women. It took a long time for me to stop loathing myself and the fact that I was a woman, and it also took a long time before I could admit that hey, I actually like that my hair is shiny and long, and wow, I like to paint my toenails, and that does not make me worth any less. What my internalised sexism did do though, was to suppress certain parts of myself that might otherwise have had the chance to be a part of me.

Feminism 101 has a pretty good quote about internalised sexism:

Internalized sexism is bad for ourselves, bad for other women, and bad for society at large, even if it doesn’t always feel that way. It is infinitely easier to accept the roles that society has put forth for us, even if they chafe at spots and make us unhappy sometimes. It’s infinitely easier to lash out at other women — who don’t have the institutionalized authority to hurt us or take away what power we may have gotten — and label them as “the problem”, but that doesn’t get us any closer to solving the problem. Indeed, by shifting the blame and creating a scapegoat we’re just helping to obscure the root of the problem: sexist beliefs and institutions.

Basically, what this means for me is that I spent many years growing up believing that I was worth less than my male colleagues, and my male friends, and trying so hard to emulate being a man, but always failing, because I’m not. I’ll never be a man.

I can not even begin to explain what a huge impact learning about feminism has had on me, and on how I see gaming and the games industry these days. I just hope that my writings here and elsewhere in the media will help others to reach the same conclusions that I have fought pretty hard to get to.

Gaming is such an ingrained part of what it means to be human that everyone should have the same opportunity to play.

At the moment, the gaming culture and the gaming industry is geared almost exclusively toward men.

I think that should change, because neither the culture nor the industry is very healthy. I also believe that equality and feminism would go a long way to get the culture and the industry to feel better.