Article Discussion Forum

Usually women stand up for women. We try to lend each other a hand, especially in an industry as male-dominated as video games.

Yet, over the last few months, there have been a number of editorials by women in the industry who are speaking up against the dedication of separate attention and space to female gamers and game developers. Two pieces in particular, Erin Reynolds’ “Women in Gaming, and Women’s Game Conferences” as published on Game Instructions, and Lisa Foster’s “Glass Ceiling ‘a Myth’” as published on Next Generation, have received a good deal of attention from other gaming news sources. They’ve even got plenty of gamers nodding along.

Which is all well and good. The real question is: What are actual women thinking?

On the one hand, Reynolds and Foster each make certain significant arguments - ones that are at least worth looking at, if only to debunk them. There’s definitely potential for conflict in the creation of separate space for women gamers, and they’re careful to point it out. For example, Reynold warns that holding special conferences or running female gamer-oriented websites - essentially doing anything that openly acknowledges women as a unique portion of the gaming community - may in fact be hindering our shot at equality because it marks us as the “other”. In reality, such spaces are necessary to represent the large community of female gamers and developer who, without organizing themselves, could easily go ignored.

Reynolds too offers something close to wisdom when she calls the idealization of successful women in the industry, instead of empowering, “condescending” and “sexist”. But she's only right if it goes too far. Remember, plenty of male industry workers are featured and revered all the time. The only difference is, since they're men, we don't get hung up on their gender.

Yet from these initial, logical worries, both women jump to broad-sweeping generalizations and assumptions, and therefore leap right over the legitimate concerns of normal female gamers and game developers. Reynolds - who, keep in mind, hasn't taken the time to attend the conferences she's speaking against - doesn’t stop at calling women’s conferences “alienating”, she as also claims they make women seem “weak” and “inferior”. Besides, she says, we really shouldn’t even be talking about an issue like gender and gaming, since all we’re doing is putting more stress on the topic, which in turn makes women stand out more, makes them seem different. The idea shouldn’t be acceptance; it should be “normalizing”.

All of which is apparently just a moot point because, at least according to Foster, “There is no inequality.” This from a woman who goes on to write, apparently in all earnestness, that unequal representation and treatment is to be expected, since “it’s simply down to the fact that blokes are attracted to working in the games business, because they’re gamers.”

How do you even begin to respond to a statement like that? These anti-women women need to be set straight.

Some of their arguments are valid. The concern that separate female space will alienate women further from their male colleagues is an every-present one, but also one with a relatively simple solution: a non-exclusionary policy. Women’s conferences tackle issue of women in the industry, but that doesn’t mean only women can attend. The same goes for women gamer-oriented websites. Just because they address “female” topics, that doesn’t imply that they ignore “male” ones. Both of the pieces discussed above suggest that we, as women, should be closing our mouths in order to subsume ourselves in the existing games culture. But the existing games culture is male dominated and male oriented. Why should we accept male culture as the norm? Why should we conform to their standards? If we’re worried about alienating women, why not encourage more men to come and check out a women’s side of things?

Really, what we should be aiming for isn’t “normalization”. Women, by the numbers, often have different interests than men, and men than women. And each of us, on an individual level, are very different people. We should be celebrating and exploring our differences, not trying to erase them or hide them away; we shouldn’t have to be the same to appreciate and respect one another.

In the end, most separate female space exists not to discriminate, but to offer a place where women can feel comfortable talking about their own unique issues. Women can certainly hold their own in male-dominated situations. No one’s questioning that. What we’re questioning is the right of a minority to feel at ease, to step back from the stereotyping performed in mainstream venues and just be ourselves, without worrying. Discrimination does happen, in many forms. And if some men read our establishment of separate space as an act of alienation, if they consider us the “other” because we refuse to subsume our identities and our concerns in their own, then that’s the worse for them.

Separate women’s space wasn’t established to start cat fights. It exists because, somewhere out there, there are women gamers and industry members who feel the desire to partake in a female-oriented community. And that feeling is the only justification they need..

Editor's Note: You can visit Bonnie Ruberg's blog at heroine-sheik.com.