I'm just a (gamer) girl, and that's all that you'll let me be.

Today I was wandering around the internet and stumbled upon this website: The Hot Gamer Chick Gallery. I tried to give the site the benefit of the doubt (mostly because the Changeling information on the main site is so useful) but eventually I just started rolling my eyes and grumbling.

So, I'm making a post to rant at this dude's hypocrisy.
I'm just going to go through the lines of text and pick out some choice ones.

Here at The Right to Dream we have dedicated this section of the site to recognizing the Gamer Girl population. Girls who break the sterotypical mold of the "Gamer Girlfriend". Ladies, we salute you!

I just glossed over that sentence at first but thinking about it now, I'm starting to wonder. What exactly is the "gamer girlfriend" stereotype? As far as I knew, it meant that the girl was only interested in gaming because that was what she felt she had to do to get her boyfriend to spend time with her or pay attention to her. Thinking about it further I can't honestly say I've met and/or seen any women like this. Granted, I'm sure they are out there, but the majority of the gamer girls I meet have been interested in gaming for gaming's sake and if they had gamer boyfriends that wasn't the reason the women gamed (just yet another similarity that drew them together as a couple).

....this section of the site will now be a gallery dedicated to all you Hot Gamer Chicks out there. Remember to send in Bios with your pics telling us how you got into gaming without the help of us lowlife guys.

This immediately got my hackles up for two reasons:
1) The "without the help of us... guys" makes it sound like if you got into gaming thanks to male friends then you are somehow less of a Girl Gamer. Which is bullshit.
2) "lowlife guys"? Well, I guess the author was speaking about himself so it counts... but, anyhoo, I really get angry when anyone tries to imply that one sex is superior to the other.

The guy goes on to address a complaint that he doesn't have a Hot Gamer Guy Gallery. Which he answers with "I am a guy and this is my website, i dont want to be looking at a bunch of geek guys." okay, I can sorta understand that but it also feels like he's saying "ew, I don't want anyone to think I'm gay!". He links to someone else's Hot Gamer Guy Gallery... but the link goes to a site that no longer exists. He can't control websites vanishing, that's not his fault, but it does remove a comparison point that would've been nice.

Okay, then are the 34 Hot Gamer Girls with names and thumbnail photos. Clicking on their photos takes you to their bios. They all seem pretty attractive and they're interesting. That's really not very remarkable, though, as I find most Gamer Girls interesting.

Under the pictures is this gem of a phrase:

Below here is all the text left over from when the Contest was still going on...it serves as a good reminder of what being a Hot Gamer Chick is really all about and to remind us that there are well...bitches out there who get real pissed off when you talk about girls being pretty. sigh...

Oh. I see. So I'm a bitch now? Well, fine, if that's what you call it, I'm proud. And we're not getting pissed off about talking about girls being pretty. We know girls are pretty, and talking about girls being pretty is, well, pretty awesome. First of all, we're pissed about the concept of a beauty contest: that the best Gamer Girl is somehow the prettiest and that the "prettiest" just happens to be the most pleasing to your male eye. Maybe we ought to be rating women on more than just their looks. Maybe we ought to just be happy saying "Damn, look at all these hot gamer chicks, this is awesome!" without having to resort to petty contests and pitting women against each other. Second of all, what we're pissed about it upstart little boys like you who run around saying "I'm not a sexist, honest." while acting like a god damn sexist.

okay, onward. So he goes on to explain his little contest further for us:

It's all a facade. I have a theory that girls do not naturally get into gaming on their own. This contest is really just a "fun" way to gather data for my [sic]socialogy experiment.

Girls do not naturally get into gaming on their own? What?! This is the same thing as saying "girls aren't naturally gamers". It's implying that there is something inherent to being female that means you're not as true a gamer as a male could be.

The contest is completely aesthetic. While I don't really see why we can't have such a thing. We play a game where the defining characteristic of the noblity is the fact that they have an extra two dots of appearance over the commoners. Hell, the game we play is shallow.

oh, okay, so because Changeling could be viewed as being shallow, that therefore means being shallow is all right? You don't want to maybe rise above the shallowness? Maybe show that you're a man who knows how to respect women and not a shallow little boy?

Regardless, its a fun little way for me see if my theory is true...I want my theory to be wrong. I want the female gamer girlfriend role to be debunked.

okay, so the gamer girlfriend stereotype is that a girl who is interested in gaming is only in it because of their boyfriends. As a gamer girl who was introduced to gaming by a boyfriend and is now still madly in love with gaming but not the boyfriend ... I don't understand how my introduction through male friends now brands me a "gamer girlfriend" for the rest of my life. If a girl gets into gaming through a male then they are somehow less of a gamer girl? How does that work? The gamer girlfriend stereotype is bad because it assumes that women don't actually like the games. Well, if a woman is introduced to gaming and becomes interested in it, how are they just in it for the guy? Years later, I still love gaming and I game more than the boy who introduced it to me. Yet this guy is implying that because my interest in games wasn't immaculately conceived then I must be merely a "gamer girlfriend".

Comic books and other influnces that are stereotypically male hobbies are how many guys come into gaming. ...Most girls (and I know that most "average" girls dont get into gaming, I'm trying to debunk stereotypes here remember?) get into the social crap brought on by reading too many teen magazines and other such dribble. The rare (and wonderful) ones that do break beyond these stereotypes by getting into other fields like fantasy, science fiction, movies, anime, comics and gaming are rare.

Well, first of all, if you're trying to debunk a stereotype inherent in the population of gamer girls then what does data on the "average" girl (who doesn't get into gaming), really have to do with anything? The ones reading teen magazines don't get into gaming. The ones that read sci-fi and fantasy and love comics are the ones that get into gaming. And how do they do that? Maybe they go into the comic store and see a game book. Maybe they read novel spin-offs of RPGs and then get into the gaming aspect of it. Maybe those girls have a lot of male friends (you know, the stereotypical male hobbists) who are the only ones who share the geek-girls' interests because all the other girls are off reading teen magazines. Maybe those girls have a lot of male friends who share their taste in books and comics, so when the guys stumble upon gaming, of course they're going to suggest it to the girl, too, because she likes the same books they do.

Interests don't just appear in a vacuum. Everyone has friends that get them interested in a new book series, a new game, a new music group. Why should women who have male friends somehow be less of a gamer? Why are guys who don't spontaneously generate an interest in games, but are introduced by friends, not considered less of a gamer?

I insist on trying to have at least one female in all of my gaming troupes... It is my belief that having a female in a party adds something to Changeling. Women bring a little wonderful something to the gaming table that I've never quite been able to put my finger on...I don't think a man can truthfully portray what it means to be a woman.

Translation: "Some of my best friends are women! Honest!" *rolls eyes*
Maybe if you stopped thinking about women and men as two categories that are completely alien to each other then you'd realize how a man can portray a woman: act like a human not a cardboard cut-out.

I dont mind that some of you are angry. You're right, you don't know me and if you did, you would never think of me as being sexist. Women are wonderful in all of their incarnations. This is a beauty contest, and frankly I don't see anything wrong with admiring the beauty of the female body. If you do, then I'm sorry.

Except... we don't have to know you. Just from what you've said on this page you've proved that you think women should be judged on appearance over other qualities and that you think that women should be held to stricter standards when being considered gamers.

And we're not annoyed at you because you're admiring the beauty of the female body. We're annoyed that you cannot seem to grasp the beauty of anything but the female body.

...but most of the time when you do meet an attractive one, it's because she is dating a guy who got her into gaming in the first place, and she wasn't a gamer until she met him.

Yeah, and? If she likes gaming and actually enjoys gaming, does it matter how she got into it? Or, is this just an excuse to get mad at those uppity women who dare to have a boyfriend who isn't you?

oh, yay, Rule 3 is "No Fat Chicks in Wings". It seems to be partially an in-joke but the parenthetical "fat girls need love, too, guys" is really obnoxious. It's a really annoying, dismissive attitude towards women who actually have some meat on their bones. Fat does not equal unattractive, people. Also, I have to wonder what this guy considers "fat".

oof.

It's people like this that really get me angry. It's frustrating because I know this guy isn't the only one like him. There are a decent number of gamer guys out there who think that women are some strange alien, incomprehensible creatures when, really, women are simply people too. We can have the same motivations, thoughts and interests as men... except that these guys think that we're somehow incapable of enjoying "manly" hobbies, like gaming. And if these guys somehow do allow that maybe we like gaming, they still try to make up stupid reasons (like that our male friends introduced us to the hobby) for considering us lesser gamers.