Wherein we discuss the ridiculous ways in which comic and gaming artists depict breasts, and the physics behind having fairly enormous breast (two girls in the group are H-cups). We also talk about Mr. Tweet and his ludicrous statements about women and gaming, and comics that we like.
http://sirriamnicast.libsyn.com
Thanks for listening !!!
Geek Girls Rule!!! 
I’m gonna ask a question and hope it’s clear that I have the best of intentions, i.e., I am not trying to be a jerk.
In podcast #3, your round table talks about how much they hate it when guys hit on them when they find out they’re into geeky stuff. However, in podcast #1, you talk about a pretty-boy Crow wannabe that “made your panties melt” when you found out he was also a Warhammer player.
I don’t get it. I mean, apparently your whole group are giant-breasted goth fetish model burlesque dancers who read comics and play RPGs. Were I a single gamer guy*, I would be insane not to try and get to know you.
Or is the issue the context? I.e., don’t hit on you while you’re trying to enjoy a game.
Sorry, I’m just confused. That, and maybe I have minimal sympathy for people who complain about getting hit on too much—probably because I never get hit on. 🙂
* I’m happily married. My question is purely theoretical, honest.
A. Only only 2, well, three of them have giant breasts. I’m the only one who does burlesque, and Julz is the only fetish model.
B. It’s not the hitting on per se… It’s usually the HOW of the hitting on, and yeah, that didn’t come across in the podcast. We’ll probably address this in a future podcast. I, personally, dig when someone hits on me in relation to something I enjoy… with that caveat I have to say, hitting on my character in game because you find me hot, not ok. Acting like you just can’t believe that such a thing as a girl into comics/gaming/computers… Annoying. Really fucking annoying. And I think that’s what we were trying to get across. We’re just geeks like you, we just happen to have these pleasant to look at, frequently annoying growths on our chests.
I hope that helped.
A. I was sorta exaggerating for emphasis. 🙂
B. Definitely makes more sense now. I’ve seen the in-character flirting and the disbelief thing, and, yeah, it’s not pretty, Thanks!
I have been listening to Ogre’s podcast, heard mention of this one, and so DL’ed and listened to this episode of this podcast over the weekend.
Great show! I’ve now DL’ed the whole set and will be catching up over the next week or so. Having gamed for decades, with very few female gamers, it’s always interesting to hear their perspective and learn something new. Further, I’ve introduced my fiancee to gaming and think (hope!) she may be interested hearing a perspective closer to her own.
Having said that, I did have a bone of contention to pick. Many times during the course of this episode there was expressed annoyance that boys found it incredulous that girls could be geeks and interested in comics or RPG’s or video games, etc. And while I certainly understand the annoyance at being told that “girls don’t / shouldn’t / can’t do that” – some of what was expressed was specifically NOT that. It was at the clerk in the video game shop or the RPG game shop or the comic shop having a prejudice based on their actual experience – and then being excoriated over it. In other words, if some clerk, working for a little over minimum wage, at a video game shop sees 80% of the customers are male and the 80% of the remaining 20% of the female customers are the girlfriends / sisters / mom’s of the guys buying video games … then why would he assume that you are the 20% of 20% that are game loving girls, well versed in all of the latest games and eager for something hardcore and new? He may be wrong in his assumption, but he came by it honestly.
In fact, part of your argument is proof by exception. “Hey,” you seem to be saying, “this is a male dominated hobby, but we’re here too!” And the very fact that you have to announce your presence so vehemently suggests that there are NOT enough girls in gaming and that the boys who are unsure how to react to a girl in “their” hobby is honestly reacting to his own, valid, experience – albeit, reacting poorly and making this a self-fulfilling prophecy.
At 38, social situations look very different then they did when I was 12. Though I never, deliberately, excluded a girl from our games – I still shudder to think that I am being judged today for something I said or did 26 years ago. And isn’t that what you’re doing? Someone, years or even decades ago told you, you couldn’t play. But they’ve gotten older and you’ve gotten older and you’ve met many people who have welcomed you in and taught you what they know and then sat, humbly, to learn from you what you know and together you’ve enjoyed many games. Why still the anger for someone who no longer exists? A previous version of some immature boy, long since grown past that immaturity (at least we hope) and no longer any obstacle to you at all?
Anyway, thank you for taking the time and effort to produce and publish this podcast. I’ll continue to listen and encourage others to listen. Take care.
Ok. First, I’m glad you enjoyed the podcast for the most part, and that your girlfriend is getting into gaming. I love my hobby(ies) dearly, which is one of the reasons that some of the more ongoing difficulties with it(them) are so vexing.
Next, I’m going to try to be relatively calm and nice about this, but the whole point of this podcast and column is the perceptions of geek women of how they have been/are treated by other (usually male, but not always) geeks. If you want to write your own column, do your own podcast about how unfair I and other geek women are to geek guys, feel free. This is not the place for that. However, I am going to address your points.
See, I’ve worked retail, so I know how very, very easy it is to keep your judgements to yourself and merely ask a customer, “Can I help you?” If someone wants help, they will usually tell you. If they don’t, it is rude to force it on them. And if they say “Yes, I would like to find X” it is the height of rude, bullshit behavior to not listen to what they are asking for or to discount their wants or opinions, as in Julz’s mom’s experience looking for more DS puzzle games.
And per my experience at CompUSA, I would have been just as nasty had a female clerk been as dismissive of what I was asking.
You know that whole “Don’t assume, you’ll just make an ass of you and me” thing? Bingo! Look, just treat female customers and male customers like customers, regardless of gender. I worked as a picture framer in a craft store, most of my clientele were female, and when a man walked in, sure I THOUGHT, “Oh boy, now I get to play 20 questions to figure what he’s trying to buy for his wife/mom/girlfriend” but what I SAID was, “Hi! Can I help you find something?” regardless of the gender of the customer. Stock phrases are great for that, and there’s a reason they’re part of retail training.
As for feeling excoriated for something you may or may not have done when you were 12, well, I can’t help you there. We merely recounted our experiences trying to game as young girls/women. None of us named names or singled out any of the guys who denied us gaming for special mocking. Those were our experiences as young geeky girls. It’s not like I’d meet one of those guys today who said, “Girls will just ruin it!” and read him the riot act. Frankly, I don’t really remember any of them. I do remember the “boyfriend” (jr. high boyfriend) who wanted me to game with them, very fondly actually. So I don’t really get your last paragraph. We’re not holding grudges, it’s kind of hard to do that with people you don’t remember.
@runester – I was one of the participants of that podcast. Reading between the lines of your comment, it seems to me that you’re dismissing the very real, very present, still-occurring sexism that is present in gaming culture. You may have aged over the last 26 years, but there are many others still in the same mindset as 12-year-old you.
To this day, I still get ignored if I go into a game store with my boyfriend, even when he’s the one wandering around aimlessly and I’m the one standing at the counter waiting for the clerk to stop chatting to his buddies and make eye contact so I can ask him for the latest release of Grand Theft Auto. That was two months ago, not two decades.
Just because you still aren’t being dismissive to girl gamers anymore doesn’t mean others aren’t still being just as patronizing as they were back then. And it diminishes the rest of us Geek Girls (what rule) to deny what we have experienced, what we are still experiencing.
@GeekGirlsRule: This paragraph interested me the most –
“Next, I’m going to try to be relatively calm and nice about this, but the whole point of this podcast and column is the perceptions of geek women of how they have been/are treated by other (usually male, but not always) geeks. If you want to write your own column, do your own podcast about how unfair I and other geek women are to geek guys, feel free. This is not the place for that. However, I am going to address your points.”
Because it implies I did a very poor job of communicating my ideas; I didn’t write anything in a spirit of anger or combativeness and yet that is how it (apparently) read. For this I apologize.
If I did have my own podcast or column it wouldn’t be about how you or geek girls or women in general have been unfair to me or to geek boys or to men in general. Because, on the one hand that topic doesn’t interest me very much and on the other hand, I have dealt with so many fair minded people in and out of the hobby that it wouldn’t generate very much content.
I understand your comments on retail service and agree. Regardless of what they thought the customers needs were going to be, they certainly should have asked; and in as unbiased a way as possible. Point well taken.
@Loree: “And it diminishes the rest of us Geek Girls (what rule) to deny what we have experienced, what we are still experiencing.”
I certainly hope that nothing I wrote suggested anyone should keep silent or deny their experience. I was simply trying to express (though poorly) that if there is an equation with “I am a minority, please treat me like the rest” on one side, then there must be “my assumptions, though faulty, work nearly all of the time” on the other. Perhaps it’s just playing Devil’s Advocate to point out that people do things, even stupid &/or wrong things, for good reasons.
I’m wondering if the same clerk would be just as quick to make the same bad assumption the next time? If he’s corrected once, or twice, isn’t he eventually going to feel foolish and expand his vision of ‘potential’ customer? I would hope so! But really, who knows? As a wise friend once told me, “Everyone is capable of change … but no one really wants to”
Take care.