The endless alienation of media.

[seanan_mcguire]

I love the SyFy Channel Saturday night movies. The goofy effects, the giant monsters, the sometimes wooden acting, it's all a delicious cheese sandwich to help me relax into the one night of the week where I don't feel rushed to accomplish ALL THE THINGS before I go to bed. I try to judge them by what they are, and not by what I want them to be:

Comments

[ext_1638914]

I (sort of) watched that, too! The ending was the ABSOLUTE worst... the 'prize' saying something about geeks not being half-bad and kissing and ... uh! I almost barfed. I was re-reading a book that luckily monopolized my attention from most of the horrid movie.

[seanan_mcguire]

Lucky.

[anne_d]

Thank you, you've caught exactly what annoyed me about this movie (and that the Husband, being a male geek, didn't even notice).

[seanan_mcguire]

That's part of the problem. I mean, I was so focused on the gender issue that it wasn't until much later that I realized it was a 98% white movie (there's one POC extra). It's so easy to say "oh, what I identify with is here, the work is over."

[seanan_mcguire]

That'd be nice.

[aedifica]

But there's a big difference between saying "Seanan, you should have been able to identify with the struggles of the protagonist, regardless of gender," and saying "Seanan, you should have been able to accept a world that cast your gender into the role of harpy and martinet, and not felt objectified or rejected by this setting."

Word.

[seanan_mcguire]

Thank you.

[m_barnette]

My mom was a gamer geek. A woman. A mom. A player of RPGs. She also wrote fantasy short stories. My sister and I grew up in this kind of environment. Imagine our shock and horror when other people would look at mom and sis as if they'd grown a second head the instant they rattled off details about Star Trek, Star Wars, D&D and other well established geekdom pass times in a room filled with 'normal' geeks, aka guys.

One of my best friends was denied entry into a Magic the Gathering tournament because 'women are no good at this and we don't want to waste our time explaining how to play.' She later came in second at a tournament, but was 'disqualified' on grounds that were never explained.

So yes, this is the sadly common mentality among geekdom, but it doesn't make it right, nor does making women the 'foils' to geeks ring true. There are many women gamers and fans of shows like Firefly, Star Wars, Star Trek out there and it's time 'geekdom' woke up to that fact.

[m_barnette]

PS: Anime cons are typically full of female otaku, far more than you see at most scifi cons simply because they feel more welcomed. At least that's what I've heard.

[seanan_mcguire]

It just. Won't. Die.

[elialshadowpine]

Second generation geek women unite! <3 My mom is a major Trekkie and I grew up going up to Star Trek cons and dressing up as Jadzia Dax. >_> I started going when I was 8 or so, and I remember people making a very big deal of it, because who doesn't love an adorable little girl in a Star Trek uniform? I also remember the attitude shifting once I got to be a teenager, and then there were people that were threatened by me... although to be fair, the Trek fandom was a lot better than other geek communities.