#spelfeminism

How Can You Not React?

Most of the people I know in the games industry are men. Most of the contacts I have are men. Not that strange. The industry is still hovering at that 80/ 20 division of men and women, where the 20% part usually also contain all of us that are non-binary, trans or queer. White is the overwhelmingly common colour, even among us who belong to the 20%, so we have an even more problematic situation…

The House in Your Favor

What happens if you discover that the “even playing field” you thought you were playing on was tilted heavily in your favour? Would you feel proud of your accomplishments, still, or would you maybe deny your privilege? Would you feel uncomfortable knowing that everything you took for granted perhaps wasn’t really something everyone had access to? It’s difficult when your world crumbles around…

Let me be the hero

I vividly remember seeing Wonder Woman in the darkness of a movie theatre with a dear friend. I remember tears in my eyes as Diana climbed up the ladder and charged across the battlefield. I remember thinking “this is for me”, and how unused to seeing women as heroes I was. It wasn’t the first time a woman was the hero. Alien, Aliens, Terminator 2 are also among fond memories, but these stories…

[..] for the purpose of this discussion I’m more interested in the kind of attitude that underlies and perpetuates mansplaining. And my answer, in short, is entitlement: entitlement of the epistemic variety, which relates to knowledge, beliefs, and the possession of information. – Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women, Kate Mann Raise your hand if you’ve ever had an idea stolen from you,…

“Put a dog in there.”

Relatedness refers to the social nature of human beings and the connectedness with others. Both can be considered as being part of the panhuman psychology and both are intrinsically intertwined. – Heidi Keller, Psychological autonomy and hierarchical relatedness as organizers of developmental pathways The title of this blog post, put a dog in there, refers to advice we were given as game…

Gaslighting is a colloquialism for a specific type of manipulation where the manipulator is successful in having the target (a person or a group of people) question their own reality, memory or perceptions. There is often a power dynamic in gaslighting where the target is vulnerable because they are fearful of losses associated with challenging the manipulator. – Wikipedia I’m writing quite a bit…

Right now, a reckoning is shaking the games industry and culture. Predators are being called out, and I can only think of Flemeth when she pours out her pain to Morrigan and the Inquisitor.

She was betrayed as I was betrayed as the world was betrayed!

Sometimes it takes a character in a game to express all the anger and pain that has accumulated over years and years and years of being seen as…

During my 30+ years as a gamer, I always knew I stood out as “odd” and perhaps “other”. Actually, that’s not entirely true. I didn’t realise how odd and other I was until I visited a games store somewhere in my early teens. I was super excited. Finally! I could have my pick of games! I could buy anything! That feeling lasted for about 10 minutes until I started registering the odd looks I was…