Who’s entitled to me?
November 2007 Issue
Features
- From the Editors
- Craft Check: Gamer Soap
- Gaming in the Media: Fallen Guitar Heroes
- Market to Me: Using sex to sell
- Gamer vs Gamer: The Virtue of Reality?
Interviews
- Industry Interview: Shelly Mazzanoble [Author, Confessions of a Part-Time Sorceress]
Articles
- Gender & Live-Action Role Play: Into the Tavern, Part II
Author: Samara Hayley Steele
- Sims vs. Playboy: Sex and Relationships in the Dark Ages of Video Games
Author: Cherie Thomason
- Another Rape In Cyberspace
Author: Pat Miller
- Immaculate Reception
Author: Latoya Peterson
In this ongoing series, Samara shares her experiences as a female LARPer in a male-dominated LARP Organization.
Cherie discusses the portrayal of sex in console video games.
The trauma of a sexual assault is not limited to physical hurt. Pat discusses the violation of virtual bodies as analogous to that of real bodies, and wonders how it can be stopped.
Latoya discusses the lack of sex in mainstream video games and critiques the interplay between hyper-sexualized characters and their chaste actions.
Gamer Stories
Reviews
Odds 'n Ends
When I was sixteen, as many teenagers tend to do, I went through some hard times. Instead of getting high, cutting, or binging and purging, like some of my contemporaries might, my gamer identity helped me indulge in a kind of self-destructive behavior that was on no therapist’s radar. I escaped the angst of my real life through an addiction to a popular video game music website’s message board.
I found this gamer forum through a classmate at my high school, an awkward older student I also first talked to online. I was the first friend he’d invited over, and that and some hand-holding made me his girlfriend. I set him straight and moved on to flirt with more popular, rowdier boys, but I kept on posting on the message board that this boy loved so much.
After a bit of lurking, it was obvious who was cool, who stood out among the thousands of registered users. People with the most MP3s or hentai on their FTP server, those with the highest post-count (folks posted as often as 100 times a day towards a custom rank under their username), the overly articulate or flamboyantly dense wankers. And girls. (Sometimes we were “females”, but rarely “women”.) It was easier for girls, a minority, to gain notoriety. Especially if we posted pictures.
I was a bit shy to introduce myself because the flames were quick to ignite under noobs, but when I did, I openly advertised my gender in hopes that I’d receive a kind welcome. I did. I was liked well enough, and soon was addicted to the instant virtual social life. I logged on first thing when I woke up in the morning to read new posts, and ate my lunch in my high school’s computer lab to see what I’d missed. After school, I threw my feet up on the computer desk and played Playstation with IRC and AIM open on the computer while I chatted online (and sometimes on the telephone) with my internet friends, all while refreshing the boards.
I was popular. I was a young, cute girl who poured her heart out online. Sure, I talked about my favorite childhood games and fangirled Yasunori Mitsuda, but for the most part I stuck to the multiple “off-topic” forums to pen the problems I was too embarrassed to talk about in real life. For some reason, I thought a male-dominated gamer message board would be a good place to get the facts about masturbation and sex. I also talked frankly about the death of my best friend, the blows my ex-boyfriend and I dealt one another during our fights, and how at sixteen I still wasn’t sure what a female orgasm entailed—things I couldn’t talk about with my family or my school friends.
Because of my neediness, several guys took me under their wing and tried to help me out. Friendships turned into courtships, and like the boy from my high school who got me started, guys were entitled to my time because we shared a hobby—and entitled to my body, which folks discussed like stats on a Pokémon card. They knew my weight, what my bra size was, what kind of panties I wore. My smile was too wide, one friend told me. I didn’t smile so enthusiastically after that.
In general, I was a lot closer to the male posters. I felt a bit of competition for their affection with the other women. I criticized a woman who posted skimpy pictures of herself on the forums—I was jealous of the attention she got—and the ensuing debate severed any potential solidarity. I wanted to be the one folks voted for in the “hottest girl on the forums” and “female poster you’d most like to have sex with” polls. The male attention was gratifying. They defined me so I didn’t have to.
I was sixteen/seventeen. Underage. Folks posted pictures of themselves naked, and I remember one young man in particular, a year or two out of high school, sought my opinion on the picture he posted of his penis. Early plans were in the works to move across the country in hopes that I’d date him—once I casually said I thought he’d be an attentive lover.
I posted there for a year. In class, during that time, my peers and teachers looked away while I cried. I stopped doing my homework. I wanted to drop out of school. I started dating someone offline, a nice person my own age, who went to my high school, and some of my online friends started attacking my character. It was for my own good, they said. I needed to know about my major character flaws so I could fix them—and it had to start by following their romantic advice with my new offline relationship. I wouldn’t go there. I wanted a part of my life that was mine, that wasn’t public knowledge.
Around this time, the message boards crashed, and I lost my post-count. The remains of all the hours I’d put into my online relationships, my online reputation, were gone. I’d tried quitting before, but like making up with a cruel boyfriend, I kept going back. This time, with it all gone, I didn’t have it in me to do it all again, to build it up. I didn’t register again. I was entitled to happiness, and I wasn’t finding it there.
About once every two years, I’ll look back at those forums, and a little knot of dread grips my chest. Even if they’re not on those boards, I think some folks never really did move on.
