Cerise Magazine

This year I attended WisCon, the world’s leading feminist science fiction and fantasy convention, for the first time. Since it was also my first time attending any convention, I wasn’t sure what to expect. But, at Karen Healey’s prompting, I not only registered to attend, but also signed up to present a paper for the academic track and to be on one of the panels.

Named because it’s held in Wisconsin, WisCon has been around since 1977 and has grown so large since then that membership caps at one thousand people well before the convention opens in the end of May. Professional and amateur writers and fans of all kinds are all welcome to participate in its programming, which focuses on the intersections between science fiction and fantasy, feminism, politics and culture.

Panels and Other Programming

In addition to the panels, which made up the bulk of the weekend, there was also always one academic paper being presented and, in the afternoons and evenings, themed parties were planned to help attendees socialize and unwind. The programming was robust (you can view the schedule over at the Feminist SF Wiki) and the most frequent complaint that I heard from people was that they didn’t know which panel to choose to attend in any given time slot, as they all looked so interesting.

The experience of sitting in a room with other smart, analytical and funny women talking about things we love and love to hate is something that I wish I could take with me back to my everyday life.

The ones that I chose to attend were the Conversation on Feminism & Japan panel, the Japanese Sense of Gender panel, and the X-Women panel, and I was on the Future of Feminism panel. I also popped into the Battlestar Galactica panel for the first twenty minutes or so.

The panels were all an hour and fifteen minutes, but it always seemed to be too short. An hour and fifteen minutes seems to be just enough time for a conversation to start, but even with the time constraints I think that a lot was said. I went to some panels, like the Japanese Feminism one, to learn and others, like the X-Women panel, to feel that I was not alone. In the end, although the panels didn’t always go as expected, the experience of sitting in a room with other smart, analytical and funny women talking about things we love and love to hate is something that I wish I could take with me back to my everyday life.

I probably went to fewer panels than the average WisCon goer. I think that was because, as much as I loved debating and commiserating with others, I loved networking even more. I was able to put faces to people I had only known through the internet; people like Liz Henry, John Kim, Laura Q, Charlie Anders, and Annalee Newitz. But it wasn’t just hanging out with online friends that I enjoyed — it was also meeting other geeky feminists and creating friendships that will hopefully last until we can meet again at WisCon 32.

One of the ways in which I networked was through the parties. There were a variety of themes: everything from a Think Galactic party, promoting their fledgling convention, to a Mad Scientist Japanese Tea Party, and my personal favorite, the Fancy Dress Party.

Since there were no video game panels this year, the parties were where I was able to meet and connect with other gamers. Most of the conversations spanned a whole host of geeky issues — from comics to anime to blogging — and so I was able to connect with many other feminist women and men who shared my interests. At one point during the Fancy Dress Party, Robyn Fleming and I were introduced to Catherine Schaff-Stump, a professor who has taught both at Kirkwood Community College as well as its sister college in Japan. Over the course of the conversation, we found out that not only was she fluent in Japanese, but she was a science fiction and fantasy writer and a lover of games and comics. It was such a delight to find someone who shared so many of my interests that I made the joke that she had the life that I want for myself a few years down the road.

Participating in the Academic Track

On Saturday I presented a paper called “Idealizing Fantasy Bodies” (available in full on Iris), which explores how avatars conform to standards of beauty/strength in games such as World of Warcraft. I shared the time slot with Jason Nicholas Boggs, who was also a first time presenter, and his paper entitled “101 Playing for Self-Esteem: How Video Games Represent Females And Affect Female Self-Esteem.” Before we began, I loaded up my computer to get ready for my power point presentation, and was rewarded with one of those geeky moments where everyone saw my Dreamfall background and laughed — in the good way.

I loaded up my computer to get ready for my power point presentation, and was rewarded with one of those geeky moments where everyone saw my Dreamfall background and laughed — in the good way.

Jason presented first, detailing a survey that he had created for the purpose of determining if there was a correlation between video game playing and self-esteem. He began by listing the limitations of his study such as small sample size, lack of response to the second half of his survey, and the problems with people self-reporting as gamers or non-gamers. Based on his interactions with female friends who identified as gamers, Jason hypothesized that gamers would have higher self-esteem than non gamers. The hypothesis was not supported in the general determination of self-esteem, although he did find that participants who identified themselves as gamers were less likely to feel that a relationship would make them more confident than those who did not identify as gamers. The audience raised further question as to the limitations of his study and how it may have affected his data, but hopefully Jason will use his experiences to further hone his methodology and continue to contribute to gaming research in the future.

After the questions were done, I stepped up and began my presentation. I read off the paper I had prepared, hoping that I was keeping to an understandable pace, and that no one could see my legs shaking. My paper began by defining which ideals fantasy bodies in video games tended to conform to, illustrating the point with pictures of magazines and breakdowns of the typical features that avatars possess. I touched on the Blood Elf controversy — when Blizzard changed the male Blood Elf avatars from their original slender form to that of a slender body builder — and then talked about sexual dimorphism, which seemed to be the most popular part of the presentation.

The paper topics led to a lively discussion about customization in online games, subversive elements that are included in game design and modding in both online games and offline ones. Afterwards many people came up to me to compliment me on the presentation, or to grab one of the Iris cards that Robyn and I had made. I got the names of two Final Fantasy XI players on my server, was surprised to hear that a few of the people present had already read the first issue of Cerise, and was overall pleased with the way that things went.

Until Next Year

WisCon is one of those events where people begin preparing for the next one before they have even checked out of the hotel. Already, I have ideas swirling around in my head for panels on video games, I’m considering what I want to do for the academic track, and am hoping that we will have enough people going to do an official Iris Gaming Network meetup.

You can see pictures of the event at Iris’s Wiscon 31 photo gallery or browse WisCon 31’s Flickr pool.

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WisCon 31: Feminists, Geeks, and Gamers

June 2007 Issue

Features

Interviews

Articles

Gamer Stories

Reviews

Panels and Other Programming

Participating in the Academic Track

Until Next Year