Cerise Magazine

After the release of Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, I joined a gaming group for the summer. I play a female fighter in part because the rules for fighters seemed simpler than some of the others – as the only player who had never played D&D, I thought I needed some sort of edge – and because I like to fight. I have a type when it comes to the characters I roleplay; they are always female, and they are always proficient with some sort of weapon.

We picked up a second female fighter early in the game. She was a little standoffish – only to be expected when she was tied up, blindfolded, and gagged before we found her, and there was debate about whether we should untie her – and then there was a joke about her chastity belt because she didn’t fawn all over the male characters.

Almost right away, the other characters (and/or the other players, because it’s not always so easy to tell if they’re speaking in character or out with this group) cast her has the man-hating lesbian fighter. Suddenly she had a backstory forced upon her by characters and/or players who were mostly male - she’d been mistreated by men – raped by men – and now she couldn’t stand them.

The player, a woman, gave up that character as soon as we completed that adventure. She rolled up a new character, also female, but made this one friendlier, more outgoing – sexier. She fights from a distance instead of up close. She rarely gets hit. She doesn’t have a backstory filled with gendered-violence, not provided by the player nor by assumption from the male characters/players.

We started the game with my female fighter and a female paladin which was also a tank character, built for up close combat and healing. The other female fighter was added early. We also had a male warlord who is a decent fighter but much better at standing back and guiding the battle.

All the fighters have been sexualized in some way or another except for mine.

As far as I know, none of us had an explicitly sexualized background. In the beginning, none of us played our characters as explicitly sexualized people. It was the preconceived notions of the players which influenced the way the characters are presented. The man-hating lesbian fighter. The male warlord who is just fabulous and is therefore fashionable, frilly, and bisexual. The female paladin who is teased about being in a sexual relationship with another male character. The male warlord plays pranks on the paladin and the male character which involve putting them in naughty positions in bed.

And I sit there, with my non-sexual female fighter, and fume.

I play her pretty straightforward. When setting up her backstory, I kept it simple, because I knew if I gave myself too much free rein, I’d write a novel about her. Her story can be summed up with few words: Descended from a long line of female fighters, she’s set out to build her reputation and earn a place with her family. Everything she does is about getting the job done well and openly so people know who she is. In battle, she doesn’t think through everything. She doesn’t know where best to place the mages, and in the beginning, she wasn’t really sure how to fight well with a group. She’s learned her lessons well, and listens when the warlord makes suggestions. She’s still prone to hit first when the monsters appear, but she holds back a little. She wants to recruit more female fighters, and is thrilled when the first female fighter rejoins their group (as an NPC) later.

I wonder, if I explained my character’s background, if they would make the same jokes about her. I wonder if I explained my personal background, if they would make those jokes at all. They don’t know about sexual history or my sexual preferences. They don’t need to know; this isn’t a group of friends coming together to game. This is a group of people who, for the most part, are spending one summer working at the same company. Each of us is here for approximately twelve weeks, and those weeks don’t all overlap. Most of them don’t know much beyond my name, my position at the company, and my character.

That doesn’t excuse the assumptions of gendered violence, or the assignment of sexual preferences and activity.

Recently, I was handed the man-hating lesbian fighter to play for our final three sessions. We’re fighting multiple dragons in the lead-up to the final boss character. Our characters need all the help they can get.

After playing her for one session, I’m sad that the original player gave her up. She’s an effective fighter, and does incredible amounts of damage. She is, of course, equipped by the DM to help in the final ongoing battles, but she would have been an interesting and useful addition in all the previous adventures.

I don’t find playing the sexualized fighter any different from the non-sexualized fighter. I refuse to acknowledge a forced backstory full of gendered violence. The only time her forced sexualization came up was when I was first given her character sheet and one of the other players asked why her original player wasn’t taking her back. Our DM said he had randomly drawn names, but he was sure the original player was happy not to have her back.

“After all,” I said, and frowned, “she gave her up for a reason.”

Chastity belts and man-hating lesbian jokes get old fast.

Families bond in many different ways: gathering together for meals, going out to social events, helping each other out… The list goes on and on. In my case, one of the ways that my family has bonded has been through games. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a “gamer family” or anything like that. It just happens that some games, especially board games, have offered us an opportunity to spend time together while having lots of fun.
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I’ve always wanted to be a hero. To fight for truth and justice. To inspire people. To make a difference. Clichéd, I know, but I’m not alone. I mean, why else would superhero stories be so popular, not to mention all those “generic hero saves the world” RPG plots, if not to satisfy a craving for heroism in the hearts of us “ordinary” folks?

When I was little, characters like Rydia from Final Fantasy IV (well, I knew it at Final Fantasy 2) inspired me. Rydia was powerful. When adversity struck, she struck back. Hard. Not only did she survive losing her family (heck, her whole village) and being swallowed by Leviathan as a girl, but she used those tragic events to forge herself into a strong, capable young woman. More often than not, she was the voice of reason when the people around her were falling apart (her favorite method was “tough love”). My first time through the game, I even named her after me (hey, I was like 10 at the time!). I don’t know how much of my early feminism Rydia shaped, but she certainly left a lasting impression.

As I got older, while I continued to identify with the female protagonists that I came across, I also found inspiration from real life women in the industry. Roberta Williams and Jane Jensen were my heroes growing up. I loved their games, and I loved that they were women who made games. If they made games, that meant that I could, too. At that point in my life, I wasn’t sure that making games was what I wanted to do, but because of them I knew in a real, tangible way (not just the “girls can do anything that boys can do” sense) that I could.

Real women continue to inspire me, even today. Not just those who are in the industry, but the bloggers, gamers, and other women who put themselves out there and refuse to accept the “boy’s club” mentality that continues to pervade both the industry and the culture. I admire those women and the work that they do.

I, too, want to be a heroine. I want to give young girls (and boys) heroines in their games that will inspire them. I want to show young women that they don’t have to stop at playing games, but can create them too. I want to make the industry a more inclusive place, where a wide variety of ideas can take root and grow.

All it takes is one person who is willing to fight for what they believe in. All it takes is one person to inspire others to become heroines themselves. Maybe I’ll never be that person, but I sure as hell am going to try.

When we asked members of IRIS over on the boards to tell us what the site has meant to them, I started to think back on my time spent here in the past year and what effect it has had on me. I first wandered over to IRIS from a link posted on Kotaku, of all places, sometime in March or April of 2007. I’d been reading Kotaku daily for about half a year or so at that point, and was regularly dismayed by the extreme amounts of sexism (not to mention racism, homophobia, ableism, etc.) spewed forth by both the commenters and editorial staff at the site. I wanted to keep up to date on games and talk to other people about them, but trying to wade through the misogyny at Kotaku was an exercise in futility and the prospect of trying to engage with some of the offensive things was disheartening. Better to keep my mouth shut and head down and not make waves where someone like me, a mixed queer feminist, wasn’t wanted. Finding IRIS in the midst of all this, a safe haven in the middle of the dominant and overwhelmingly sexist mainstream gaming culture was like a breath of fresh air. Cliché, I know, but how else can I describe it? It was such a relief to find other gamers, gamers who loved the hobby but were sick of the culture surrounding their hobby, gamers who were critical of the games that they loved even while playing them. Finally, other gamers that I could relate to. Finally, other gamers who understood. IRIS instantly felt like home to me.

Since my initial introduction to IRIS over a year ago, I’ve experienced significant growth in my understanding of the way oppression operates not only in games and gaming culture, but in other areas of life as well. Meeting the other progressives at IRIS and poking around through the directory opened my eyes up to a plethora of feminist blogs, sites and communities online that I hadn’t even known existed. If I had thought to look for these sorts of things before I might have found them prior my introduction to IRIS, but you know it just hadn’t occurred to me to do so until IRIS first put the combination of feminism, games and the internet together. Reading all of the brilliant things that were being said in critique of pop culture on the internet has helped me hone my own ability to articulate my feminism and the way I experience the world. I continue to learn every day from the work of online progressives, to whom I will always be indebted. I can only hope that the work that I do through IRIS/Cerise may have a similar impact on other women and/or feminist gamers out there, looking for community in a hostile culture. This desire to make a difference for others, the way IRIS and the rest of the feminist blogosphere have done for me, is what motivates my continued contributions to this magazine and this site.

Without veering too far into TMI, I would be remiss if I neglected to mention the other significant effect that IRIS has had on my life: I met my partner (going on six months!) through the IRIS Network last year. If for no other reason than that fact alone, IRIS will always be a special place for me. <3

When I was a kid, I made up stories for my siblings and the neighbourhood kids we could press-gang into participating by the hour. Let’s Pretend was by far and away my favourite game, second only to reading as my favourite activity. We hunted down dinosaurs, enthusiastically swung sticks at each other in pirate battles, saved ourselves from floods of molten lava by jumping on the bed and, in possibly my finest hour, prevented alien plague infection by eating most of my friend’s stash of M&Ms.

I do exactly the same thing now, only I call Let’s Pretend “writing”, and I supply my own M&Ms.
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This month marks Cerise’s first birthday, and the magazine’s parent site, Iris, is just a teensy bit older. We asked our community members to talk a little bit about what the site and the magazine have meant for them over the past year. Here’s some of what they had to say:
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By Stephanie Pegg

The guy who runs the roleplaying game I’m in right now has two separate groups. Some of us meet on Wednesday evenings and some of us meet on Sunday afternoons, and the living room is visible to the house across the road. What the neighbors see is a bunch of people of varying ages and dress sense meeting twice a week, sitting around in the living room talking. For two to three hours. Just talking.
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Before joining my fabulous, wonderful, awesome Potter-verse RPG, I had never gamed before. Sure, I’d played pretend (and really, an RPG feels like pretend with math) but once I’d grown up I’d stayed the hell away from gaming. Math… is not my thing. So very far from it. Plus, most video-games give me mild anxiety issues.¹
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I am a 31 year old woman. In the last two years, I have been taking real steps towards l33t g33k status, though my geekiness has been within me for most of my life. My first foray into the genre of fantasy really began when I was eight years old and my grandmother handed me a copy of The Fellowship of the Ring to browse through for a good name for my new troll doll (remember the ugly plastic ones with the crazy colored hair that were so popular in the 80’s?). I picked “Frodo” because it called to me. Then I read the book. I don’t think I have ever fully come back from that world. I still have Mr. Frodo – he’s on a hutch in my bedroom and he’s gotten me through some pretty hectic times in my life.
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Separation

My first recalled memories all involve video games: The Intellivision, playing Utopia and Dungeons and Dragons with my mother, or watching my father play TRON: Deadly Discs. I remember the graphics and sounds vividly, even though I was only three years old. I continued to play games as I grew: Atari Track & Field and Pitfall, Lode Runner and The Incredible Machine on the PC. I still play NES games, and have sporadic and horrible obsessions with Heroes of Might and Magic II and Sonic CD.

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