Ouch!

So I pop in in a drug induced haze and realized something.
If I ain't talking controversy I get no love!
That's Harsh! come on, you guys can do better than 4 visits. I know I've been boring you to tears lately but still. Do I need to stoop to low tactics like posting boobs every day? Wait, I can't do that. I've been talking about boobs for days now, that was like how this whole mess got started, boobs.
boobs are the enemy, right? I don't know, I like boobs.

Oh well, I'm here, I need page views and I've had you dangling for a while, so, I'll give you a quick crash course in feminism.

Oh but you already know what it is, right? What I've noticed is that the word gets tossed around a lot and most of the time its used incorrectly.
First is the fact that people seem to think Anti-Feminism and Post-Feminism are the same thing and use them interchangeably, on top of that its constantly paired with complaints of Sexism, another word tossed around a lot whether its right or not.

Quick example of that and gaming:

   I want to clarify for people that having a small amount to no females in a game is not, i repeat NOT SEXIST! When's the last time you played a game that looked like a UN summit meeting? Shall we scream RACISM then? Of course not.
   Lets be honest, games portray a certain moment, whether going towards realism or fantasy, a game is a moving snapshot of a moment. A moment in people/aliens/bugs/blobs/whatever bizarre creature the creator conjures up's lives. Its representative of those characters experiences, viewpoints, opinions, -isms. You can not judge that by real world standards...well actually you can but not in a global sense.
    Lets say that instead of being a net savvy hotty born in Puerto Rico and raised in New York, I was born in a tiny secluded village near the banks of the Amazon river in Brazil. In this village my people are completely isolated from the outside world, we live much like our people have lived for hundreds, maybe thousands of years.
    One day the village elder tells us a story passed down through the generations of the time one of the more adventurous members of the tribe wandered a bit further from home and saw something mind boggling. While hiding in the brush he saw these strange things, they walked like us, and they had features similar to ours and they made noises that sounded like some sort of language but their skin, it was bone white! they wore no jewelry and they were wearing clothes that covered them basically from head to toe. He was so scared he ran all the way back to the village where he told his story to the others, who laughed at him. He never left the village again, he was too scared.  No one else from the village have ever seen one of these "white creatures" he talked of but its an entertaining story.
     Because the villagers have never been exposed to people of other races  the villager who saw a white person thought they were some sort of bizzare creature and no one else in the village believed him.does that make the previous story racist? Does that make the villagers racist? Of course not. You use what you know, what you've been exposed to, what's in the moment, in your mind, in your memories. Nothing more, nothing less.
    Now moving back to my sassy New Yorican self, if I referred to a caucasian person as a "white creature-thing" that might be a lil racist cause well, I live in Florida and I'm surrounded by Crackers! Oh yeah, get your pitch-forks, I said Crackers!!!! you know what? I'd leave my husband for Garth Brooks' chubby bald Cracker self! So there you go, make of that what you will.

So what was my point again? Oh yes, Sexism in games. Anti-Feminism in games. Well, much like my above story, and my above points, Everyone and Everything cannot be in Every Game.
I have not played Modern Warfare 2 yet, though I got it for Christmas but I have played CoD4. It was pointed out on a site that shall remain nameless by a person who shall remain nameless (yeah, like most of you don't know what I'm talking about) that there was only ONE, I'll say it again ONE female in CoD4. On top of that this ONE woman was piloting a helicopter, that got shot down. Note this person claims that the chopper was shot down NOT because its well...A WAR ZONE, but because it was perpetuating the sexist stereotype that women can't drive.
    I just wanna throw out there that being the awesome diva I am I was once complemented on my tight turns (no nasty double entendre intended) at 95 miles an hour in my old Jetta  by an actual race car driver.
   But wait! there's More! (my tribute to the late Billy Mays)
   When the Chopper goes down the chopper the player is on goes back to rescue the female pilot. According to the same person this is NOT because she is a fellow soldier, but because she is a woman.
   WTF??? How do you come up with CoD4 and by extension Infinity Ward are sexist because the one woman in the game is a bad driver that gets rescued cause she has tits? (pardon my french)

 
    My mom has a saying about projecting yourself on others: "The Thief judges by his own condition". What does that mean? it means that in a lot of cases the person screaming the loudest in protest is the one that secretly feels that way, hence they know what they are talking about.
    I'll cover that more in depth a little later right now, I wanna give you a quick crash course in the definitions (there's more than one) of Feminism.

      The First Wave of feminism takes place between the 19th century and the early 20th century. Its the one we all read about in school, Suffragette's. These Feminists protested, lobbied and marched for women's rights to vote but more importantly, they also lobbied for women to have Equal contract and property rights and for the disavowal of the belief that married women and their children were men's property. Basically the  freedom of women, body, mind and soul.
     An interesting side note is that women didn't start off as chattel. The Celts had a more liberal view back in the early centuries. There were famous battle queens like Maeve and Boudicea. Many might not  know who Maeve was, for those I recommend you read the legends about Cucchulain. Boudicea is a bit more famous. She took to her battle chariot after she was flogged and her daughter's raped by the Romans. She gave a hell of a fight and poisoned herself finally to avoid capture. Also under Brehon Law a woman and a man were married for a year and a day. After that year and a day if either party decided they were unhappy they could simply state that they divorced the other party and there was no loss of honor for either, A woman had no stigma attached to her and could remarry again, and if she had a child within the time frame they were married the child was not considered a bastard, also, should the man be so unlucky as to be divorced while outside of his home the woman could keep the property.
     In medieval times it was expressly stated that the wife of a blacksmith, should she become widowed could not only keep the smithy but become blacksmith in order to support herself and her children if she was trained in smithing. Seems like we started off well in the "barbaric" "dark ages" and regressed with progress.
    
     The second wave of Feminism takes place between the 1960's and the mid-late 1980's. Its more of a continuation of the first wave goals. Mostly it was concerned with issues of discrimination and equality in the work place.

  Both the first and second waves had clearly defined goals. This is where it get sticky. the Third Wave.
   The Third wave of Feminism started in the 1990's and its the most convoluted, volatile wave. It has the most interior debates about its goals and beliefs. One example is Psychologist Carol Gilligan who believes that we women are inherently different from men both physically and pyschologically, hence we can't be truly equal  because we are 2 different sexes. Others believe that she is incorrect and that there are no inherent differences between the sexes. That gender roles are due to social conditioning.
   Finally we come to an even more misunderstood group, and one that I personally subscribe to if you haven't noticed yet. Post Feminism.
  
   Post Feminism is NOT as is commonly believed Anti-Feminism. Post Feminists believe women have already achieved the goals they set out in the first 2 waves. They also question third wave goals and issues, feeling that Feminism is no longer relevant in today's society.
     Believing that Feminism is not relevant does not make one anti-feminist or anti-woman.
     I mentioned in a previous post that a woman once accused me of setting feminists back 50yrs because I liked being a stay at home mom and cooking for my family. I say that its the contrary. The woman who said that is the one setting feminism back. Huh? are you scratching your head in confusion? Ranting at my ignorance to the computer screen? Snickering at my idiocy? If you are, scroll up and re-read the part about the 3 waves of Feminism, then come on back here and continue reading, go ahead, I'll wait....
  
     Did you reread? Did you see where I'm going? No? Well then, stop reading and begone cause you're never gonna get it. For those that got it or that think they got it, I'll give you the answer.
     Feminists in the past fought for a woman's RIGHT to vote, work, own property, be their own person. That means they also fought for a woman's RIGHT to NOT do these things. They fought so that I could work outside of the home like I did from the age of 16 to the age of 24 just like my male counterparts, but hey also fought so that I could stay home and take care of my family if I chose to. There's the rub. That's the part that "Feminists" today forget. That's why Feminism as a whole is irrelevant nowadays. We women, can work, can play, can think, can vote, can act in any way we choose. What the hell are we fighting for now? I will not deny that there are still places where feminist goals have not been achieved, but for the most part in most non-third world situations that glass ceiling women cry and scream and rant about is in their own minds.

    One final goal of original Feminism was a belief than in equality we would also bring the sexes closer together.  We would come to a better understanding of each other. These days it seems that the sexes are drifting farther apart and it is due to women. yeah Yeah, you're pissed at me again and think I'm an idiot. Keep reading.

   Women want men to understand them, to be sensitive, to take on a type of role reversal; stay at home dad's, men doing more of the cooking, cleaning, child rearing, shopping, gardening, whatever the hell they deem "feminine". However, we also expect men to be strong, manly, capable, hard working, intelligent. This has led to men being in 3 groups. The metro-sexual, the neanderthal and the wuss.
  
     The Metro-Sexual, neat, clean, gets manicures, spends more time on his hair than a woman with floor length hair. Women don't want him because well, he gets manicures, spends more time on his hair and is prettier than them.

      The Neanderthal, burps, farts, watches sports, drinks beer, asks you to go make him a sammich. Women don't want him because well, he's a pig that keeps them repressed.

        The Wuss, maintains himself but not as much as the metro-sexual, however he has repressed any and all "manly" behavior. Women don't want him because if they were ever mugged he'd push her towards the robber and run off.

   Now I know I'm generalizing and not all men and women fall into these categories but what the hell, we live in a world of generalizations...they are called stereotypes, and they aren't going anywhere any time soon whether we want them too or not.
   
   Where do I fall into this? Post Feminist all the way and proud of it. I believe Feminism's goals hve been achieved. I also believe that men and women are fundamentally different in both physique and mentality.

      And my husband? Well, he started as a metro-sexual throughout our 10yr friendship. Upon our marriage he has now completely reverted to the Neaderthal, at least in terms of cleanliness and appearance. and I love him just the way he is and wouldn't want him any other way. We can both be crass and admire a girls boobs but we can also both cry at a chick flick. For all our differences and arguments I think we are a very good balance of male and female and the essence of Feminism.

So that's it for this installment of Feminism, Sexism and Gaming. The final installment will be about  a reversal of the "Hot chicks" with offensively large anatomy in skimpy outfits.