Have you seen David Wong's article on Cracked, "5 Ways Modern Men Are Trained to Hate Women"? In it, he posits that men are encouraged to harbor a "frenzied, 'burn the witch!' hatred" toward women that stems from being "told society owes us a hot girl," and thinking women are "conspiring with our boners to ruin us," among other reasons.

While Wong's perspective is interesting—especially on a dudecentric site like Cracked—there's a lot going on in this article that's rubbing me the wrong way. First of all, why is Wong exclusively addressing women in this piece? These points are kind of old news to lots of women. (Oh, men would rather look at my breasts than eulogize their grandmas? Weird example, but I'm not too surprised.) Also, his tone is one of acceptance—sorry ladies, but this is just how it is for guys. Are we really supposed to feel sympathy when Wong says, "we're starving, and all women are various types of food. Only instead of food, it's sex. And we're trying to conduct our everyday business around the fact that we're trying to renew our driver's license with a talking pair of boobs"? How about you stop thinking of women as food because WOMEN AREN'T FOOD?

Bummer. Please don't eat us, though.

The whole thing smacks of evolutionary psychology in the worst way. According to Wong, men are trained to hate women and that sucks, but hey—that's just how men are. I'm not a man so I can't speak to men's internal lives, but I know plenty of men and I don't get the sense that a lava flow of white-hot hate magma is burning inside all of them, just waiting to erupt. Am I missing something or does this piece read kind of like a non-apology apology letter? (Sorry we called you sluts but hey, we think you're sluts.)

Here's Wong's take on men in the co-ed workplace:

A once-great world of heroes and strength and warriors and cigars and crude jokes has been replaced by this world of grumpy female supervisors looming over our cubicle to hand us a memo about sending off-color jokes via email. Yes, that entire narrative is a grossly skewed and self-serving version of how society actually evolved. It doesn't matter.

"It doesn't matter"? Hm.

Of course, Wong leaves out a lot (well, everything) when it comes to intersections of race, class, and sexuality, but then again this is Cracked, where the first story I'm encouraged to read is "You Might Be a Zombie!," so a nuanced critique might be too much to ask for. Still, it's tough to have this conversation and leave out so many crucial elements of intersectionality.

Enough from me though, this is an open thread! And this article has 6,132 comments and counting, and 1.6 million (million!) people have read it since yesterday, so obviously it's striking a chord. What's your take? Is Wong sparking an important conversation about social constructs and sexism, or is he just trying to give sexist straight guys a pass for staring at women's boobs?

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney's sexism is old news at this point, but hey, it's election season and he has to stay in the news, right? Romney doubled down on the misogyny last Thursday by hiring Richard Grenell as his national security and foreign policy adviser. Grenell, formerly of the Bush administration, kicked off his first week on the job by deleting a bunch of sexist shit from his Twitter account.

Sexist tweeters, raise your hands!

Romney's hiring of Grenell has been controversial among right-wingers because the new adviser is openly gay. The thinking is that, perhaps, this move will help Romney appeal to LGBT Republicans and be read as a "shout out to the homosexual lobby." While some gay voters might have been psyched by this hire initially, many of them probably got un-psyched once Grenell was revealed to be a complete douche with a track record of snarky sexism. Behold, a collection of his tweets (captured by ThinkProgress before he deleted more than 800 of them, natch):

I can't decide which is douchier: Is it the trashing of Hillary Clinton, Rachel Maddow, Jessica Simpson, and Callista Gingrich's looks? The open mocking of condoms? Or maybe it's the dig at the "first daughter," a 13-year old girl? Grenell has since apologized for what he referred to as his "tongue-in-cheek" remarks:

my tweets were written to be tongue-in-cheek and humorous but I can now see how they can also be hurtful. I didn’t mean them that way and will remove them from twitter. I apologize for any hurt they caused.

Ah, the ol'"it was just a joke" response. Grenell, who is known as a "master of spin," has been spinning his tweets (and deleting them) all week. While he and his Twitter followers may very well have found his jokes about Madeleine Albright and clip-on hair HILARIOUS, it doesn't change the fact that he has a public record of sexist "humor"—a record that clearly didn't bother the Romney camp.

On its own, this tweetapalooza might seem frivolous. After all, I myself tweeted about a failed attempt at soup just last night, but that doesn't mean I necessarily have strong opinions about soup (OK, I do, but that's neither here nor there). In the context of the "War on Women," however, Grenell's remarks are much more telling. Romney has been flapping his gums all over the place lately, telling anyone who'll listen that he cares about women voters and is not the sexist jerkstore we think he is. While most of us probably didn't believe him before, his claims that he is the candidate most concerned with women's issues resonate even less in light of his hiring of Grenell.

Grenell may have scrubbed his Twitter account and his personal website, but his douchiness remains. And while Romney doesn't seem to care, women voters certainly should.

Previously:That Racist Swedish Cake and Everyone Who Had a Piece in It., Belvedere Takes Lack of Consent to New Level

When I was in elementary school, we played a game in P.E. where we basically just threw foam balls at targets. My mean gym teacher Ms. Heinz would make the girls stand closer to the targets than the boys, because presumably 8-year-old males have rocket arms or something while 8-year-old females need special accommodations just to get a nerf ball off the ground (not the case). I remember thinking, "Why do we girls need our own version of this dumb game when we could just play the one the boys are playing?" My thinking is similar, if gender-role-reversed, when it comes to MANteresting. Who needs a men-only, crappier version of Pinterest?

Barf.

According to its FAQs, Manteresting is "not the first social bookmarking website to hit the Internet, we are the first to specifically cater to the male population. Last time we checked there were 3.4 billion men on earth. It's about time." IT'S ABOUT TIME YOU GUYS. When will men finally be able to share photos of cars they want to drive without shame? Well, now apparently. Clicking around the site, it looks like the manterested men who use Manteresting share photos of weapons, cars, women, and bacon, with the occasional home improvement project in the mix. Bacon and home improvement projects are also popular on Pinterest, the site Manteresting never directly references but is very clearly modeled after. So why not pin dudely stuff there instead of launching just-for-men site?

Cheesecake two ways: Pinterest on the left, Manteresting on the right.

Money is the obvious answer, though it doesn't appear Manteresting is making any. When it comes to these men-only social networks though—and there are plenty more—something more sinister is at work. Men can and do use Pinterest, but the sharing site is widely regarded as being girly because most of its registered users are women (notice that Pinterest is not "just for women" nor has it ever done anything to exclude men). As Tammy Oler wrote in the most recent issue of Bitch:

That so many manly alternatives exist suggests that men may find the format of Pinterest appealing, but want to distance themselves so completely from Pinterest that they’ll join an entirely different site, one that reinforces their masculinity rather than threatens it. In fact, these sites are so over-the-top butch that it makes one wonder if they’re basically giving men the ability to pin their content with a big “no homo” tag on it.

Manteresting pushes machismo above all else—users "nail" items instead of pin them and create "workbenches" instead of the too-feminine pinboards—because some guys want to share photos of furniture, recipes, and DIY gardening projects (along with the aforementioned weapons, cars, women, and bacon) without feeling like less of a man. That Manteresting has but a fraction of the users Pinterest has tells us that most men either don't care or aren't threatened by "pinning" something, but it's still unfortunate that these manterested parties don't feel comfortable just using Pinterest like everyone else in the world who likes bacon.

Those of us who've been paying attention for, oh, EVER know that women in the music industry are given sexist special treatment by the media. "How did someone so pretty get so good at guitar?""Who helps you carry those heavy instruments?""Isn't it hard being a woman in a man's world?""Do you worry about finding a husband and having babies?""Where do you buy your stage outfits" and so on. Questions that men, the default when it comes to music journalism, are rarely asked.

In this week's edition of The Stranger, Emily Nokes and Bree McKenna hilariously turn sexist music journalism on its head with their local bands feature "Men Who Rock!"

Guys who aren't afraid to get their rock on!

Like all good parodies, this feature highlights problems so common we've pretty much stopped noticing them. For example, the tendency of stories written about women musicians to discuss looks first and music second, or the notion that women musicians are trendy and "happening." Here's the intro to "Men Who Rock!":

It's that time of year again—time to pay attention to the men who rock, FOR A CHANGE! Everyone knows that there is nothing sexier (or more rare) than a man who knows how to rock. Being a gorgeous man in music is one thing, but add talent to the mix? That's taking it to a whole 'nother level. With male-fronted bands, male solo acts, and even all-male bands becoming more and more commonplace, 2012 has definitely been the year of fierce men in music.

The feature includes interviews with six Seattle-area men musicians, accompanied by the kind of photos that are usually taken of women (think bare midriffs, coy gazes, and roses). They're eye-opening and hilarious, but the best part is the questions Nokes and McKenna asked in their interviews. A sampling:

• How does it feel to play music in a largely male environment? It has to be scary or overwhelming at times.
• How did such an attractive group of guys decide to play music together?
• Do you want children someday? How does your career in music affect your plans for a family?
• Most men can barely play one instrument—how did you learn both guitar and bass?
• Do you set up your own gear?
• We've seen you rocking a few different hairstyles—how do you do it?

I'm not one to argue that what's good for the objectified goose is good for the gander (we're better off with no sexism, not double the amount), but these interviews are funny not because of the shirtless pics, but because they get at a larger truth: Women are treated this way by the media all the time and men aren't. We laugh because it's absurd, but if these interviews were with women, the douche-y infantilization and focus on looks probably wouldn't even register. Don't believe me? Check out Rolling Stone's"Women Who Rock!" issue. Here's the style video of this year's cover artist, Karmin. You can get Amy's hairstyle!

Hair is such a great way to express yourself.

Aaand the Stranger feature becomes that much more relevant (and sadlarious). Read the full piece here and see how "Men Are Doing It For Themselves."

Like a pap smear or tax season, it happens every year: People wear racist and sexist costumes on Halloween. Hell, maybe you’ve done it yourself! You didn't know what to be for that one party so you jammed some feathers in a headband and called yourself Pocahontas. Or you grabbed a toy donkey and a poncho and went as a cartoonish Mexican. We’ve all made mistakes and hopefully learned something from them, like how not to be the offensive asshole hanging out by the pumpkin keg. Because seriously, you really shouldn’t wear that stuff.

Dressing up as a stereotype reinforces it, plain and simple. Think about it: The “joke” that is a racist/sexist/culturally appropriative/homophobic/transphobic costume hinges on other people knowing what you’re dressed as and why it’s “funny” (it isn’t though, actually). In order for me to understand that you are a “gangsta” I have to see your bandana and fake braids—and possibly blackface—and do the racist math. This costume decoding happens dozens of times over on Halloween night, and by the time the sun comes up on All Hallows' Day you've reinforced the hell out of harmful, tired stereotypes among countless friends and acquaintances. You've also probably alienated and offended countless others who didn't laugh at your "white trash" beer belly or your Chop Suey specs. It's a problem.

Who ordered the spandex burger?

Also a problem: sexist costumes, as anyone who's been advised to dress like a total slut for Halloween is well aware. Don't get me wrong, I fully condone Halloween hotness for people of all genders, but when the women's sexy hamburger getup (which is sold out, btw) involves a formfitting bandeau and miniskirt and the men's version involves, well, a giant foam hamburger, something sexist this way comes.

Lucky for us, lots of smart people are calling bullshit on these Halloween shenanigans and offering suggestions for alternative, less stunningly problematic outfits. Take, for example, this excellent poster series from STARS on why cultures are not costumes:

Friends don't let friends wear these costumes.

Adrienne at Native Appropriations has a great response to Spirit Halloween Superstore's sale of "traditional" Native American costumes along with an archive of posts from Halloweens past, and the Root has a roundup of racist Halloween costumes that will blow your mind. (Bonus: Bitch has covered offensive costumes as well.)

A great resource for venting sexist Halloween frustrations is the Fuck No Sexist Halloween Costumes Tumblr, which lines men's and women's costumes up side by side (see: above burger platter) and lets the double standard speak for itself. On at least one occasion they've photoshopped a reverse-sexist costume scenario too. Behold, the sexy watermelon:

At least, I *think* it's photoshopped. Unless Michael Phelps is going seedless this year?

Rethinking that newly purchased Geisha costume and and want to replace it before the Halloween parties start this weekend? First of all: good for you! Second: There are tons of places you can go for fun suggestions! Like right here at Bitch! Also, the Mary Sue has a list of 10 Awesome Ladies to Dress Up As, and Take Back Halloween is a site dedicated to helping you find an amazing historical figure and becoming her via costume. Taking kids trick-or-treating this year? Check out Everyday Feminism's tips for avoiding sexist Halloween costumes for the younger set.

If you're dressing up for Halloween this year, avoid stereotypes, and tell your friends to do the same. I'm sure you've got a great idea for a feminist costume anyway, right? So share it in the comments and let's tap that pumpkin keg already!

Welcome to the third installment of "Ms. Opinionated," Bitch's new advice column, in which readers have questions about the pesky day-to-day choices we all face, and I give advice about how to make ones that (hopefully) best reflect our shared commitment to feminist values—as well as advice on what to do when they don't.

Dear Ms. Opinionated,

I've been struggling for pretty much my whole teen and adult life with this issue.

I am a woman who doesn't respect other "feminists" who dress provocatively. I'm referring to mini skirts, high heels, caked make-up, exposed side-boob or clevage or midruff, etc - anything that is more provacative than it is comfortable. Obviously I realize that I need to "lighten up" because I've more or less been told so many times, so maybe you can help! In my opinion, it's not liberating to dress to "impress" or in fact, "turn on", whether the opposite or your own sex. Why should we women contribute to the degradation of our gender to sexual objects above all else? They say that the most important thing is to feel confident in our outfits, and therefore we can wear whatever we like. But what if that confidence is coming from stranger's gawks/lewd comments/compliments? Are they truly only worrying about impressing themselves - no one else? Obviously, I can't stop a huge population of women from dressing how they want. I'd just appreciate any tips on how to deal with this resentment that I feel. I feel they are doing my gender an injustice by playing up to these roles that society would like to keep imposed on us. If they truly understood that we're meant to be fighting for respect as humans (not sexual objects) and equality, why would they work so hard to prioitize their sexual existance above all else? After all, first impressions are the most powerful, right? To me it seems that some women want to say with their first impression "yeah, I know you wanna fuck me". Where do you seriously go from there? Help.

Woo, that's some heavy baggage you've been carrying around. Let's try to unpack it a bit, see if you really need everything you got in there and throw some stuff away before you continue on your way.

First off, let's talk a little bit about the pernicious way female competitiveness -- especially when it comes to men -- worms its way into your head and some ways to stop it. From the get-go, girls and then women are pitted against one another. Whether you want to get all Marxist with it and attribute it to false consciousness (i.e., if we fight one another at the bottom of the ladder, we'll never get to dismantling the system at the top) or straight-up patriarchy (why are we competing for them anyway?) or whatever your philosophical flavor is, the fact of the matter is that somewhere between princess fantasies (the 3 ugly stepsisters and the older jealous witch, anyone?) and beauty pageants and women choosing to compete amongst themselves in English instead of Engineering departments, we're all socialized to see one another as competition -- and to not see men as competition in the same way.

And so every time you catch yourself mad at a woman for something like how she attracts the male gaze (or wins an accolade you don't), you need to stop and ask yourself if you're mad at men for that. Do you walk down the street disrespecting men in crotch-hugging, penis-outlining jeans, hating on men in assless chaps at gay bars, sneering at dudes that are wearing those super-low V-necked T-shirts, raging about guyliner and high-maintenance sexy facial stubble? You probably don't. So you're holding women to a different standard than you hold men, and judging them for what they wear -- and attributing motivation to why they wear it -- in exactly the clichéd way you have been socialized to do.

Ugh, right? It's like a pair of nasty stinky socks in the middle of your baggage. Maybe you are really attached to the socks, or have grown accustomed to the stank, but when you start questioning yourself about them, you're going to get more cognizant of the stench and you're going to start to want to toss them. It's a first step.

But there's some other grody stuff in there, too. Let's root around some more.

The second thing that stands out to me is that you're blaming the objects of the male gaze for how some men behave toward us all. You're assuming that the women whose sartorial choices you dislike are wearing those clothes primarily to attract the male gaze and -- most importantly-- that the gaze of those men on those women has a negative impact on you that would be eliminated with more modest dress by the women.

Let me assure you, even in countries where religious leaders and governments force what they consider modest dress on women, it doesn't stop the objectification of women by men. And allowing women to express themselves sartorially -- even to attract the male gaze, though it's hardly the only gaze they're attracting, since you're looking too -- isn't forcing men to look, or forcing them to think about fucking the objects of their gazes, or forcing them to think of us as simply objects of their fucking. Men have a choice, I swear!

I mean, I parade around in front of my partner in all manner of undress and occasionally in high heels and make-up and low-cut outfits and I know I have his respect as a person and a partner (or else I wouldn't be in a relationship with him). Men on the street have the same choices -- and some of them choose to leer and catcall and go elsewhere and treat women with no respect. That's not the fault of the woman whose outfit he appreciated, or the woman whom he treated with disrespect in a prior relationship, or even a stripper whom he showered with dollar bills -- but, gosh, seems sort of like the whole competition thing we were talking about earlier when we forgive him his choice and blame his behavior on another woman who isn't as "good" as us, right?

Effectively, if a man disrespects women, then he's not doing it because we asked for it. He's choosing to do it, and us blaming it on certain women -- be they sex workers or sexy-dressers or girls who give blow-jobs without demanding reciprocity or those who reveal side-boob -- is just relieving men of responsibility and blaming it on women. And it takes acknowledging that we're doing that, that we're blaming women for men's choices, to realize why we have to stop.

I hesitate to use the phrase "victim-blaming" because, yes, some women undoubtedly dress for the male gaze and wouldn't call themselves victims, but it's effectively the same principle. And, again, you need to acknowledge what you're doing -- and that it's grody and wrong not because there's no way to appropriately criticize other women, but because you're doing it from the exact same perspective of the patriarchal society that you're simultaneously trying to take down. Something to try? When you're judging other women's choices, think about (or write down) your exact criticism and imagine it being said by Rick Santorum. If it sounds about right for him, then you're not engaging in a real feminist critique, you're just engaging in a standard one.

Finally, the last thing you're doing when you're judging women (or feminists) by what they're wearing is that you are attributing motivation -- which, given that you probably don't know most of the women in question, is actually not something you're privy to. You're assuming they consider their clothing a feminist choice -- even though not every choice even feminists make is in a kyriarchy going to be a feminist one -- and that they are choosing it to make themselves more fuckable, to get self-esteem through the male gaze and that they are doing it because they prioritize their sexual selves above all else.

Now, that may well be why you dress how you choose to dress, and that you are comfortable with your choices -- which is great. But you don't know why strangers dress the way they do, whether they find booty shorts more comfortable than khakis or low-cut tops more comfortable than turtlenecks. (Full disclosure: I find turtlenecks rather strangle-y and enjoy air on my cleavage and don't really give a rat's ass about which, if any, men happen to notice I have breasts.) You don't actually know if they find cat-calling a source of self-esteem -- though, surveys say they don't even if street harassers think they do -- of if they prioritize only their sexual selves or are just doing so at the moment you're seeing them. And, if you judge women based on their covers -- the thing you say you hate that men do, by the way -- then you're never going to find out.

But the last think I'll leave you to think about is this, courtesy of the Women's Rights National Historic Park in Seneca Falls, NY.

Have a question? Email us with "advice" in the subject line. Anonymity guaranteed. Photo credit: Kate Black, kateblack.com

As the saying goes, “If you hate hipsters, you probably are one.” This is because, while many of us are familiar with the term (especially if describes us), it is obnoxious and has been used to identify numerous non-trends, from mustaches to homesteading to beer to bellies caused by beer. These things exist whether hipsters claim them or not, and drowning them in irony does nothing to change their nature. More usefully though, hipsterism has also been called out in conjunction with other isms like racism and, in a New York magazine piece from earlier this week, sexism.

Hipster sexist via quickmeme.

Hipster sexism, also known as ironic sexism or liberal sexism, is the notion that if sexism done is tongue-in-cheek it's okay, even hilarious. As s.e. smith points out at xoJane, this idea is nothing new (read s.e.’s piece if you haven’t already because ou does some important work reminding us why we shouldn’t just claim ideas as our own when someone else thought of them before we did). The concept has resurged this week though, and it’s worth talking about it again. Alissa Quart, the author of the NYMag piece, defines it thusly:

Hipster Sexism consists of the objectification of women but in a manner that uses mockery, quotation marks, and paradox: the stuff you learned about in literature class.

Basically, hipster sexism is when people who should “know better”—progressive people with possible college degrees who are maybe environmentally conscious and probably liberal and might even identify as feminists—are ironically sexist. This includes women posing for the male gaze (but ironically!) in ads, creepy sexual predators continuing to amass cultural capitaleven though they’re awful, popular tv shows that normalize calling your sister a “skank,” and basically any time someone has sexually harassed you or told you to get back in the kitchen BUT AS A JOKE.

While actually sexist, of course, hipster sexism is different from what Quart defines as “Classic Sexism.” A hipster sexist calls you a bitch and tells you to shut up but in a funny way, while a classic sexist tells you your rape was God’s will without a hint of irony. Both are douchebags, but the hipster sexist is a douchebag in enlightened clothing (see also: the nice guy™, the hipster racist). Hipster sexism hinges on the assumption that “no one thinks this way anymore” and therefore it’s funny, like making a joke about horses and buggies or something. It allows for sexist comments under the guise of being sooo far above them, and it’s a lot harder to call out than non-ironic, old-fashioned sexism. (Ah, those were the days. JK I am being ironic! See?)

Over at the Frisky, Jessica Wakeman argues that this distinction is not important, that sexism is sexism no matter the form. I disagree, and not just because I encounter hipster sexism far more often than the classic variety, though I’d bet many of you do too. Many of us who identify as feminists are far more likely to encounter a hipster in our social/work/dating lives than we are a right-wing anti-feminist, after all.

Attempting to take the sting out of something by couching it in irony is dangerous in its sneakiness and sneaky in its danger. Like claiming that we’re in a post-racial society and therefore your jokes about slavery are uproarious, trashing women because you know better and still find it funny only reinforces the sexism inherent in your “humor.” And worse, as smith points out, hipster sexism “sends a clear message to women in hipster and young liberal communities: Embrace the hipster sexism or find yourself on the outside of the conversation. Don’t challenge sexism when it’s done 'right,' and be aware that if you’re sexually assaulted, emotionally harmed or exploited by a beloved of the crowd, you’ll be pilloried for reporting it and challenging it, not supported.”

I hate to be the feminist killjoy the hipster sexists have been LOLing about (okay, not really) but saying sexism is "no big deal" actually IS a big deal. It’s a big deal because we don’t live in a post-feminist society, and this brand of humor does garden-variety, non–fixie-riding misogynists' work for them, putting women down and keeping them down. It creates an environment where it’s okay to dismiss someone as a slut and to blow her off if she challenges you. Where you can joke that a woman should make you a sandwich knowing that she'll "get" the joke, but really, underneath it all you kind of do think women should have to make your sandwiches. Where women, regardless of the cut of their jeans, don't feel safe because they probably aren't.

Hipsterism, or if you hate the term, "irony" culture, is tricky because it mocks earnestness—and it takes earnestness to call out this bullshit. Checking people on their hipster sexism is designed to be embarrassing, because if these people—the ones shopping at American Apparel and referring to their girlfriends as their bitches (but in a HILARIOUS way)—are too cool to care, what does that make you? A FEMINIST KILLJOY. But it’s okay, embrace it! Non-ironically!

And it’s also okay to make jokes. We need to laugh, people! We just need to find ways to laugh that skewer sexist notions instead of fortifying them. We need to laugh at the sexism, not with the sexists.

"Haters gonna hate." That's how I interpret writer Bret Easton Ellis' misogynist tweets regarding Oscar-winning director Katheryn Bigelow. Her new movie, the Osama-capturing drama Zero Dark Thirty, hasn't opened in the United States, but has already swept up awards from the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Board of Review. Other critics' groups—my own included—are set to vote in the following weeks, probably adding to her collection.

But back to Ellis. He's not a fan of Bigelow's work: Even Point Break failed to win him over. So what does he say to explain critics' love affair with the, in his estimable view, "really overrated" Bigelow? It's not the fact that her last film, The Hurt Locker sank her ex's competing film at the 2010 Oscars. It's not that he thinks her storytelling skills are lacking. It's not the even the fact that her shaky-cam style makes his tummy hurt.

No, by his account:"Kathryn Bigelow would be considered a mildly interesting filmmaker if she was a man but since she's a very hot woman she's really overrated."

"Kathryn Bigelow: Strange Days, K-19 The Widowmaker, Blue Steel, The Hurt Locker. Are we talking about visionary filmmaking or just OK junk?"

Given that he's a guy whose last hit work dropped back when I was in middle school, maybe Ellis ought to stare a little less at Bigelow's fine bod and instead eye up that Oscar on her shelf. She's poised at getting the chance to win another, in a field whose female members comprise just 7 percent of the whole.

If Ellis's charming tweets were a grab at attention, mission accomplished, I guess, since I'm up in arms about this. We could just as easily forget about about the guy. But at the same time, I think it's a fine example of the institutionalized sexism in the film industry. If Bigelow made RomComs (which she never has) instead of war movies (which few women do), would we hold her in the same esteem? It's vital that we have a diverse group of talented individuals in ALL aspects of the industry. Anything short of this would be institutional segregation, and would stifle the creative possibilities and effect the collaborative process of filmmaking.

But, for Ellis, my pro tip of the day: If you're going to take down a director, try picking a better excuse other than "she's a very hot woman." Otherwise, you look not just bitter, but bitter and sexist.

Shout out to the original source, since I try not to follow too many mansplainers on Twitter:
http://blogs.indiewire.com/womenandhollywood/sexist-quote-of-the-day-by-...

When I was a kid, my parents would buy me and my siblings new board games every year. But the girls in my neighborhood had all the ‘cool’ games. Pretty Pretty Princess. Electronic Dream Phone. I went web searching down memory lane looking for these fond childhood memories, and discovered serious material for therapy.

I’ll start with Electronic Dream Phone.

This game came onto the market in 1991. It’s one of the games I fanatically begged for, but my parents remained hardened to the cry for a toy they didn’t want in their house. Like any annoyed kid determined to get their way, I went to a friend’s house to play it. Electronic Dream Phone is an ages 9 and up game, for 1-4 players. There are 24 boys in the game, but only one of them likes you! He’s also shy, and told 23 of his closest friends about his crush. Crushes. FYI: he actually likes all the players.

Winning Condition: The first one to figure out who he is, wins! She gets the guy! Tough luck, everybody else.

Everyone’s armed with creepy fact checking sheets as they scour the board for clues, stalk their possible future boyfriend, interview the guys (and you wondered where the phone came in) and take more notes based on their observations than I ever have at a press conference. This game is heteronormative gender programming at its finest. I can definitely point to Dream Phone as my first encounter with the gamification of the message to be competitive with other women.

For younger girls, my generation had Pretty Pretty Princess. It’s not much of a game, but she who gets the gaudy royal crown wins, and everybody is supposed to hate the black jewel in the game. You get that black ring and you are screwed.

Only a pursuit of the traditional femininity objects and that crown will get you out of that game the Pretty Pretty Princess. A society recognized model of femininity is exploited in that game, and you’re put in competition with your friends to become the Princess. Competition is often a feature of games, but the “pink” games put girls into competition in a gendered context. In Pretty Pretty Princess, a competition for girls ages 5+. The newest edition honestly scares me more.

“Pink” games are the easy sexism you can find on the game shelf. Easy pickings if you walk into a game aisle. Everybody knows pink games are the dark side.

I was really disappointed—and frankly horrified—by cracking open Clue again. Ignoring for a minute that it’s a game about trying to get away with murder and evading capture/or catching a murderer, it’s the character art and backgrounds that made me freak out during this revisitation. It’s easy to forget that the little coloured game pieces were attached to much in the way of visuals or even a background. I’m going to explain why I find what they do with Miss Scarlett in detail, but be aware: all the women in Clue are portrayed as evil. Just because it’s a whodunit game doesn’t mean it gets a free pass for that.

I remember Clue as a fun, fast childhood game. Wholesome, aside the murder. Imagine my surprise when I discovered most of the art for Miss Scarlett involves plunging necklines, or even better, an inexplicable transition to a Western World racist stereotype, the ‘Dragon Lady’ from the mid 70’s till 1992. I usually applaud the inclusion of minority characters in any game, but find myself less inclined when it’s done in such appalling creepy fashion. (Exoticism, table for one!)

Throughout the evolution of Clue, Miss Scarlett’s portrayal is commonly one of a social climbing, manipulative woman who’s also (according to various editions of the game) willing to have sex with everyone. So we get racism, sexism, and slut shaming, simultaneously. It’s been pointed out to me that every player option in Clue is someone who’s a terrible person. Be that as it may, why does Scarlett get tsk’d but Colonel Mustard gets a high five from the game for digging the ladies? Regardless of edition, all the ladies in Clue get a pretty sexist treatment.

Clue is for ages 9 and up. This is a game my parents gave me and my siblings because it wasn’t a B.S. pink girls game. It’s mainstream. Plenty of people have played it. But classic editions or updates, Clue somehow got a free pass.

The sexism in these games is treated as white noise. This is just a tiny sampling of the games that are considered normal to get kids. We haven’t even gotten started on the games I’ve played as an adult—which are just as bad for sexist casting.

Cards Against Humanity is a game that is fiercely popular, constantly requested, and perpetually sold out. In tabletop gaming, it is a cultural phenomenon. It's also deeply problematic.

Over and over at conventions and parties I hear people say that the game is "like Apples to Apples for horrible people.” The comparison to Apples to Apples certainly helps set the expectation for how the game is played; a card comes out ("What ruined my last relationship?), everyone plays a card that seems to fit it, the person with the current turn (the Card Czar) judges the cards everyone has played. The winning card ("Being a motherfucking sorcerer") nets the player who won an Awesome Point and the black card from that round. Play passes, everybody draws back up to ten white cards, the next person with a turn becomes the new Card Czar. Repeat till everyone runs out of cards, gets bored or invents a house rule (a player made rule) about how to end the game.

CAH is at every con and every party I've been to in 2012. It was released in 2011, and the original run sold out in three days. The holiday expansion that came out this month brought in more than $70,000, which the game's creators donated to the Wikimedia Foundation.

CAH is a card game written deliberately for a maximum amount of awkwardness. Though it’s capable of clever, satirical moments, it’s really an arms race among players for how dark, sick, or weird things can get. If you’re a strong believer that our humor should be used with care, that sexism and racism aren’t funny—CAH has the potential for being offensive, nauseating, and emotionally upsetting. There are a number of cards related to sexual violence in the deck, for instance, as well as domestic and child abuse, genocide, and a cornucopia of racism. It also has an assortment of cards related to terrible things happening to conservatives, so if you prefer your entertainment to be potentially offensive in every way possible, Cards Against Humanity is your game.

I’m often torn about offensive media and games, especially when a game like CAH can make an incredibly powerful statement about humor, prejudice, and our society at large. Controversial media sparks conversation, debate, sometimes even positive dialogue and change. But when it’s a card game people play at parties, it has the very real possibility of being an upsetting experience that people feel peer-pressured into, and which they leave feeling ill and upset.

So what’s a woman got to do to play a game her friends love, without walking through a sea of rape jokes?

In my social group—and plenty of others—there has been the very real need to somehow make CAH safe for people emotionally. What people have done is “sanitize” their copies of Cards Against Humanity. That word’s usually used derisively, like when someone writes off cleaned-up fairytales books that lack an earlier version’s grimness.

Sanitizing a CAH deck doesn’t make it magically all-ages and all-people appropriate. But it does demonstrate the power game players have to remix their games, into forms that are sharable and enjoyable for each other. Sexism, racism, and other isms in tabletop games are not purely flat and static.

Communities can react to problematic content in ways that maturely handle volatile and emotional issues. I can’t play with an unsanitized deck of CAH. It is emotionally fraught, and that’s not what I look for in a good time. Making me cry also isn’t on my friends’ to-do lists (unless it’s awesome crying, like what results when they send me cute octopus videos).

If one of my friends hands me their sanitized Cards Against Humanity deck at a party, I can play and know I’m in a safe space. I don’t have to listen to rape jokes or cracks about domestic violence. I am still horrified, sometimes extremely, by things I see played, even in a sanitized deck. But the things that hurt me, that reinforce a violent kind of humor against women, aren’t ever on the table.

Game art can enrich a roleplaying game. While browsing your friendly local game store, games will often draw you in with their cover. That said, too many times, covers look like this:

In the comic-book community, there’s a lot of discussion surrounding the portrayal of women in comic art, and we’re having a lot of similar debates with regard to roleplaying games. Impossible poses, side boob—or in some cases, side and back boob—and an underdressed female character are just some of the problems in this Wayne Reynolds cover for The Inner Sea World Guide. But it is far from the only problematic cover I can bring up.

Disclosure: I was a proofreader for Shadowrun: Attitude. I was also incredibly disappointed when the book came out, and it was because of the cover. I'm a fan of Echo Chernik, who did the art: I'd happily own most of her artwork produced to date. This cover was painful for me to see, as it shows very little of Chernik's talent or vision. In the enlarged version, you can see more of the background, in which characters are posed naturally, involved in tasks and conversation. That version would have made a stronger cover, don't you think?

Full or abridged, the problem I have is with the woman in the foreground. Her attire, her pose, her everything is aimed at the viewer. She’s a sexualized object, and sadly a compelling example of something we see over and over in game art. There is a fixation on “strong female characters,” and that’s become shorthand for art featuring thin, white women in provocative clothing, sometimes armed, and rarely holding their weapons with any degree of familiarity.

So what's the one cover I hear shouted, by women and men, as an example of overly sexualized art?

The cover for Exalted: Savant and Sorcerer, by the artist Hyung Tae Kim. This isn’t a recent release by any means, but Exalted is a game people still play. When the third edition of Exalted comes out, is the art still going to look like this?

Women of color are rare, women in reasonable armor or the game equivalent to everyday clothing are unusual, and mixed body types are practically unheard of. Art tells us a lot about game worlds—and art like this tells us that these game worlds contain highly sexualized women present for the heterosexual consumption of men. The defense that these images are for women attracted to other women is bogus. The cheesecake we’re treated to on a regular basis in game art is geared for the male gaze.

Indeed, tabletop games often ignore the presence of sexual orientations beyond the garden-variety heterosexual, which makes game art a double special of sexism and heterosexist assumptions. This is unfortunately a mirror to our everyday lives.

When we play games, we often sit down at the table to have fun. To enjoy ourselves. To escape from the day to day experience of street harassment, othering and sexist daily grind. Game art that deprives us of choices, of characters who look like us, that presents women the same way we are served up for consumption, domination and control? We don’t need a game to experience that. The sampling I’ve presented in a small slice of a widespread problem.

We need games—or at least their art—to be places where we can, to some degree, find escape. Fiction can be empowering, and inspiring. So can games. To push for a more diverse portrayal of women is not making mountains of molehills, or being "unhappy bitches who hate/are jealous of other women." Nor is it "a negative application of my energies." These are all things that have been said to my face and online, usually by men. The subtext is that asking for a diverse portrayal of women, and asking to be seen as more than an object of consumption, is abhorrent.

I’m not asking for a ban on sexy characters or skimpy clothes. I’m asking for a more varied portrayal. I am not asking for an exclusion of men, merely an inclusion of women. I am asking as a participant, and as a creator, to be heard. For my hobby to stop telling me to shut up.

Games come together through the combined development of designers, editors, publishers, layout, art, printers, graphic designers, public relations, project management, playtesters, art directors, and more. It can take a stunning number of people to produce a single game, from its original note-to-self to the end product.

There are women in every possible role that gets a game to the end goal. A number of them are experienced in more than one of those roles. Without a robust presence of women in games, our stories go untold. Diverse talent means new games, new ideas, and a visible reminder that games are neither made exclusively by or for people who prefer sexist narratives. For every man who acts as an ally to women, there's another guy who thinks female characters belong in chainmail bikinis. Think of it as the fantasy- genre equivalent of barefoot in the kitchen.

Of all the sexism-related problems we have in games, the low visibility of the women working in games steadily feeds into all of them them. And it starts with coverage.

Typical tabletop coverage includes blogs, podcasts, tabletop game awards, vlogs and YouTube channels (like Wil Wheaton’s Tabletop), with some coverage outside tabletop-only spheres. Even parenting magazines will have coverage of card games and board games when they’re geared for a more all-ages audience. That’s reasonable diversity for such a small segment of the games market.

But reviews of games often focus solely on game play, without exploring the personnel who made a game. That’s not inherently bad, but it’s a missed opportunity to talk about the game’s creative team—one more place we lose hearing about women making games we love. How our coverage is shaped can unintentionally exclude women from being discussed. It takes conscious effort to look for good opportunities to interview women making and creating games.

The presence of women covering tabletop games is helpful, because it’s hard to ignore when the column or podcast you read/listen to is done by a woman. Jennisodes, which is a much-loved podcast in the tabletop sphere, is recorded, cut, publicized, and run by Jennifer Steen. So when it comes to coverage, we have two issues: finding opportunities to talk more about women making games, and encouraging more women to become the very newsies covering the hobby.

That’s an issue that takes more than one group to solve, and would benefit heavily from mentorship. Newsies showing women the ropes to become podcasters and writers, and existing newsies looking for more opportunities to talk about the work women are doing.

I’ve heard people toss around that women are missing from  games because they either lack interest or skills. If I scroll through the list of people I follow on Twitter, I already know a number of women doing those jobs already, or can find them through friends. Women often aren’t socially trained as well as men to self-promote and to network. But we’re not actually all that hard to find. Going outside the industry is something we could be doing to continually build the presence of women in games. In 2012, I recruited Lisa Grabenstetter for a roleplaying setting book Kickstarter in 2012.  Li isn’t a seasoned games artist—she’s an experienced and talented artist. That’s more important than whether she had games experience before that book.

Experience in a job within a games context gives nuance to people’s skill sets, but ignoring the array of talent outside games doesn’t benefit us. It contributes to the tendency to silo, closing ourselves off as a hobby and seeing only what’s within the silo as what we have to work with. If we recruit women from blogging, public relations, journalism, art, writing, and editing, we don’t have to teach them from the ground up. We instead show them and mentor them in how those skills work in a context new to them.

If we build the visibility of women in games, and mentor talented women from outside games who could do the hobby incredible good with their skills as well, we’d set the stage for continual gains against sexism. Visibility and presence are critical for maintaining and building on the successes women have made so far. We’ve come a long way, but we still have a ways to go.

Photo Credit: Newsie Manda Collis running a tabletop game at Let's Play Green Bay, 2012.

Sometimes, board games have cool miniatures and artistically admirable player pieces. Other times, they have patently sexist, exploitative and offensive miniatures. Sadly, this week has supplied an exemplar in the latter category. Kingdom Death, a horror-themed board game for 1–6 players and currently in development, just finished its Kingdom Death: Monster Kickstarter. The full game, available to backers of the campaign at $100 or more, contains a generous number of pieces. As the campaigns steadily racked up more backers, upgrades to the base game were unlocked via stretch goals. Creator Adam Poots had set the funding goal at for $35,000. He ended up raising $2,049,721 from 5,410 backers. While it's important to remember that both Kickstarter and Amazon take a percentage of a Kickstarter campaign’s money in processing fees, it's equally important to point out that 5,410 people are really, really excited about this game.

Kingdom Death is described as a "nightmare horror game" that “underscores the brutal physical and mental torment of surviving in a world where people are the struggling bottom of a monstrous ecology.” Though the examples of characters and monsters viewable online are not exhaustive, the thematic element that appears to recur is sexual organs. At least one monster, whose image appears on the game's main page, appears to comprise testicles, a tail, multiple breasts and arms, and at least one face. I’m always a little concerned when human sex organs are portrayed as monstrous or even sinister. The human race has enough issues with sexuality as it is, but apparently Kingdom Death is a world where giant sentient ballsack-breast monsters are but one of an adventurer’s problems.

The portrayal of women in the art and miniatures is just as concerning. Miniatures in general are rarely varied or diverse in their portrayal of women; they’re usually a tiny replica of the worst chainmail-bikini tropes. Kingdom Death has reached for the limits of this aesthetic. Sexualized portrayals of women abound in the game images available—some of them even called "pinups"—as do images of women in submissive positions. Female figurines are either monstrous, sexual, or both.

The "Preacher Pinup" demonstrates a misunderstanding of what constitutes clothing.

I find it disturbing and discouraging that a creative team that clearly prioritizes making quality figurines chose to make those same quality figurines out of astoundingly sexist material. This scale of female sexualization in Kingdom Death's characterizations outweighs, for me, any other merits this game could have going for it. High production values don't change that a game with pointedly sexist artistic content was able to raise more than two million dollars to fund its manufacture.

I’d like to see the miniatures market catch up to consumers who don’t want sexist miniatures. I’m also not expecting to see that happen any time soon. The success of Kingdom Death's funding campaign is a clear reminder that women remain outside the target audience of many game designers. I've seen a lot of people already saying "Don't like it, don't buy it," but the vote-with-your-dollars argument is a cheap way to shut down criticism—and neatly sidesteps the fact that sexism continues to be a problem in tabletop games.

Update, 1/10/13: I wanted to respond to the comments on this post. Because of the volume of them, I'm going to try and address as many as I can in one response. It's being added to the article to keep from repeating responses throughout many comments, and to keep from getting lost in the comments section.

I was unaware of the Kickstarter for Kingdom Death: Monster until after it was finished. I do have issues with the pinup's proportions, because I feel they are highly exaggerated and sexualized depictions of women's bodies. As has been pointed out, I did not clearly differentiate between which miniatures are present in the game versus other miniatuires, such as the "pinups," which were represented in the article's visuals. I ackowledge that was not a deft employment of language skill, but does not change that such sexually charged imagery was popular, and sold well.

There were several compliants pertaining to my opinions and biases not constituting journalism. My series is an opinion series, and newswriting is vastly different from opinion columns. I am not obligated to interview people.

I find the gorm pretty damn scary. I mentioned in the article that I find genitals in monster imagery very disturbing, and it concerns me because I think that feeds into societal issues surrounding sex. In this case, somewhat unintentionally. The Wet Nurse suckles children, so its appearence at least makes sense, but it still squicks me out.

A number of people seem to think that the issue is not that the pinups or game base minis are sexist, but there isn't an equal ratio of scantily clad hot men to scantily clad hot women. "Equalizing" the images of sexual consumption just exploits men too. Exploitation isn't suddenly okay when we're doing it to two parties. It just means more sexism.

Many comments seem to agree with my recognition that sex sells by protesting that people want to see attractive, scantily clad people. While this is true, my issue was with how selling those minis as part of the campaign struck me as sexist. It was using images of women's bodies to make money. We already see that every day outside gaming. The effort and quality of the Kingdom Death minis is some of the best I've ever seen. That kind of artistic merit stands on its own. That's, in part, why the pinups make me frustrated and dissapointed. The Kickstarter page is full of the pinup images. It distracts from the product. KD is a horror board game in a nightmarish world. Why not more exquisite monsters, instead of the default to selling women out?

I can expect better care from men who design games because designing is usually done by smart, savvy people. I don't expect men to universally be sexist, to attack women in any fashion, or treat others in a pejudicial manner just because they're men.

Since Warhammer came up: I've played Warhammer. I dig it. I think the few female minis in Warhammer feed into bikini-chainmail stereotypes. My bigger problem with Warhammer is how deeply women continue to be so absent from the minis. Which makes me sad. Thankfully it's slightly easier to cope with those aspects in the Warhammer RPGs, like Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader.

It is not forbidden for me to dislike a game, or its aesthetics, nor is it against any rules for backers and others to deeply appreciate and enjoy products I do not. I am not a monolithic voice, I am a single person expressing an opinion. I don't think people who backed this Kickstarter are evil, horrible, or lesser than anyone else. I've talked to backers in the past day who love the game and walked right past the pinups because it was Not Their Thing. That's okay. And it's also okay that other backers bought the pinups. I expressed my opinions about content I found problematic. At the end of the day, I have my opinion, others have theirs, and we all continue to have the ability to hold differing opinions and enjoy different things.

If you make roleplaying games, you’re creating something for people to play. To engage with, experience, and share. But something I hear frequently from women in the gaming industry is their discomfort with self-promotion. I understand that, but it’s a discomfort we have to leave behind—as women and as professionals. If you’re uncomfortable with putting yourself out there, this is an important thing to discuss with yourself and with peers who are good at it.

Tabletop games aren’t a solely static medium, and a number of fans and peers will follow the products and social media of other people making games. Whether you’re a designer, artist, writer, or project manager, your role can be improved by people knowing you. People like hiring and supporting people they know. It’s not just nepotism, it’s about knowing what they’re getting when they send you a contract. 

No one can buy a game if they don’t know it exists and so self-promotion can make or break your success. I see my male peers constantly put themselves out there, seeking feedback openly, introducing themselves to audiences and to possible future employers. I see more women express doubts, fears and anxiety in public about the social aspect of being successful with their games. Same goes for their feelings about their work—doubt and fear are expressed publicly and quite often.

I’m guilty of this, too. I’m personally not an exceptionally extroverted person and I'm prone to expressing fear that I'm not competent as a freelancer. I had to be coached from doing so in public. I have a sometimes-unhelpful preference for conducting a lot of business and conversations “off list,” in private e-mail or closed door meetings. But that can make me hard to get to know, can make me look aloof, and keeps me from engaging as much with others. Neil Gaiman did a great speech addressing a graduating class at University of the Arts that touched on how freelancers get and keep work. A fan transformed it into a Venn Diagram that I find personally very useful. Being good at your work is only one part of success. 

We have to talk to people, just like our male peers.

We have to be honest, communicative, and socialize when we can. That isn’t because we’re women, but because we want to succeed. All the talent and ability in the world won’t make you successful if you never show it to people. Those things also won’t get honed if you don’t get out there, get work, and learn your craft.

In my own life, I have to remind myself to exercise my ability to socialize, even when I feel bad at it. I practice not feeling guilty or shameful or weird for saying I'm good at something.

The more of us who embrace our ambitions—proudly and publicly!—and support each other to do our best and be known, the more we can break down the walls we face. The hobby world would look better with a few more doors. Introducing yourself to others is a step toward making a new one.

Jessica Price works as a project manager at tabletop roleplaying game publisher Paizo Publishing—a progressive company with a female CEO. But Jessica’s career reaches across jobs and companies. In the worlds of video and tabletop games, her experiences have run from sexual harassment to seeing real and positive industry change.

Who do you find it difficult to get respect from in the gaming industry? Or has your experience been largely free of sexism?

It's rough sometimes.

Some of it's unintentional. Male programmers will be shocked by the idea of making the default avatar female for a game intended primarily for female audiences. Marketers will think that making a console pink will magically fix its branding problems with women. Studios making games intended for kids and moms will refuse to give a successful female game designer an interview because she's never done a first-person shooter. And regardless of your actual job title, new male employees will assume you're the receptionist, ask you to clean up the kitchen or conference room after them, and believe your ideas came from your male coworkers.

But some of it's very intentional. I've had every inch of my anatomy commented on by coworkers. I've had marketing guys propose that our marketing should consist of me putting on a low-cut top and talking about our product. I've had people insist that I must have slept with someone to get into the industry. I've had guys I disagreed with in meetings suggest that it's because I'm on the rag.

I've been sexually harassed, and had the people I went to for help tell me I must enjoy the attention, instruct me to deal with it because they didn't want to fire the guy, and warn me not to go to HR because I'd get fired for being a troublemaker. One guy had a history of violence, and clenched his fists and came close to taking a swing at me when I told him he had to stop touching me and talking about my breasts. The response from my chain of command was still, basically, "Deal with it yourself." 

How has the games field changed for women since you started working in it? 

Changing how an industry views women tends to be evolutionary rather than revolutionary. It's gradual, but there are things happening that I think are important—men who grew up in the era when women were mostly stay-at-home moms are retiring, and the men replacing them don't see female managers and coworkers as unusual. The men between those two groups are reaching the age where they're getting married and having kids. They're able to realize that they would be furious if the women they love got treated like the women they work with. The third is that there are more women in leadership roles—as executives, writers, creative directors—than there used to be. 

In the past year or so is that the role and treatment of women in the industry has come under a lot more public scrutiny. The violent reaction to Anita Sarkeesian's work called attention in a very dramatic way to how different the conversation is in the industry when a woman says something controversial than when a man says it—and how high the price can be for women who publicly express an opinion.

There's been a lot of backlash, but at least it's getting talked about openly now.

So it is getting better, and I believe it will continue to get better. There are more and more people making games with an exuberant disregard for society's baggage around what men versus women are supposed to be. That's the future. 

When have you felt supported as a woman working in the industry? Where do you find supportive peers in your field?

You do find male coworkers (usually those who have daughters) who notice misogyny and are disgusted by it. They understand the importance of having female characters represented—and represented as more than sex objects—in games, and they're vocal about it. 

 I had a producer who didn't believe me at first when I pointed out to him how much more often women got interrupted by men in meetings and just in conversation. Once he started paying attention, he started doing things that seem small—for example, when he was speaking with a female coworker, and got interrupted, he'd say, "Hang on, I'm talking to Anne right now; I'll be with you in a minute." Another guy started pointing out that he didn't like the word "slut" as applied to the female characters in the games he worked on. These things made other men start paying more attention to how they were treating and talking about women.

I now work for Paizo Publishing, makers of the Pathfinder pen-and-paper roleplaying game, and we have a female CEO. The company is (by my estimate) about 30 percent female, and I have a significant number of gay and lesbian colleagues. The difference is amazing. I haven't experienced any sexism from my colleagues here. For the first time in years, I get up in the morning and go to work without feeling like I'm headed into hostile territory.

This is the last installment of this guest series on gender and gaming. Thank you so much for reading—and may you always roll 20 on your Save vs Sexism.

Women’s colleges were born out of institutionalized sexism. So, do we still need them?

In mid-December the Huffington Post published a guest editorial by Elizabeth Pfeiffer titled, “Don't Like the Gender Gap? Women's Colleges Might Just Be the Answer.” In her post, Pfeiffer defends the all-female Scripps College. She argues that a school should be defined by “the richness of the community…and the possibilities this kind of environment offers.”

I agree: Schools should be defined by the richness of their community. But that goes beyond a gender binary. How about those whose identity does not fit within this heteronormative binary of man or woman? 

Pfeiffer asks,  “Why is Scripps, or any women's college, still relevant?” Pfeiffer believes one reason is because of the leadership roles she was able to take on, as well as the idea that women’s colleges instill a sense of leadership. She cites the fact that women's college graduates make up “more than 20 percent of women in Congress and 30 percent of a Businessweek list of rising women in corporate America.”

The woman’s college is in some cases a moot point, in many institutions across the country, women attend colleges in numbers at par with men. But if some women need this environment to find their power, I am all for it.

Pfeiffer's article received a response from Shannon Miller, a current student  Claremont McKenna College (CMC). Claremont was a male-only college until 1976 and is part of the five-college Claremont consortium with Scripps. The response, “Don’t Like the Gender Gap? Don’t Encourage It” asks, “What makes Scripps—or any other women’s college—any better than CMC, based solely on the gender composition?”

Miller argues that Claremont better equipped her to tackle the gender gap than most women’s colleges, particularly because of the co-ed environment. She also says that in her own search she wanted a “challenge” in her college experience, she “wanted to enter a school that would push me to be stronger and bolder, not indulge my weaknesses by protecting me from ‘injustice’ in an inaccurately idyllic setting.”

It's worth noting that by almost any standard, both Claremont and Scripps are both idyllic settings. I attended Claremont consortium school Pitzer College and can say that there is an enormous percentage of the global population who do not have access and could not afford to be on any of private liberal arts college campus. 

But the debate over women-only colleges is about more than the sex break-down of institutions. What we need are not colleges and institutions that define themselves by one means of oppression (sex), but colleges and universities that have a greater understanding of how some dynamics of academia can create institutionalized oppression. 

Instead of focusing on whether or not we need women's colleges, let's expand the debate to ask what kind of institutions we need, and how we can make visionary institutions a reality. In my humble opinion, we need innovative environments that go beyond sex, race, class and citizenship. For a step in the right direction, check out the Consortium for Innovative Environments in Learning CIEL. We need a culture shift in academia that's both local and global. 

It doesn’t take a skilled gender detective to deduce the target audience of the Rainbow Magic books for early readers. These wildly popular books feature covers that literally sparkle, covered in lithe fairies dressed in pointedly feminine clothing and accessories. The series’ titles boil down to Feminine-Name the Feminine-Noun Fairy (as in Grace the Glitter Fairy or Bethany the Ballet Fairy). They’re published under the pseudonym Daisy Meadows.

These are the girliest girls’ books in Girlville.

Why am I so familiar with these gems of English literature? Because they’re among my six-year-old son’s very favorite books. He devours them, shrieking with laughter at the bumbling goblins. We spend hours playing Rainbow Magic 

Fairies: “You’re Queen Titania and I’m the Museum Fairy. What could a Museum Fairy’s object be?” Or, “We’re all goblins. Where’s Goblin Steve?” These books are very big in my house.

Well over a hundred Rainbow Magic installments are available, but the plot is always the same. Jack Frost and his goblins have stolen some magical object (the weather fairies’ feathers, for instance). The displaced objects cause some sort of wonkiness (unusual weather, say). Kirsty and Rachel, human BFFs and friends to the fairies, help recover the objects. The goblins are ugly, mean, and male, and they always lose. The fairies are pretty, sweet, and female, and they win through the power of friendship.

Reading the books is actually teaching my son an unexpected lesson: recognizing sexism. 

The Rainbow Magic series is not just popular in my house, although the fact that the glittery books litter our boy’s floor is a bit unusual. Rainbow Magic is a noteworthy instance of contemporary girly-girl culture. According to a corporate press release, it’s “the biggest girls’ brand in series fiction,” with global sales of over 20 million copies. Huge in the US, the books command even greater market share in the UK: “Daisy Meadows” was the most-borrowed children’s author of 2010 in UK libraries.

These very popular books are sexist, formulaic, and utterly cheesy. The titles read like a list of stereotypical girl interests (colors! flowers! pop music! cute animals! princesses!), which would bother me even more if I were parenting a daughter getting this stuff thrown at her from all sides rather than a son who has to fight for the right to like anything pretty or soft.

The dialogue is a painful mix of stilted and peppy, riding exclamation points to dizzying heights. Our heroines Kirsty and Rachel are cloying to the point of barf-worthy. And a powerful story element, fairymagic, is reduced to figures like Claudia the Accessories Fairy. Seriously, can you imagine being the freaking Accessories Fairy? I mean, Shannon the Ocean Fairy? Okay. Morgan the Midnight Fairy? Sure. But poor Claudia.

In this world, only girls get to have fairy adventures—or be fairies. This troubling fact has not escaped my child’s notice. After his first few Rainbow Magic books, he began to speculate about gender imbalances. Upon further reading, he discovered that there is at least one male fairy—King Oberon—and that female goblins seem to exist off-screen in the form of “goblin mothers.” My son hopes, rather poignantly, that someday he’ll come across a Something-or-Other Fairy “that’s a he.” His latest theory is that the (sadly nonexistent) Baseball Fairy might be male.

I doubt most girls would spontaneously notice these gender dynamics. The books so smoothly and clearly invite girl readers to identify with “the girls” and also with the fairies. Reading as an outsider, though, my child can't help noticing that boys are never pretty, sweet, friendly, or fun in the books’ world.

He objects to all that, but he doesn’t let it stop him from throwing himself into the fantasy. As awful as the books are, I admire his attitude.

I also have to admit that—perhaps because of this boy-outsider vantage point—the Rainbow Magic books have led to some interesting interactions in our family. We speculate about the goblins’ perspectives and whether the fairies are truly as kind as the books imply. We strategize: how could the fairies better address this nonstop stealing? He makes up original fairies and corresponding magical objects. We’ve even brainstormed titles for an awesome seven-book Bathroom Fairies series.

Would I pay actual money for one of these books? Not in a million years, no. And yet they do make my child’s face light up. As long as these stories are open to questioning and play, I’m okay with their place in our home.

Good morning! Here's all the feminist news on our radar this fine Friday.

• We all know that women are capable of writing about anything. Why is it, Roxane Gay wonders, that anything beyond personal stories of love, sex, and "having it all" is such a hard sell in the mainstream media? [Salon]

• Burglars broke into the offices of the San Bernadino Country Sexual Assault Services and stole computers and monitors, but returned all the equipment once they found out that the agency works to help victims of sexual assault. So the takeaway here is that thieves sometimes have a social conscience and that the agency could use more prominent signage. [NPR]

• Women in academia have long known that their careers suffer more than those of their male counterparts when partnership and family comes into play, but a new book confirms it: The "baby penalty" has a negative effect on nearly every stage of women's academic careers, while having children often enhances those of men. [Chronicle of Higher Education]

• People in prison will now have an easier time callling their families: prisons have been jacking up the cost of family phone calls for years, but the FCC has finally voted to step in and regulate the price of these calls. [Campaign for Prison Phone Justice, Twin Cities Daily Planet, h/t Victoria Law] 

• This month's Harper's Bazaar features a portfolio dedicated to "The Diversity of Women."Plus-size fashion blogger Nicolette Mason has some questions about what, exactly qualifies as "diverse" in fashion—and what's just half-assed lip service. [Nicolette Mason]

• If you like American Horror Story and you like witches, you're in luck: The third season of Ryan Murphy's TV thriller will center on a coven of witches moving from Salem to Louisiana's French Quarter. [AfterEllen]

Image: The lead characters of queer-centric web comic The Less than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal.

This week brought another reminder that despite lots of agitation and conversation and market data and sexy drawings of Hawkeye, the bigwigs of the comics industry still don't really get that what's wrong with mainstream comics. 

ThinkProgress writer Alyssa Rosenberg reported on a panel of comics legends at the Television Critics Association tour this week, where a group of long-time comics creators dismissed the issue of sexism in the industry. "The vast majority of dudes [are] doing this high testosterone sort of storytelling, and so we put our fantasy on the plate on the pages," said Spawn creator Todd McFarlane. The Punisher creator Gerry Conway noted, "The comics follow society. They don't lead society."

The problem is that comics aren't following society—they're following a very narrow section of society that seems to be composed mostly of straight, white men. 

A lot of the focus of recent debates about the exclusivity of the comics industry has focused on treatment of female characters. But mainstream "high testosterone" comics have also historically left out LGBT characters and queer narratives. 

There is a 40-year history of queer-centric comics, which have long been created and published as indie comics and underground comix, zines, and in queer-centric newspapers and magazines. But until very recently, readers were very unlikely to find many LGBT characters in mainstream comics. This is partly due to overt censorship: the Comics Code Authority, which was in place nationally until 1989, banned any reference to homosexuality. It's also been due to the culture in the major comics publishers—Marvel in the 1980s reported had a "No Gays in the Marvel Universe" policy. Mainstream comics have occasionally included gender-bending characters (Bitch recently published a list of five great genderqueer comics characters that included characters from two DC titles and one Marvel title) and gay minor characters, but the vast majority of the comics landscape has been straight-up hetero. 

In just the past two years, there has been a big uptick in openly LGBT characters in mainstream comics, including characters in Archie and The Green Lantern, and DC's "New 52" reboot included two lesbian leads, a bi-sexual superhero, and a gay superhero duo. Some movers-and-shakers in the industry are clearly looking to make comics more inclusive and to push the genre forward—let's hope they get some traction. I look forward to a time when comics actually represent society.

Meanwhile, for the past decade, queer comics have thrived online. While DC and Marvel are just figuring out that queer characters resonate with comics readers, online artists and writers have for years been crafting stories with a variety of rich and complex queer characters who represent just about every point on the lengthy gender and sexuality spectrum. Working online is good in many ways for comics creators—there's no printing costs, few gatekeepers, and it allows artists and writers more freedom—but also obvious drawbacks, such as smaller audiences and a lack of quality paychecks.  All-volunteer nonprofit PRISM Comics has spent 10 years supporting and publicizing queer comics at big-deal conventions like San Diego Comicon and there is definitely much more room for mainstream comics to incorporate queer characters. 

Until then, for people just getting into comics or who are used to picking up print copies rather than reading comics online, Bitch Media intern Hanna White gathered together this list of five queer-centric webcomics that make her smile. 

1) The Less than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal

Featuring the adventures of a young man named Amal who comes out to his conservative parents, goes out drinking, and wakes up to a man with dreadlocks cooking him eggs and suggesting a joint road trip from Berkeley, California to Providence, New Jersey so that Amal can see his sister's graduation. Includes some incredibly beautiful art. Updates weekly.

2) Go Get A Roomie!

The story of a self-identified hippie and promiscuous lesbian who goes by Roomie after she moves in with shut-in Lillian. Besides Roomie and Lillian, the cast includes a wide variety of repeat characters, including Ramona and Richard, a pair of twins who are, respectively, a dom and sub, and several fantastical beings who populate Lillian's vivid, incredibly drawn lucid dreams. Updates Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

3) Girls With Slingshots

Although main character Hazel is straight, this comic makes the list for its truly incredible array of side characters, including a drag queen, a married lesbian couple, a dom librarian, and an asexual character. Also, a talking cactus. Updates Monday through Friday.

4) Capitol Hillbillies

As a proud Pacific Northwesterner and a huge nerd, I would be remiss if I didn't include this strip, about four queer male gamers living on Capitol Hill. Based upon the author's experiences being… well, a queer male gamer living on Capitol Hill. Updates weekly.

5) Asexy Mythical Creature

An informative comic about asexuality and what it means (and doesn't mean) to be on the spectrum. It hasn't updated in about a year, but the author/artist will be bringing it back soon. It's a good thing too, since asexuality remains severely underrepresented and misinformation about it is pretty rampant (see: the delightful comics on "Shit asexuals hear!").

For other queer comics, Queerty recommends Young Bottoms in Love, among others, and here on Bitch we've covered a collection of comics about Midwesterners and gender and run Erika Moen's queer-friendly sex comic Oh Joy Sex Toy. 

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This week's Douchebag Decree goes to DC Comics.

DC, you know I love your characters. I'm willing to put up with a lot in exchange for stories about the Batfamily and Wonder Woman. But you're getting beyond the realm of acceptability. In case you haven't been keeping track of the stupid things DC has done recently—there's a whole blog for that!—here's a rundown. 

Incident #1: Last month at Fan Expo in Toronto, DC finally acknowledged their female readers. However, it was only to tout a new romance series, Superman/Wonder Woman. As The Mary Sue reported, illustrator Tony Daniel had this to say:

It's funny, because in Chicago I was talking to Bobbie Chase and Bob Harras about making a book, I wasn't referring to creating this book, but I mentioned maybe, can we create a book that targets a little bit more of the female readership that's been growing. And maybe a book that has a little bit of romance in it, a little big of sex appeal, you know, something that would, for lack of a better example, that hits on the Twilight audience. You know, millions of people went to see those in the theaters because it has those kind of, you know, subject matter.

Now, there's nothing wrong with a romance title, and I'm sure plenty of women will indeed be interested in it. What this feels like, though, is straight-up pandering to the audience that they have been ignoring and dismissing until the Twilight cash cow has proven that women will spend lots of money on media they like. Not to mention, of course, that the female readership is not monolithic; female readers are not solely interested in romance—especially Twlight's specific brand of romance. During the Q&A portion, a panel attendee named Liz asked:

Liz: When you were talking about Superman/Wonder Woman, what caught my ear was, you're making it romance and romantic to catch the women. My question is, that's not all you're doing, right? [Laughter and applause from the audience]

Daniel: Are you asking if you'll see like, Superman butt shots? I'll be sure to keep it even.

The rest of the exchange was equally as dismissive to Liz's concerns that the creators had equated a female readership with the love of well-defined butts and romance. After a history of ignoring female readers, DC has now single-handedly decided what those same female readers want, without bothering to consult or listen to them—even when a female reader is directly asking the questions.

Incident #2: This past week, DC encouraged artists to "break in" to the industry by drawing Harley Quinn, a character who is "no stranger to a little breaking and entering." But instead of continuing their pun, the contest requires artists to draw Harley attempting to kill herself in four different panels, in turn trying to get herself struck by lightning, eaten by an alligator, eaten by a whale, and the worst one, electrocuted while naked in the bath. Their guidelines required a drawing of:

"Harley sitting naked in a bathtub with toasters, blow dryers, blenders, appliances all dangling above the bathtub and she has a cord that will release them all. We are watching the moment before the inevitable death. Her expression is one of 'oh well, guess that's it for me' and she has resigned herself to the moment that is going to happen."

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