Geek and Gamer Girls

 I will start by saying that I have played Tabletop role-playing games since I was eight and played MMO’s since I was in high school.  I love role-playing games in both forms and still play to this day.  Starting out as a young child, I did not realize that playing role-playing games was a male thing, because to me it was just hanging out with my older brother.  My first gaming group had 3 boys and 2 girls, to me gaming was just something people with imaginations did for fun.  It wasn’t until we moved to a new area that I was confronted with the idea that to play role-playing games was evil and was definitely inappropriate for girls.  I am thankful every day that my Mum was willing to stand up for our right to play role-playing games but more importantly for my right as a girl to play them as well.  My Mum would allow the group of us gamers to spend hours around our kitchen table on the weekends playing D&D, Vampire the Masquerade, and ShadowRun.  She would ensure we ate and would laugh at the antics of our group.  Never once did she make me feel that I was not able to be a gamer because I was a girl.  When we got our first computer, computer time was split evenly between my brother and me.  To me I wasn’t a Gamer Girl, I was just a gamer. 
               

Then when I hit high school and started playing MMO’s things started to change.  I started to have people look at me quizzically when I said I was a gamer, or relegate my interest to looking for a boyfriend.  It felt odd to have something so fundamental to who I was, being seen as deviant or not really true.  I was told repeatedly that, “I couldn’t really be a girl because I was too good at the game. ”or “Girls are not good at special relations so they can’t play video games.”  I would often play without voice chat to limit the negative comments that came from being a girl online.  I remember , after playing in a PUG, having another player who I saved on numerous times during the raid start to stalk me in game and kill me at every opportunity he had.  It got so bad I had to go to the game master to get him banned from the game.  All because he felt bad that a girl had saved him.   However, not everyone online was horrible.  I ended up a part of, and then in charge of, a guild of people who respected the ability of the player regardless of who they were.  Our guild had a balance of women and men but also had many children of both genders as well.  Everyone had a role to play and everyone’s job was to support others to improve the guild.  It was a great feeling to know that every day that you went online you had people who had your back. 
               

Unfortunately, the stereotype of girls as gamers is not just an online one.  I go to a convention and people assume I am there because of a boy in my life.  People selling stuff, less so now but it still happens, would tell you how much your boyfriend, husband, brother would like the item you were looking at for yourself.  I went to buy a computer a couple of years ago.  I wanted a top of the line custom build machine.  I had done my research and knew exactly what I wanted to have put into my machine.  I get up to the custom service desk and tell the clerk what I wanted in my machine and he starts to tell me why I would never need the components in the machine that I was asking for, and that I would be better with just a regular off the shelf computer.  I stopped talking to the clerk and asked for his manager.  He kept going at me with the fact that I didn’t need his manager because he could find the perfect off the shelf computer for me and I shouldn’t worry my “pretty little head” about all the technical parts in a computer.  The story ended, after dealing with the manager, that I got the computer I wanted when I arrived but the sad part is the clerk didn’t understand even after his manager talked to him why I was upset.  He said, “How was he to know that she was a Gamer Girl”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

         
I think that, at times, women are our own worst enemy.  We allow ourselves to be labeled as Gamer Girls and not just gamers.  In 2008, Mari Mancusi wrote a delightful young adult novel about what it is like to enjoy anime and role- playing games as a girl.  She then, however, titles it Gamer Girl which reinforces that her interest is not mainstream because she is only a gamer girl not a gamer.  She then, in her bio, talks about video games as her guilty pleasure, thus reinforcing the idea that she should not enjoy them but she does.  It is time that women refuse to use adjectives to label their interest in fields that have been seen as male, no longer gamer girls or geek girls, but as gamers and geeks.  How can we expect to be included if we allow ourselves to be excluded from the mainstream group, and even worse if we exclude ourselves?  I believe that this stereotype is part of the reason why there are fewer girls seeking STEM jobs.  This stigma needs to change to ensure that the right people, regardless of gender, are in the up and coming STEM jobs of the future.