Category Archives: General

Sexism in Geek Culture, with a look at Comics

In the most recent Coming Out of the Basement Podcast, we discuss sexism in geek culture, with a bit of a closer look at comics (along with the Mass Effect 3 ending). For the first subject, I had enough sources and examples that I thought it made sense to do a post on the topic.

I meant to mention three areas:

  1. the portrayal of women in geek culture media (comics, games, RPGs, etc.)
  2. the treatment of women in geek culture in real life situations, and
  3. women in positions of authority in the industries (writers/artists/creators/editors/etc.).

Lots more below.
Continue reading →

COTB 003 – On Sexism in Comics and Mass Effect 3 ending

Carlos and BJ discuss various forms of sexism in geek culture including comics, video games, and professional competitive gaming. Finally they discuss the ending of Mass Effect 3 and all the drama surrounding this fan reaction.

[Edit from CJ: And a friend mentioned we might want to mention a trigger warning, which is a good idea and I apologize for not doing so in the first place. We do talk about violence against women, including sexual violence.]

Speak Out With Your Geek Out

This week is Speak Out With Your Geek Out, which seems appropriate for this blog. ^_^

Take a stance against baiting nerd rage and stereotypes of geeks.

Post about how much you love your geeky hobbies or vocation from Monday, September 12th, 2011 to Friday, September 16th on your blog, website, social media account or in a forum somewhere. Then come here and tell us about it. We’ll have a kick-off post where you can stand and be counted.

So, although we haven’t been particularly good about necessarily POSTING here, it really is part of the purpose of this blog; coming out of the basement. Yes, we’re playing with a geek stereotype; if you haven’t read it, look at Mike’s definition of Geeks and Kurt’s definition of Basement in the tabs above.

Heck, I’ll quote a big chunk of Mike’s:

It’s about marginalization. When you get passionate, does the conversation start flowing with you or does it stop and eyes start rolling? It’s “geeking out” when your passion surpasses the audiences tolerance for your obsessive interest. Now, this doesn’t mean a group of people can’t be geeky about a topic because within the group they aren’t marginalized. It just means if that room was full of average people, the dedication to the “geek out” would be relegated to, well, those geeking out. Believe me, when I start discussing Lockean linguistics with gamer friends, I can tell from their reactions that I’m the geek.

So you aren’t either a geek or not a geek. Everyone’s a geek about something, likely more than one something. So you’re not a geek, you’re a geek about X. Like Curly said in City Slickers, it’s up to you decide what that one thing is. Except I still think it can be more than one thing. So it’s more like City Slickers two where Jack Palance’s zombie twin showed up.

Yeah, we’re all geeks about SOMETHING. Some of our hobbies are probably considered particularly “geeky,” but we love them. ^_^

I will blog on this a bit more later; I’ve got a bunch of deadlines tomorrow that I need to meet, but I’ll come back! Really this time. ;)

A Long, Strange Trip.

As mentioned here, my laptop has been angry with me for going on 4 months or so.  This cause me to retreat away from my usual comfort space of Team Fortress 2 and MMOs, and try to find ways to amuse myself.  I went two totally different directions – Facebook games, and diving back in the Xbox 360.  It’s come back now, in time for me to test SW:TOR and get back in to WoW for Cataclysm, but the damage has been done.

Facebook games are what they are.  I found a couple nice card based ones that occupy me well enough (Eredan and Urban Rivals, primarily, though Clash and Tyrant are in there too).  It’s the 360 part that’s really interesting to me….

Continue reading →

Board Game Geeks: Dominion vs Ascension

Carlos’ gift guide prompted this – it was originally just a comment, but once I noticed the size, I figured it needed a post of its own….

For the Board Game Geek (see what I did there?), Ascension: Rise of the Godslayer is quickly coming to be the new Dominion.  It’s another “build your deck as you play” CCG-esque game.  But there are several key differences that make each of them appeal a bit more or less to certain player types….

Continue reading →