Stop Feeding The Trolls

By now you will have heard a least a snippet of the news regarding @AshleyJudd recieving threats and obscene comments after she expressed her opinion about the UK vs Arkansas game Sunday afternoon. If you are a woman who has ever loved something society has deemed to be the realm of men, you can identify with the hurt and frustration she must be feeling.  If you've dared to express an opinion about one of these topics, you've experienced the hateful comments yourself.

I make no excuses for my brash and sarcastic attitude.  I am a redhead. I am a Southerner.  I love University of Kentucky basketball and football. I write science fiction and fantasy.  I am a gamer.  None of those loves, hobbies, or beliefs is less or more valid because I have two x chromosomes. And, yet, for all of my life I've been told what a girl can and cannot do, what a woman should not say, how a lady should dress and act. I've been warned that expressing myself could be dangerous.

My response has been and will ever be: Come Get Some.

I play MMOs (Massive Multiplayer Online games).  I played them when they were MMORPGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) and before that I played MUDs (Multiple User Dungeons).  From the first day I logged on with a "female" name I learned that the internet gaming culture treats women differently. "Phat loot for cyber-ing" was a constant refrain. I'm very good at playing certain roles in games. I'm also an outspoken advocate for my friends (guildies in MMO parlance) and a natural leader.  While I was just another member of the raid the innuendos and snide comments were very occasional and low key. Then I started leading raids. I started being the person who shouted battle commands, made tactical decisions, and proposed strategy. That is when the sexual insults and real threats of violence began.

The game I play now has on-line fantasy combat. If you've seen the Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers movie, imagine the Battle of Helms Deep played out on a computer screen. It's a lot like that, only death is just a temporary set-back and we never get to actually toss a dwarf. I still like to lead large battles like this. Because I am what has been politely termed a "serial contrarian", I choose to play a character and class that many feel is not best suited for the role.  It works for me and it works for my friends, but people doing things differently is just as reviled in the online world as it is out here in the real world.  I've been called "catty", a "cancerous bitch", a "fat old c-nt" and many other names. These persons never give specific examples of why I shouldn't be leading, they immediately launch into personal attacks.  While discussing this with a friend recently, I lamented that people just can't see that there are multiple avenues to successful raiding.  The friend replied, "They aren't attacking you because you play that class. They are attacking you because you're a woman who dares to be good at a game."  I instinctively dismissed the idea. These are guys who have played with, or near, me for years. They are reasonably educated individuals raised in Western Society.  Then the friend pointed out multiple examples of male commanders who led raids with "alternate classes" and were never criticized, much less bombarded with abuse.

I challenge you to find a female gamer who doesn't have a similar story.  Even in our educated, enlightened society, there are still activities deemed to be gender specific. The same situations occur for female sports fans, female car enthusiasts, female soldiers, and female politicians.

Many have suggested that Ashley Judd, and others who have complained about on-line harassment, just need to "get thicker skins". It has also been said that the emotionally stunted individuals who made the disgusting comments about her are not breaking any laws. It is quite probably that they are indeed not stepping outside the law. They are however, stepping outside the bounds of societal interaction. If they have decided not to participate as adults in our society, we should reciprocate by ceasing all interaction. Those saying that Ms. Judd should "just get over it" are enabling further juvenile outbursts. People may have the legally protected right to be internet trolls, but we don't have to feed the trolls.

We should, instead, be rooting out the trolls with pitchforks and flaming torches.  We should be yanking them from their anonymous bolt holes and exposing them to the harsh light of societal scorn. It is not OK to respond to an opinion or argument with any version of "well you're retarded/fat/a woman/homosexual". Responding to Ashley Judd's tweet with sexual innuendo, threats of rape, or comments about "getting back in the kitchen" is barbaric in the truest sense of the word.  Those persons chose to make themselves outcasts from polite society.  It's time we stopped treating these situations as trivial.

So, kudos to fellow UK alumnus Ashley Judd for responding to the slobbering idjits on Twitter with her own version of "Come Get Some". I've got her back, and so should you.

Again with This?

Tasha Robinson, at The Disolve, writes that "We're losing all our Strong Female Characters to Trinity Syndrome". It's a well thought-out piece and well worth the read. Near the end of the article, Robinson proposes a litmus test for female characters, which really got my brain churning.

I've written on this topic before.  If all goes well, I'll be discussing it on a panel at Geek Girl Con this October. While I could, easily, answer "no" to all of Robinson's questions, does that matter? Is the goal to write a charachter who fulfills every single aspect of that perfect formula?

No.


I don't write Strong Female Characters.  I write PEOPLE.  Male or female, they have faults and quirks and serious psychological issues. (Maggie O'Connell is famously described BY HER BEST FRIEND as "emotionally stunted"!)

The problem , as I see it, is that authors (of screenplays and novels alike) set out to write a "Strong Female Character" like generations of old set out to write a "Damsel in Distress".  Just because your character can kick a little ass doesn't mean she's not a flat, lifeless, cliche added to your story as a sop to a particular demographic.

My advice: STOP IT.  Make your characters reflect reality. Write REAL women. The viewing--and reading-- public will thank you.

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day:

• To the Sarah Conner type moms
• To the mothers of dragons, wolves, felines, and velociraptors
• To Moira Queens of the world
• To the mothers of Sheldons and Sherlocks everywhere
• To Beverly Crushers and the Athenas
• To the mother's who not yet are 
• And to the mothers who are only so in their tear-soaked dreams

Giving birth is only one of the on-ramps to the journey that is motherhood.

No matter how you got on this road we share, welcome and safe travels.

Fame

The past few years have seen an explosion in discussions about the role of gender in the nerd & geek communities. In case you've been stranded on an island with Oliver Queen, a hashtag search for #GeekGirls should give you plenty of reading material.  I've contributed to these discussions myself, notably with this post: Hear it for the Heroines.  A video posted recently, and a post by friend and fellow author JC Cassels, prompted the following entry.

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I am a geek. I am a nerd. I am a female.

I am memorable.

I have always been these things.  I watched GI Joe and He-Man cartoons, purloined my brother's comic books and begged to play D&D with him.  I spent as many hours with the Atari Basic programming cassette as I spent with "Missile Command" and "Pac-Man".  I adored "Turtle Tracks".  I kicked my brother's whining ass, beating Castle Wolfenstein and DOOM long before he did.  The very first story I ever wrote was science fiction.

You'll remember me.


Yes, this made adolescence rather painful.  I doubt, however, that it was more or less painful for a nerd/geek boy. I'd be lying if I said I didn't care what other people thought or said about me. Those snide comments and date-less nights, though, made me who I am.


Don't you know who I am?

I don't take the easy road.  Anything worth doing is hard.  You want me to do something?  Tell me I can't.  I knew that using Cassandra Davis as a pen name would hurt sales.  I decided I didn't care.  If someone is so ignorant as to live in this century and still believe that the quality of storytelling is dependent on the gender of the storyteller, then I don't want that idiot reading my books. I'll sell fewer books, but as long as that is a reflection on the idiocy of a few and not on the quality of my writing, I am unconcerned.

Remember.


When you grow up marginalized, when you grow up "different", you become a grown up who dares.  You dare to believe. You dare to fight for what you want.  You dare anyone to stand in your way. You set the sky on fire.

I am unafraid, unapologetic, unswayed.

They'll remember.

If I'm doing my best, it won't matter what name I use.  I will live forever because my story will learn to fly. Every boy or girl, woman or man, who reads my books, will take a part of it with them.  The story will become a part of their lives.

Fame, and a name, are what you make of them.

Guild Wars 2

Where was I all weekend?  Why did I miss SFF Saturday (again)?  Well, I'm a geek girl at heart and, thus, a gamer.  I spent my weekend playing Guild Wars 2.  I'll have more about my gaming habits at a later date, but I wanted to share this beautiful screenshot:

Let's Hear It For the Heroines

I do so love a good heroine.  Don’t get me wrong; I’m still madly in love with Han Solo, Captain Reynolds, Apollo, and any man to sit in “the chair” on the bridge of the USS Enterprise. But, come on, girls like me don’t get guys like that.  I can, though, become my favorite heroines.

That’s why I think all this talk about the need for “positive female role-models in media portrayals of women” is a bunch of bunk.  “Positive”--that’s just another way of saying “perfect women who are smart, wordly, virtuous, independent, emotional honest, and responsible citizens”.  In a word: BORING.  Pop Quiz: who did you love more, Scarlett O’Hara or Melanie Hamilton?  Yeah I thought so.  Authors don’t (or shouldn’t) write perfect role-models because perfect people are too unreal.  Do you know a perfect person in real life?  Someone without a single fault?  I highly doubt you do.  Characters should be people that we can associate with, or at least recognize as being realistic copies of people we encounter every day.

That isn’t to say we need to be raging alcoholics like Starbuck, or have the myriad psychological disorders of Ripley or Sarah Connor.  We can, though, be unabashedly awesome at our jobs, fiercely protective of our young, or really good at delivering snarky one-liners in the face of gruesome death. (Though, really, spend the energy avoiding the gruesome death and save the snark for when the YouTube re-enactment is filming.) Laura Roslin certainly wasn’t perfect, but I’d sure as hell rather vote for her to be our next president instead of the choices we currently have! Yes Kaylee was naive and hopelessly pining after a man with severe commitment issues, but damn wouldn’t we all like to have her skills with engines? And come on, even a sarcastic cynic like me can appreciate a woman so positive that “there’s not a power in the `verse can make Kaylee stop being cheerful”.

Instead of encouraging girls and young women to be a Madonna-like (speaking of the Holy Virgin Mother, not the pop star, obviously) paragon, let’s teach them to celebrate the good in themselves while acknowledging the bad.  Teach them to recognize that the literary, movie, and television characters they encounter have flaws because they are based on real women.

Real women have flaws.  Battling and, if we are very lucky, over-coming those flaws makes us better women. Honestly sharing our stories, even the painful bits, can make us Big Damn Heroes for the next generation.