Despite what Asmiov thought ….

Love, C.

my two daughters are also huge fans

The Laura character is a beacon; Kara shows that women can be tough and vulnerable; even Baltar’s “imaginary” girlfriend, as overtly sexual as she is, has a soft spot while still being capable of superhuman feats (well, maybe cyberhuman is the word here).

But I think what we like most is the complexity of the relationships in an intricate plot. The male characters are also amazingly multifaceted. I mean, XO Tigh surprises you every time. Admiral Adama is also tough but smart and sensitive. Even Baltar is likeable in a sort of underdog way as the fallen angel we wish would come back and do good (though now I think he’s headed for a Vaderesque dark side, being sequestered as he is by the Cylons). But he could go the other way as well…

It has been interesting watching women’s lib online blossom. Four years ago, when I got into a top-rated EverQuest guild (a highly structured, very strict organization with attendance requirements and a firm hierarchy of leadership), women were only allowed if they were the wife or live-in girlfriend of a male member. I was one of the very first females in the guild to make it in without invoking what they used to call the f*ck-a-Triton clause. Now, I am an officer (one of about 5 leaders) and applications are not denied based on gender; in fact, a full third of the guild is female. (Being a wife or girlfriend isn’t enough anymore - you have to earn your own way in, which, oddly enough, many women don’t like.)

There have been some substantial growing pains, though. Many of the women that play these games are not there for the gameplay - they are there for attention from the men who play the games. As sad as it is to say, there was a very good reason many guilds didn’t allow unattached women. You’d drop a single female into a group of 100 males who may or may not have the courage to talk to a “Real Girl” in real life, and look out! The drama would flare terribly. I could recount a bunch of horror stories that stem from women causing terrible havoc simply because they could. I’ve seen 100-person guilds that were very successful torn apart by such things. It’s sadly common.

The slut-female-gamer is one of my biggest peeves, personally, because I am there to play the game and I am damn good at it. I am one of the few female leaders in a high-end guild on any game, and I work hard to keep everything professional. It’s like every time one of the tramps acts up, my credibility takes a hit. It’s made me, the only female officer, more wary of accepting female applicants than the men are! I’ve been burned so many times. And, as I am sure you can tell, I take it personally.

I hope that within the next few years, women in gaming will be so common that we won’t have these problems anymore. Right now, integrating them is still a work in progress.

/hops off the soapbox

Though I don’t play video and computer games myself, from the online communities in which I participate, I have the sense that women are a very strong presence in these areas as well, but maybe just because of who are in these communities my own sense of the extent of female participation is skewed?

Love, C.

Which made the cognitive brain cells hum loudly, coz, it’s supposed to be young males, yanno? This is the received wisdom across the field in whichever form it be — print, media, game, comix, etc.

Why this change? And why now? And how come the actual administrators&deciders in most of these areas continue to remain young males?

Love, C.

I have only watched the miniseries, and then the first season and half the second. The one thing that I found bothersome is the ‘traditional’ use of rape to humble and humiliate and torture the (attractive) female Cylons that have been captured. it seemed to go against the rest of the cultural set up. I haven’t seen the second half of the second season, so don’t know how that was ultimately dealt with.

Bingo. I had a writer friend ask once whether I thought he was writing female characters well, and I told him that they came across as people first, soldiers/empresses/prostitutes/whatever second, and women third, and that while this approach might occasionally lead him into trouble, it would do so far less often than the “women first, everything else second” approach I sense far too often.

BSG’s gender setup works for me because they DON’T make a big deal out of it. I’ve watched a season and a half so far, and I don’t think I’ve yet heard a single character bring up Starbuck’s sex or gender as being somehow worth commenting on in the context of being a pilot.