Looking For Group: Gamers of Color Sticking Together

Image description: A tweet from twitter user sourcedumal that reads "when
there are 47 long flowing hair options in character creator but 3 natural hair
options: afros, cornrows, dreads. And they all look terrible."

Writing for Endgadget, Jessica Condit gave us "Gaming While Black: From Casual Racism to Cautious Optimism", and detailed how many gamers of color have either banded together or not engaged in voice chat just to be able to keep enjoying a hobby and form of entertainment important to them because social pressures and racial harassment follow them everywhere:

“The stories Allen could tell probably wouldn't surprise Dr. Kishonna Gray. Dr. Gray is an Assistant Professor at Eastern Kentucky University's School of Justice Studies, and the founder and director of EKU's Critical Gaming Lab, a hub for researching the immersive online environments within console gaming. She studies gaming and harassment from the player's point of view. "Most gamers of color have isolated themselves into private parties, private chats, or just don't engage verbally at all," Dr. Gray said. "And that's sad because they can't take full advantage of the gaming experience that they paid for. So what's happening is a virtual ghettoization of minority gamers. [...] Because a person's identity is automatically revealed when a person speaks, they are targeted. I call it linguistic profiling. As soon as someone hears how you sound, they engage in this practice. They hear how you sound and react based on that. So a lot of black gamers are called derogatory terms because of how they sound. They don't have to do anything but sound black."”

While thre are still some that would cling to the dismissive response of video games and online game not being a part of the real world, Dr. Gray disagrees:

"Gaming culture is a direct reflection of our society," she said. "The only reason racism and sexism run rampant in gaming is because racism and sexism run rampant in society. But in physical spaces, mostly, it's not overt. It's subtle. It's covert. So, yes, these issues manifest in a similar manner in gaming, but I contend that they present themselves worse. It's not subtle. It's in-your-face racism. A black person may not be called a [n word] to their face, but they can almost guarantee it will happen in virtuality."

Although the article was written in 2015, not much has changed. The entire article is a fascinating read, so go read the whole thing.

VOYA: Youth Advocates, Unless The Young Woman Is Bi

Description: The character Beetlejuice wagging his index finger derisively at the
camera, with the caption "Ah! Oo, oo, oo, ah, ah, ahh! Nobody says the 'B' word" beneath.

Librarians across the country rely on Voices of Youth Advocates Magazine (VOYA) as a professional journal for young adult librarians. It's rutinely cited as a valuable publication in advancing advocacy of young adults, and the promotion of young adult literature and reading. Its reviews have a lot of influence in what Young Adult (YA) section librarians stock on library shelves and the magazine champions itself as "...one of the earliest and... strongest advocates for intellectual freedom and equal access to information for teens". Which is why a recent review of the YA novel "Run" by Kody Kepplinger is all the more troubling, and VOYA's response to the backlash against it very worrisome. Here's the review, (emphasis is my own doing):

"Agnes is legally blind, and leads such a sheltered life that she cannot even take the bus home from school or attend parties. Bo Dickinson has a drug addicted mother, an absent father, and is rumored to be the town slut. Although opposites, they become good friends through their kindness and acceptance of each other. Bo’s cousin Colt is almost a brother to her; they have grown up together and are part of the family “you steer clear of because nothing good can come of getting mixed up with that bunch.” Agnes has a different problem; her parents hover over her and limit her activities so it is impossible for her to be a normal teenager, until she begins sneaking out to go places with Bo. When Bo hatches a plan to leave town to find her father, Agnes decides to go along, thinking she and Bo will live together. They steal a car from Agnes’s family and begin their road trip, along the way visiting Colt, with whom Agnes has a sexual encounter. When Agnes discovers that Bo intends to live with her father, they separate and she gets in touch with her parents, leaving Bo to a disappointing meeting with her father, and an eventual return to the foster care system. The story contains many references to Bo being bisexual and an abundance of bad language, so it is recommended for mature junior and senior high readers.–Rachel Axelrod"

Yup. Not only is a character talking about her orientation eye-rolling mentioned in the same breath as cursing, it also means that it can't be recommended for anyone below junior or senior level in high school. Even though, like yours truly back in the long ago, there are bi youth that exist and know they're bi long before junior or senior year. As much as I'm angry at the biphobia in this review's attitude, I have it a little better than most. I'm a bi man. The form of biphobia that surrounds bi-women is even more pernicious and damaging.

When the reviewer uses the word mature, it's a commonly understood meaning in YA book context that means "sexual content". And there's a common element where bi women are hyper-sexualized just by exisiting, We live in a society that acts that women that are bi, use the word "bisexual" to label themselves and are out about it are on the same level as sex acts. This attitude also floats around in a social climate where bi women face intra-group discrimination and increased percentages of harassment, violence and partner abuse. Plus, you don't see a similar warning like "this book contains many refences to being straight, so it's only appropriate for juniors and seniors" because straightness is see as the "default" or "normal".

Well, maybe there's a sex scene with Bo, and that's what makes it mature, maybe? Nope. As the author herself pointed out on twitter:

The irony? (And this might be a spoiler so beware:) There IS a sex scene in the book Between the STRAIGHT characters. Not Bo, the bi M[ain] C[harcter]. But Bo's sexuality - Bo who doesn't have a sex scene while her straight co-narrator does - is the one considered "mature." 

The review doesn't think to warn about a sex scene, but does think to warn about a character talking about being bi! VOYA is super influential in the young adult literary field. Booksellers and librarians rely on these reviews because no one person can read all of the thousands of YA novels published every year. VOYA's own mission statement reads "Young adults have rights to free and equal access to information in print, nonprint, and electronic resources, without infringement of their intellectual freedom due to age or other restrictions." and this review's note runs counter to that. Author Tamina Wright points out that "These types of reviews, in addition to being insulting and harmful to actual queer teens, hurt queer books because they could be passed over. Queer books, by and large, don’t get the big advances or the huge marketing budgets so they depend on word-of-mouth, hand-selling, and libraries. Being in a library could quite literally make an author’s career."

The topping on the sundae of crap that is this VOYA review? It was released during NATIONAL BI VISIBILITY WEEK.

When Wright wrote an email to VOYA, pointing out that this attitude is harmful to bi youth in general, and herself in particular as both a bi woman and parent of a genderqueer child, a VOYA editor responded with the non-apology of "sorry if you were offended", claimed that nothing was inappropriate about the review, and then personally attacked Wright for "revealing your child's sexuality to me" (which the author didn't even do) and said that because it was Bi Visibility Week, all Wright wanted to do was "find and destroy your enemies in a public forum" (even though Wright sent a private email). FOR REAL. The screencaps of the emails are here.

There was an outcry from queer youth and authors and librarians. SO VOYA did the logical thing... and printed Wright's email and the editor's response as a special "Letter To The Editor Column" on its website that has since been removed. Bi author Hannah Moskowitz, whose YA work VOYA has reviewed favorably in the past, wrote a scathing response to VOA's actions, which she shared on here twitter here.

Literary agent Barry Goldblatt-- who is a big name YA lit agent-- publically announced he was pulling all agency ads from VOYA in response, and encouraging his contacts in the publishing industry to do the same.

Author Peggy North dug through old VOYA back issues and found that the magazine only seemed to warn about f/f romances. NO similar warning for straight ones, and these reviews were all written by different staffers. Meanwhile VOYA doubled down on social media:




It gets better. And by better, I mean worse.

VOYA finally apologizes. Sorta. In the most flouncy, pouty way possible. See, it's the "LGBTQ community" that has "taken offense" and "demanded" an apology! So, there's a ham-handed apology, but it's a start, right? Surely VOYA would start listening to authors and others and try to improve?

Nope. They then deleted all mention of the controversy from their official twitter and FB accounts, and began blocking anyone that spoke to them about it. Including famous writers. Successive attempts at apologies from VOYA have started out better but quickly careen into defensiveness.

Let me share a resource with you that shows YA stories with bi protagonists that don't have weird, unnecessary bi-phobic warnings.

SJW: Social Justice Witcher

Lawrence Richards, writing for gaming site The Leveller, recently took on a special challenge playing through The Witcher 3 (which we've previously discussed here):

I wanted to see if instead I could play a character whose interests were a bit less tedious than being some empty, unquestionable Nietzschean superman. I wanted to test the so-called freedom of what is clearly the most groundbreaking open world game of our generation, to see if I could reject the usual triple-A heroism and play a character who is sensitive, humble, committed to social justice rather than self-aggrandisement. 

I wanted to play a male character who could be an actual ally to the empowerment of his female co-stars, a-la the new Mad Max, rather than just the tough guy who saves them. I wanted to immerse myself in this world committed to freeing its inhabitants from their miserable feudal bondage, rather than just saving the day and making sure that the system can survive. I wanted to play a hero that Gamergate couldn’t wank over.

Giving some of the series' reputation for cringeworthy misogyny, The Witcher 3 may seem like an odd choice for Richards to try to play the character in this way. However, the developers have played up the nuanced choices available, and there are supposedly 32 different ending depending on how you play the game. Many reviews have called The Witcher 3 out as a good example of an expansive sandbox action game. With this in mind, he decided to play the game as an anarcho-feminist. Was he sucessful? Kind of.

There's also a neat little side-diversion on game economics and NPCS:

I tried to keep those ideas of money and exchange and autonomy in mind as I freed numerous entrepreneurs through the world. But ultimately it was all done in good faith, as well as a sense of resignation that there was no way for me to guarantee helping cottage industries was going to help the workers. There were very rarely apprentices, which made each smithy and merchant’s shop a kind of Ayn Rand utopia in which the only visible labour is that of the brilliant entrepreneur, the source of all value and creativity. This, though subtle, was for me one of the blandest features of the game, because it is an accidental trope rather than a philosophical decision.

What do you think? Sound off in the comments!

Classic Macs, Memories & Facts, Simulated Hijacks

Multimedia artist Jesse English is more well known for his creation called the Sincerity Machine-- a working  ink-ribbon typewriter reworked to actually type in Comic Sans-- but he also considers himself a bit of a new media archeologist. So when he was trying to look up a barely remembered game he played on an AppleII in his 7th grade social studies class. He remembered it was part of a larger lesson plan on terrorism, and reproduced it here:


Using an emulator to create artwork that would look similar to the artwork style that would be generated for Mac Classic is pretty impressive. Also impressive is that a mere 3 weeks later, he found the game in question, and did a Let's Play run of it!