I feel compelled to comment on this series of tweets from Kate Beaton (utterly fantastic webcomic artist and one of my favorite tweeters), and on this tumbld response from a reader, because I think I feel like the latter is missing a key point about feminism that is worth elaborating on. It’s something that’s easy to forget when thinking about feminism, and even when thinking as an aspiring feminist: even if men and women are equal in every form of capability, men and women are not the same, because they have different histories.

A great article from Ian Bogost mirrors my suggestion that the games that will (hopefully) win games status as protected speech are the games that aren’t being made.

This post over at GameSetWatch lays out some of the basic arguments we can expect to hear from the EMA side of the table (i.e., in context, the good guys). One of the “vagueness problems” Smith mentions is that the law in question “limits restrictions to games that ‘as a whole … lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.’”

This is an epic assertion. Count ‘em, folks: there are four good reasons for a videogame. As I’ve blogged before, there’s not even uniform agreement as to whether games are capable of being artistic or literary, though my own views on the matter are more certain. To me, the problem extends well beyond “vagueness.” Questions about “art” and gaming run into the same problems that all questions about “art” do—problems of canon, which are problems of audience, which are problems of race and class.

There exists some question as to whether or not I can be a feminist, so prior to writing this post I had the following conversation via GChat with my wife (who definitely is one):

me: Do you think I’m a feminist?
(No wrong answer here, and feel free to not answer. Just have it on the brain.)

Megan: Yes.
Not a hard question.

Which I guess means it’s okay for me to comment on this post about the new game Hey Baby. The game’s premise is simple: wander around the city being harassed by male hecklers, jeerers, catcallers, and wolf-whistlers, and then kill them all. My first reaction—for which you may be justified in stabbing me in the eyeballs—has more or less held since watching the trailer: they should really be marketing this to men.

This clip. This is why I’m writing a book.