Letters from a Young Radical

Let me start out by saying that I get accused of overreacting to things a lot, I understand I'm a party crumb, and yes I do think this parody is really hilarious. Well done even!

At the same time, this is one of those red flags in our in-transition culture that sends some amazingly mixed messages to me.

To set the scene, all WoW (World of Warcraft, an MMORPG) players in this piece are male. While this is obviously a huge percentage, it's a stereotype that only males play video games. Women make up about 1/3 of players of multi-player games and I believe have a heavy presence on WoW in particular. Males are also not the only sex that has the potential to spend a tad too much time on the game.

All WoW players in this scene are in heterosexual marriages. I'm pretty sure that there is a GLBT presence on the game as well.

While the piece seems to rail on traditional gender roles by portraying the men as weak and stupid and the women as strong and smart, there are many contradictions in this portrayal.

I know from personal experience that WoW tends to have an obsessive power over people (even me), and this can take a serious toll on romantic relationships that sometimes take a backseat to a game that, one you're high level enough, actually requires you to spend hours at a time playing, and unlike the games of the past, doesn't have a pause button and therefore contains a lot of social pressure not to leave during play. On the other hand, I find the nature of this portrayal, while important, to be pretty insulting to both parties.

The women/wives in this video are initially portrayed as strong women with a handle on reality. They're funny, they speak their mind, and they seem to be practical and without drama. Then we discover the secret to their power: their level 70 breasts (highest level you could get pre expansion pack). On one hand, we're aknowledging that women have a legit power over men, however this insults men by assuming that they are all complete slaves to sex, and insults women by suggesting that our strength comes from our ability to please men. There's still a huge debate over whether women who use their sexuality as a tool are empowered or oppressed.

It gets worse. In the beginning it's suggested that getting some time away from the game would be beneficial, but towards the end we find out exactly what the wives are training their pet husbands to do: stop messing with their flower bushes, wash the dishes (ok that's practical), and go to BABY SHOWERS.

Dude. NO ONE like going to baby showers. Ok, so maybe some people do, and I certainly wouldn't be very feminist by suggesting that women who enjoy baby showers are somehow uncool, but it's obviously portrayed as a huge burden to the men, who are now in the know again, and it's still a huge stereotype on both ends.

I really think they missed the boat on the wives thing as well. I mean, dude. If you're playing so much because your wife just doesn't do it for you, you married the wrong chick. Forget the boobs, find something that you actually WANT to quite a raid group for.

I think these contradictions really say a lot about the times we're living in (trying but still not quite there). I get the same feeling anytime I watch South Park (not often these days) - they'll try to give us a lesson in accepting homosexuality while giving us gay stereotypes to laugh at in order to tell the story. How about Christina Aguilera's video for "Beautiful" where she talks about inner beauty but is all made up herself? How about Danica McKellar's book encouraging young women to get into math, called Math Doesn't Suck: How to Survive Middle-School Math Without Losing Your Mind or Breaking a Nail.

There's a lot of good intention toward accepting and respecting women for their intelligence, but as a culture we still suspect that beneath that, all girls really want are a tight-fitting tutu and some good old fashioned materialism. Yikes.

I ran into an apt blog entry on the Women in Tech blog, aboutthe new "reality show" (is it a reality show if its actually real?) "Nerd Girls" which attempts to prove to the world that women exist who are both smart and *gasp* stylish as well! WHO KNEW! Obviously you couldn't sell the interest of smart women on its own merit (and if you could, would that be sexist in its own way? "Gasp! Smart women! Crazy enough for television!").


Anyway. Vomit. This is why I hate being a woman. When we can get past using stereotypes to talk about how stereotypes are bad, I think we'll have made some progress.