Video Games Vs Scrapbooking

Sorry to bring this up again, but this has been sitting on my brain for a long time. A blog waiting to happen; So when the discussion came out I thought it was a good time to finally put it down. This is based off of discussions going around the site, so if you feel like you missed something, its because Im refering to something that was said elsewhere.

So here is my Take on the whole Sexism in Gaming.There are video games out there for everyone. My 60 year old mom who is the poster child for upper middle class white woman owns a wii. She owns more games for her wii than I do. She probably spends more time on her wii than I do. She LOVES her wii.
My Mother in law could spend all day playing bejeweled and farmville and zuma. She LOVES them.
I get bored with most wii games and I can play arcade or browser games, but they dont hook me like other gametypes do. We are happy with our gaming options.
Men and woman's fingers may be the same, but our brains arent. There is a reason that most women are drawn to one type of game and men another. No one has forced them to play those games, its just what they naturally like.
MEN AND WOMEN ARE NOT THE SAME.  WE ARE NOT EQUAL, BECAUSE YOU HAVE TO BE THE SAME TO BE EQUAL. Ever heard the expression Apples and Oranges? Apply it here. I lover Apple Pies and Orange julius. IT doesnt mean that I like apples more than oranges or that one is better, they just both make great tasting treats.  "How dare that orange not make good pie!" "yeah, well that Apple sucks because it doesnt make a good julius." Im not saying men are better or women are better, we just both "are". You cant get mad when things dont match up perfectly. For every lonely girl on XBL, there is a lonely guy on a scrapbooking board.  It doesnt make gaming better or scrapping beter, it just makes them different. On a whole, men and women DO seem to have different hobbies/likes. You dont see many men scrapbooking. I can honestly say I have NEVER seen a thread on digiscraptalk.com that said "what can we do to get more male scrappers". And sure using "this is a male thing, thats a female thing" is stereotypical, but there is a reason WHY those stereotypes exist. Nobody is stopping women from gaming, or men from scrapping, its just isnt always what floats their boats.  So I dont think its fair to say that women dont game because its full of asshole men. They dont game because its not what makes them happy. The same reason that Bubba doesnt spend his spare time Scrapbooking. (however if he did, I want pictures!)

When I started playing Halo I KNEW I was going into a male dominated game genera. I knew that it was a game built with men in mind. I didnt get mad when cortana went from an A cup (H1) to a bigger C cup in H3. In fact I enjoy the new hotter Cortana.
I do mind Jacks outfit a bit in ME2, and as soon as I could, I put more clothes on her. BUT I dont think Jack minds her outfit (that is if she was a sentient person) because Her outfit gives her power. How many times does she call herself a powerful bitch. She knows that her sex appeal gives her power over weak minded men and she uses it. They are busy looking at her topless while she is kicking their ass. So not my style, but I can appreciate it for what its worth.
There are games that I dont like. Bioshock was too creepy for me, and I will probably never play DoA. They dont hurt me though. just because I dont like their style, or their graphics, doesnt hurt my Fable games or my MiL playing Zuma.

Yes some video games use sex to sell. Is there an industry that doesnt use sex to sell? Even Herbal essences used sex to sell their shampoo. A shampoo so fruity smelling no guy would want to use it, which means that it was marketed towards women using sexy women. Video games dont have the monopoly on sex. Its everywhere you look. You cant get mad when they deliver what the consumer demands, and there just hasnt been a demand for a game with smartly dressed woman who runs around being nice to everyone. Video game characters are idiolistic because we game to role play, or dream. Who doesnt want to BE masterchief after a sucky day of real life. Who would want look forward to coming home from work and playing as a paunchy middle ager. Ever read a romance novel? (you know romance novels, which are dominated by female readers?) Its just as idealistic as video games are. Men swoop in on their white chargers,  save the woman, get her married and pregnant, and raves about her beautiful perfect pregnant body while he fights to kingdom come to save her from the evil dude. (trust me, that is the plot of 90% of historical romance novels) Look at Twilight. Perfect man loves clumsy girl he fights for her, they love each other, she ends up perfect. the end. Women want the sexy wonderful just as much as men do, we just want it in a different way. So yes, games are not going to have average Joe as their main person. And I dont know what games you have been playing, but I cant think of a one on my crowded shelf that has women like Jcat talked about in her blog. Im not saying they dont exsist, just I dont think they are the main attraction like they were when Mario started rescuing princess.

When I get dressed up for a night on the town with my husband I get out my heels, my cutest dress, I put on make up, I do my hair. I want to look good. You know what? When I look good I feel good, I feel hot, and I feel STRONG. I feel 100 percent better about ME when Im dressed up and looking good than when I am a shlub in my sweats. I don't do it because I want men to hit on me, or because I need to look good to be special, or even for shakes (because trust me, he wants sex even when Im a shlub) but because it makes me feel good. I like to feel hot. I like to be admired. I am very comfortable with the very useful brain in my head, and all my other talents, but I also enjoy the fact that I can (or at least used to) turn heads. Some women like to feel hot. So why do we get to be mad when some women get sexy with their video game stuff?  Because it makes people think we are sexy too, simply because we game? Well damn, I hate it when people assume Im sexy. [/sarcasm] I roll my eyes at QTPies boobs pressed onto her xbox, but if it makes her happy then Im not going to demand she puts some clothes on because I think its lame.

As for the 2o2p forums...... I dont like talking sports. Does that mean I should whine about my OMM peeps obsessing over march madness? I roll my eyes at the threads and ignore them. Same with the boob threads, and the bacon threads. Just because they arent my cup of tea, does that mean that it cant be theirs? How do you think the Jews/muslims on the site feel every time they open OT to see the bacon thread? No matter what, everyone will never be happy. We are all too individualistic for that. However, nobody is MAKING those women pose the way they do. No one is MAKING them take their shirts off. They like being looked at. The men like looking at them. I dont morally agree with it, but how is it hurting me? And why is it that if a man likes looking at boobs he is only seeing objects with a woman attatched? I could watch Max from dancing with the stars all day long. He makes me DROOOOOOL. That doesnt mean that I dont think he is smart, talented, and an amazing person, it just means I also like his beautiful body. We cant put words into the guys mouths. We dont know why they like their pictures of boobs. Sure some like them just for the moterboat factor, but I dont think we have the right to say that is why ALL of them like them.

The type of gaming we do IS MALE DOMINATED. So why do we get mad when they act like males?
The world is full of assholes. I see them on my mommy boards, I see them on my religion board, and I see them on XBL. Its part of life- dealing with the assholes. It doesn't mean we shouldn't fight it, but we shouldn't rag on the 80% of the population that isnt an asshole just because there are assholes around.
2o2p is a great place. Ive been here since it had less than a thousand people. Sure there can seem to be quite a few asshats around, but if there are thirty asshats for every thousand site members back then, you would have to expect that same ratio now, with the site bigger, it would seem to reason that there would be more douchbags too.
Maybe Im a freakshow and I am weird, but with the exception of one time I have never felt "boo hoo, Im a girl and Im picked on" I HAVE felt picked on, but I didnt feel that it had anything to do with my sex. It was just an asshat being an asshat. Just because I AM a girl doesnt mean Im being picked on because I am A GIRL. (does that make sense?) Its because there are douchenozzles who will pick on everyone regardless. They might say things that only relate to women, but I think that is because its what they think will hurt more, and if I was a guy that same person would still be pissing me off, just saying things that related to being a guy.  Shakes catches almost as much crap as I do. The only reason I think he catches less is because he is quieter and a fairly vanilla person. Where as I am loud and can be an attention whore lol.

So yes, I agree with a lot of Phreaks article, but I agree with Tdrag too. However, I dont think we hide in the cabal, but I also dont think that everything out of it is a boys only club. Off Topic may feel like your in the middle of a guys locker room sometime, but I think that happens (at least it has for me) anytime you get a bunch of guys together. The Cabal is a needed place because we can talk about things that we share in common. We can have threads drooling over Alistair without some shmuck putting in a boobs picture. I dont see it as a support group because being a "girl gamer" is so hard, or an exclusive club, its just a place for people with a common interest which happens to be "being a gamer who is female." We happen to give support the same way that this site has supported many of its members. We gather together because we have things in common just like Tdrag mentioned in her blog.

Im not sayingI wouldnt mind seeing a little less boobs, but I would also like some rainbows and flowers on the site to make it pretty ;) It probably aint going to happen, and Im fine with that, because I have other places on the net to go when I want my pretties and when I dont want to see boobs. And that is what is great about the internet.