Monthly Archives: April 2012

Sexism in Geek Culture, with a look at Comics

In the most recent Coming Out of the Basement Podcast, we discuss sexism in geek culture, with a bit of a closer look at comics (along with the Mass Effect 3 ending). For the first subject, I had enough sources and examples that I thought it made sense to do a post on the topic.

I meant to mention three areas:

  1. the portrayal of women in geek culture media (comics, games, RPGs, etc.)
  2. the treatment of women in geek culture in real life situations, and
  3. women in positions of authority in the industries (writers/artists/creators/editors/etc.).

Lots more below.
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COTB 003 – On Sexism in Comics and Mass Effect 3 ending

Carlos and BJ discuss various forms of sexism in geek culture including comics, video games, and professional competitive gaming. Finally they discuss the ending of Mass Effect 3 and all the drama surrounding this fan reaction.

[Edit from CJ: And a friend mentioned we might want to mention a trigger warning, which is a good idea and I apologize for not doing so in the first place. We do talk about violence against women, including sexual violence.]

Odds and Ends

Like I mentioned in our just-released Episode 2, I’m not nearly as good as self-promotion or promotion as BJ is. :P A book I worked on actually came out the day we did our first podcast, but I felt a bit odd about bringing it up (so didn’t):

Open Design’s Midgard Bestiary for Pathfinder, with lead developer Adam Daigle. Daigle is an awesome monster developer who worked on all of Paizo’s Bestiaries and a host of Open Design and other materials- and as of last month was officially hired by Paizo and relocated from Austin to Seattle. And although I am biased, I gotta say that the book is one darned cool monster book. I’d get it without my contributions. ^_^ (I did include the idea of kobolds riding giant sea turtles, though! :P As well as other stuff.)

On the Kickstarter front: A few hours for a Gaming Paper adventure (plus gaming paper, a nifty gaming resource), and a few days for this excellent looking Viking-theme video game, The Banner Saga. Both look super cool. And today was the launch of Open Design’s new Kickstarter-backed project, Midgard Tales, which is going to be awesome. The lead on this one is Christina Stiles, who is both a great designer and really nice. I’m definitely backing, and if I can make the time I’m definitely contributing.