Welcome to Grrl Geeks!
Before we get down to business, we feel some explanation and a little history is necessary. In high school, Maggie and I were socially defined by our geekiness. Like many of our fellow girl geeks, we were awkward, intelligent and somewhat socially stunted. However, we had great passion and imagination concerning the things we loved most. We spent hours discussing the various philosophies of Trigun, and we cried our way through the ending scenes of Final Fantasy X. We read His Dark Materials and Harry Potter. We played Magic cards, we read comics, and delighted in all things that pertained to our geeky subculture without much discretion.
When we went to our separate colleges we began subconsciously distancing ourselves from most of the things we enjoyed as teenagers. Thrust into new environments, we became more and more conscious of the poisonous attitudes toward women that inhabit our culture. We further developed our own identities; I explored my queerness while Maggie found female empowerment. We both found ourselves outraged at some of the messages about women that we had willingly accepted as participants in geek culture. And so, we each came to an impasse in our identity formations; were we to ignore the blatant sexism in the geek products we consumed and thus compromise our feminist identities? Or should we wholly denounce our geeky interests for the sake of the cause and deny a huge aspect of ourselves? We found neither acceptable, so we founded this.
This blog is an attempted reconciliation of geek culture and feminist thought. We believe that by maintaining a critical eye, we can sort out the media that promotes unhealthy cultural attitudes toward women from the media that challenges and empowers us. Although historically a male-dominated culture, women are beginning to even the playing field as both producers and consumers of geek products. And they deserve a voice. Girl geeks should no longer be required to act like "one of the boys" and objectify female characters when playing their favorite games. Girl geeks shouldn't be made to feel awkward about their bodies because their favorite anime characters are unrealistically proportioned. And above all, a girl geek should never feel like she shouldn't speak out about what she feels is an unfair treatment of her sex, just because her boy geek friends will make fun of her for being "too sensitive."
We dissect geek culture because it's what we love. We wouldn't be doing this if we didn't think that geek culture could hugely benefit from a feminist reading. We would greatly appreciate it if readers would leave any defensiveness they have about their hobbies in order to partake in unfettered intellectual discussion about them.
We are grrls and we are geeks! Let's start the discussion!
Sarah
Fellow Feminists!
There isn't really much I can add to Sarah's brilliant and inspired introduction, but since I can't seem to keep my big fat mouth shut (ever, in any situation) I would like to take a moment to stress how our intention in the creation of this blog is ultimately one of celebration. We are not trying to roundly dismiss geek culture as sexist--instead, we are looking to uncover and support those amazing comics, web comics, video games, manga, anime, YA lit novels (my personal poison), fantasy and science fiction novels, and any other geek products that break through the rampant sexism of the industry, that encourage us to love ourselves and our bodies, and that tell us women really do kick ass (the sneaking suspicion we've had since high school despite mass media telling us otherwise). That isn't to say we won't call out the total sexist bullshit that we come across (Twilight, I've got your number). Or that we won't pan the banal and boring (...I'm still talking to you, Twilight), but we also hope to promote a whole lot of awesome shit.
As you can tell from Sarah's letter, we were not very discriminative in high school. We watched shitty, self-hating anime like it was our job. And we definitely went through that whole girl-bashing, gender-role enforcing yaoi thing and somehow made it out in one piece. In fact, I think our earlier lack of discrimination gave us the kind of exposure that we need to be informed and helpful (and empowered) critics.
And while we love all things geek, since we are just starting out on this blogging adventure we will probably be sticking to our strong points for awhile (We're both huge reading geeks, and so you'll probably see a LOT of book reviews to start with) we are serious about covering as much of geek culture as possible. So just stick with us! It will be an excellent ride!
Luv,
Maggie
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