The Games Girls Play

M is playing the first Halo in the next room and I'm reminded of all the rants I've never written about my (in)glorious history as a girl. And a gamer.

I've always wanted to write about the presumption in MMOs that I'm a male, and my nerves when I log into a Ventrilo channel with new guildmates who don't know yet. I'm tempted by diatribes about Cortana and how her competency is in direct correlation with her impossibility as a sex object, but I'm sure someone else has written it first, and better, and a host of fanart on the internet utterly confirms the ability of fanboyz and girlz to objectify anything, especially when it has breasts. Besides, I would have to admit what a poor shot I am in every first person shooter ever, and that's unthinkable.

But there, I've gone and done it, and does that make for other unfathomable confessions? Like the fact that I turn the difficulty down when I just want to find out what happens in a plotline, and the boss fights are too much for me? Like the fact that I want, need, to say that I do return to them and beat them the way they should be beaten, because if I don't, it's like I'm not a real gamer? Like the guilt I feel for falling so eagerly into every trap set for me by game developers, the (literal) bones they throw in romantic opportunities, clothing customization, and the ability to collect my own virtual petting zoo of vanity critters.

What upsets me most is that I polarize these things even with the education I've had and the efforts I've made not to engender behaviors in my life away from the console and the computer and just to think, this is one kind of human, this is another. But I don't feel like I can be this kind of gamer and be a girl, like it's somehow damaging, or I'll warrant rolling eyes and glances that speak nothing but I-told-you-sos. If I'm not a badass, if I don't dig LAN parties and would rather socialize than raid, then I'm just a girl who likes playing The Sims 2.

And that's not a real game, right?