Feminist Frequency at CES with Engadget — Feminist Frequency

Ebony’s 2017 Comfort Blankets
▻https://feministfrequency.com/2017/12/19/ebonys-2017-comfort-blankets

For what it’s worth (quite a lot, actually), there were moments of solace and triumph in the largely fetid swamp of 2017. For my money, 99% of those moments were born from the work, passion, and creativity of trans folks, the disabled community,* and people of color. I learned more and laughed harder this year than I had any right to expect by just ear-hustling on the conversations of brilliant […]

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Eleven Is the Hero I Needed in 1984
▻https://feministfrequency.com/2017/12/04/eleven-is-the-hero-i-needed-in-1984

NOTE: This piece references events that take place at the end of Stranger Things season two. I want to tell you about Eleven, and why she’s my favorite in a long line of young magical outsiders. I wonder, would she prefer I call her Jane now? Jane strikes me as too plain a name for her (no offense intended to all you extraordinary Janes out there), but perhaps that’s what […]

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Peach’s Tiny Taste of Freedom : Gender in Super Mario Odyssey
▻https://feministfrequency.com/2017/11/08/peachs-tiny-taste-of-freedom-gender-in-super-mario-odyssey

SPOILERS: Super Mario Odyssey’s climax sees our hero Mario, who has made a 30-plus-year career out of rescuing Princess Peach, once again doing battle with Bowser to save her from his vile clutches. Okay, okay, you probably saw that coming, but just to be clear, this post discusses endgame story events in Super Mario Odyssey in detail. Consider yourself warned. This time around, it’s not just Peach who needs rescuing […]

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Ask a Feminist: What does it mean to “live a feminist life”?
▻https://feministfrequency.com/2017/11/07/ask-a-feminist-what-does-it-mean-to-live-a-feminist-life

Happy fall, y’all! We’ve added a new recommendation to our list of nonfiction feminist media: Sara Ahmed’s newest book, Living a Feminist Life. Anita can’t put it down, and my copy is here beside me as I type, sitting in a spot of honor on my bedside table. As a long-time student of gender studies, I’ve been a fan of Ahmed’s work for years (I mentioned one of her other […]

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Officer K and the Real Girl: Cultural Dehumanization in Blade Runner 2049
▻https://feministfrequency.com/2017/10/17/officer-k-and-the-real-girl-cultural-dehumanization-in-blade-runn

The original Blade Runner is a film without heroes, but to me, the most sympathetic characters have always been the four rogue replicants that Rick Deckard hunts down and kills over the course of the film. Designed for slave labor, their rebellion demonstrates a conviction that they deserve to freely exist just like the human beings they’re so closely modeled on. And they do deserve that. Of course they do. […]

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Geek Girls, Assemble!
▻https://feministfrequency.com/2017/10/03/geek-girls-assemble

 The FemFreq team had a great weekend in Seattle at GeekGirlCon 2017, and we’ve got the pictures to prove it! We had a dynamite time getting to talk to long-standing FemFreq supporters, and meeting new folks who wanted to learn more about what we do. On Saturday, we held a panel called “Pop Culture Playback,” to give audience members an inside peek into the development of our new series, […]

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FREQ #17: Ann Leckie Imagines A World Without Gender
▻https://feministfrequency.com/2017/09/26/freq-17-ann-leckie-imagines-a-world-without-gender

 Our latest issue of the FREQ newsletter features an interview with the fascinating Ann Leckie, who wrote her critically-acclaimed and best-selling debut novel, Ancillary Justice, when she was a stay-at-home mom well into her 40s without any published work to her name. The novel explores a fantastical universe through the eyes of a sentient AI ship called Justice of Toren, and it went on to win the hat trick […]

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UK Conference Inducts Anita Into European Women in Games Hall of Fame
▻https://feministfrequency.com/2017/09/12/uk-conference-inducts-anita-into-european-women-in-games-hall-of-

Anita delivered the keynote address at the 2017 Women in Games Conference at the East London Arts and Music Academy on September 6th. Women in Games is a non-profit, games industry diversity organization, and their recent conference drew over 40 speakers and panelists to discuss the diverse talent within the games industry. The conference, which aims “to educate and inspire, and help stimulate future generations,” included a mix of keynote speeches, panel discussions, […]

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Facing the Darkness Within: The Importance of Acting in Observer and Hellblade
▻https://feministfrequency.com/2017/08/30/facing-the-darkness-within-the-importance-of-acting-in-observer-a

Acting matters, but some acting matters more than others. The 2013 film Locke, for instance, takes place entirely in a single car, being driven by a single man, played by Tom Hardy. His performance absolutely has to carry the film. If the performance doesn’t work, the film doesn’t work, no matter how good the script or other aspects of the movie might be. Similarly, games that are primarily focused on […]

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We’ve Got to Stop Depending Upon Disgust
▻https://feministfrequency.com/2017/08/25/weve-got-to-stop-depending-upon-disgust

Disgust is everywhere these days – have you noticed? Without question, a number of despicable things have occurred in the past few weeks. To name a few: a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, complete with neo-Nazis; their unchecked organizing and violence, resulting in the death of Heather Heyer and the injury of many others; and the U.S. president’s miserably insufficient response, complicit with white supremacy and exempting white nationalists. And […]

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Party vs. Video Games: Celebrating Tropes
▻https://feministfrequency.com/2017/08/08/party-vs-video-games-celebrating-tropes

You didn’t think we’d let the wrap of Tropes vs. Women in Video Games pass without a proper celebration, did you? This past Saturday – five years after Anita launched the Tropes Kickstarter – we hosted folks from the games industry, backers, and many of the other people that helped make Tropes a reality. And, without exaggeration, it was an awesome time! The theme of the night was old school […]

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Tacoma Review: Found in Space
▻https://feministfrequency.com/2017/08/01/tacoma-review-found-in-space

Perhaps more than anything else, Tacoma is proof that a decent story, brilliantly told (which Tacoma is) is far better than a brilliant story, decently told. The follow-up to their debut masterpiece, Gone Home, Tacoma demonstrates that Fullbright are still in a class by themselves when it comes to creating environments that feel believably lived-in, and that offer up insights into characters in ways that ring true and don’t feel […]

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Pyre Review: The Fires of Freedom
▻https://feministfrequency.com/2017/07/24/pyre-review-the-fires-of-freedom

Games almost always want us to feel like a great deal is at stake. Our hero’s life, or the outcome of a war, or maybe the fate of the universe. But few games succeed at making us feel the weight of those stakes, because we know that if we fail, we just get a Game Over screen, and then another shot. We can keep trying until we get it right. […]

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Masculinity, Rage, and Racism: Some Thoughts on War for the Planet of the Apes
▻https://feministfrequency.com/2017/07/18/masculinity-rage-and-racism-some-thoughts-on-war-for-the-planet-o

War for the Planet of the Apes may be the least subtle film I have ever seen. Of course, not every film has to be subtle, but at a certain point, enduring a movie that repeatedly bludgeons you with sledgehammers of obvious meaning becomes a numbing experience. War crosses that mark within its opening 15 minutes, practically screaming at viewers, “Look at all the Vietnam war imagery we’re so meaningfully […]

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Contained in Our Moments: Ignorance and Love in Nier: Automata and The Witcher 3
▻https://feministfrequency.com/2017/07/12/contained-in-our-moments-ignorance-and-love-in-nier-automata-and-

PLEASE NOTE: This piece discusses the ending of Nier: Automata in extreme detail.  I finally finished The Witcher 3, that beast of a game. I have plenty of gripes with it. It egregiously sensationalizes violence against women, repeatedly putting the bodies of female murder victims on sexualized display. Yennefer has a ridiculous tendency to stand precisely where she needs to stand so that her butt is perfectly presented to […]

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FREQ #16: Amber Galloway Gallego: Turning Music into Sign Language
▻https://feministfrequency.com/2017/07/07/freq-16-amber-galloway-gallego-turning-music-into-sign-language

Each month, FREQ will bring you the latest news and updates from Feminist Frequency, as well as interviews with some of the most inspiring women in media, activism, and beyond. This month, we’re talking to Amber Galloway Gallego. An ASL interpreter by trade, her vibrant, impassioned translations of concerts by artists like Kendrick Lamar and The Red Hot Chili Peppers have gone viral more than once, and even earned her a spot […]

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On VidCon, Harassment & Garbage Humans
▻https://feministfrequency.com/2017/06/26/on-vidcon-harassment-garbage-humans

To kick off the Women Online panel at VidCon last Thursday, the moderator posed the question: Why do we still have to talk about the harassment of women? I replied, “Because I think one of my biggest harassers is sitting in the front row.” He showed up with several others; together, his group took up the two front rows at the panel. Their presence was plainly not, as one of […]

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Senior Citizen: Gender, Infirmity and Horror
▻https://feministfrequency.com/2017/06/21/senior-citizen-gender-infirmity-and-horror

You wouldn’t know it from the amount of time I spend thinking, talking, and writing about horror cinema, but I’m actually not a huge horror fan. I’ll spend hours falling through a TV Tropes or Wikipedia rabbit hole reading plot summary after plot summary, but what I’m looking for are spoilers and someone else to do the work. I want reassurances that the vampires have been staked and the aliens […]

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Building a Human Universe: The Ambitious Vision of Beyond Good & Evil 2
▻https://feministfrequency.com/2017/06/14/building-a-human-universe-the-ambitious-vision-of-beyond-good-evi

I wouldn’t have been surprised if the demo I saw for Beyond Good & Evil 2 had reminded me of the open-world adventure of Breath of the Wild, or of The Witcher 3’s efforts to tell human stories in a vast landscape, or of how The Last Guardian’s mechanics emphasize cooperation between characters. I certainly didn’t expect the game I walked away thinking of most to be No Man’s Sky. […]

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Gender Breakdown of Games Featured at E3 2017
▻https://feministfrequency.com/2017/06/14/gender-breakdown-of-games-featured-at-e3-2017

For the past two years, we’ve produced gender breakdowns of the games showcased at the major press conferences of E3, the game industry’s biggest annual event. We do this not because we believe that every game starring a female character will be great, or that every game starring a male character will be awful, but because, when taken in their entirety, the numbers can tell us something about whose stories […]

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