Portrayals of Feminine Skills and Attibutes as Sources of Strengh and Power

"Similarly, the Kyoshi Warriors have a fighting style that turns feminine accessories like fans into key weapons in their arsenal. When Sokka meets them, he has to be more feminine, rather than less, to become a more skilled fighter. If we had more portrayals of traditionally feminine skills and attributes as sources of strength and power, I think showing women as strong when they take on traditionally male attributes or roles wouldn’t feel like lazy shorthand and instead could be part of a Balanced Action Diet. We need Michelle Yeohs, Sigourney Weavers, and Hit-Girls along with our Angelinas." via ThinkProgress by Alyssa Rosenberg on 9/7/11

 I am going to use this quote as a jumping off point for my blog post today. One of the comments at the Geek Girl Con that I attended this past weekend was basically this point.


Lazy shorthand of creating a strong female character from this article seems to be the tough strong woman such as Ripley (Alien), Sarah Conner (The Terminator; The Sarah Conner Chronicles), and Starbuck (Battlestar Galactica). These are traditional the examples of a strong female character. And they are strong. And they are awesome. But what do they all have in common? They all subscribe to a patriarchal view of strength--physical prowess, tough attitude, and militaristic influences.

On a message board for the Fable II Xbox game, one poster asked, "Can I have a Female With Max strength stats without her being all bulky and stuff?"


I think the question should be, what makes a strong female character. And that the one of the better answers would be one that follows a more feminine strength, like the Kyoshi Warriors and the Japanese war fan weapons they use. 

To take it further one could say a female strength can come from even more traditionally feminine characteristics. What would these be?


Or you could go in another direction and define a strong woman as one who was strong, but not necessarily male or female. Then you would move into androgyny. How would this be defined?

Geek Girl Con Review Part 2: Sunday

This weekend I attended the Geek Girl con in Seattle.

http://www.geekgirlcon.com/
Free your inner Geek Girl! Come to GeekGirlCon in Seattle this October 8 & 9, 2011 at the Seattle Center Northwest Rooms and EMP Museum to laugh, learn, and connect. All geeks welcome.

These are the Panels I attended on Sunday:

 

Girls Make Games Too

This panel had a full set of six panelists who all worked in the game industry. They gave a view of what it would be like to work on a game, what their backgrounds were and how they got into the game industry and how to work on a team that is predominantly male.

Media Literacy, Criticism & Production

 In this discussion the moderator asked the audience what topics or questions they would like the panelists to address. The panelists responded to questions about women in the media. What I took away from this panel in response to the question, (Q) yes there is inequality in how women are portrayed--what do I do about it? is that (A) if you don't like it, make your own, if you can't or won't, shout out your discontent on any outlet you can get your hands on and vote with your dollars.

Enticing a New Generation of Women in STEM Careers

The final panel I attended on Sunday was on how to get more girls into the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) careers. For myself, I had a hard time with math and gravitated to a liberal arts degree of creative writing, and I am not disappointed, however, I have many friends in the STEM careers, both male and female and I love hearing about organizations that encourage girls to aspire to STEM careers. My take is that for young girls they should expand their horizons, do what they want to do, and don't be discouraged by the challenges.

 On Sunday, there were less attendees than Saturday. Besides these three panels, I also ducked into the dealers/artists room and checked out the venders who were there. The amount of venders was small, but a decent turn out that represented a variety of goods from visual art, to postcards and comics, to Steampunk accessories and clothes. There were plushies and key chains and even some video games.

Conclusions:

In conclusion Geek Girl con was a resounding success. As a creative writer, I felt like many of the panels I attended focused more on games or computer science aspects. I did not attend any of the writing panels that I would more traditonally be interested in because I'm wasn't sure, by their desciptions that they would tell me anything new that I already didn't know about writing. 

I hope for the future that there will be more panels about writing that would appeal to me. I did find myself educated and highly entertained by the panels I did t attend, so I commend Geek Girl Con for a job well done.

Here are my take-away thoughts:

As long as we live in a patriarchal society, women can feel and act however they want towards feminism be that subjective, objective, thoughtful or angry. And if we, as women, want a more equal society, then we need to grow our feminist discussion among ourselves and then take out into the world. If roughly 50% of the population is male, a feminist movement will need to enlist the voices of men as well as women to get results.

Geek Girl Con Review Part 1: Satuday

This weekend I attended the Geek Girl con in Seattle.

http://www.geekgirlcon.com/
Free your inner Geek Girl! Come to GeekGirlCon in Seattle this October 8 & 9, 2011 at the Seattle Center Northwest Rooms and EMP Museum to laugh, learn, and connect. All geeks welcome.

These are the Panels I attended on Satuday:


Lessons Learned from the World of LOLcats, FAILS, and Other Blunders
 I had heard of LOLCats and Fail mostly from Facebook. This was an interesting back story of the company, and how the site got started. The presenter, Emily Huh, gave a witty, informative overview of the sites and shared some things that those who run the site have learned from the users. Overall, a very entertaining an lighthearted way for me to start out the con!

Very Special Dudes

 This panel was one of the best executed out of all the panels. The moderate deftly introduced and directed the panelists, and fielded audience questions. I felt that the panels had an interesting viewpoint as they were all male, and I'm sure that for gender equality, not just one gender, but both must be involved in the discussion.

History of the Universe as Told by Wonder Woman

 This presentation was mostly of the footage from the independent documentary, History of the Universe as Told by Wonder Woman, with director Kristy Guevara-Flanagan. There were five other panelists besides the director, however, as the film took up much of the presentation time, there was very little time at the end for discussion. The documentary looks like a promising take with insightful observations, and I look forward to seeing the final production.

Character Studies: Keep Girls in Popular Culture

 As the previous panel I attended (History of the Universe...) ran late, I was delayed in arriving for this panel. When I entered they were discussing Buffy the Vampire Slayer and continued on with many more interesting topics and ideas such as "Intellect makes geeks empowered and this is a better scenario than geeks simply begin gifted with powers".

“No, I am not a Booth Babe:” Sexism in the Video Game Industry

 The final panel I attended on Saturday was a more casual panel run by three panelists who preferred to have a discussion with the audience rather than a presentation. They were entertaining to listen to and attempted to exist alongside the audience rather than separate themselves from it.

This day was chock full of feminist discussions and included lot of topics, information and insights in relation to feminism and women in the world.

To be continued...