A while ago FundAV reopened their grants that deliver an All Access Pass for the GDC, only this time they were reopened just for women, because the entity that grants the passes decided that the male quota was covered and the remaining beneficiaries had to be women, since they were aiming for a quota of 50% male beneficiaries and 50% female beneficiaries. That measure was taken because women are a minority in the videogame industry.
A while ago FundAV reopened their grants that deliver an All Access Pass for the GDC, only this time they were reopened just for women, because the entity that grants the passes decided that the male quota was covered and the remaining beneficiaries had to be women, since they were aiming for a quota of 50% male beneficiaries and 50% female beneficiaries. That measure was taken because women are a minority in the videogame industry.
We could try to solve this scarcity of formal data with anecdotic experience, but male developers tend to hang out with other developers of their same gender, because people feel comfortable alongside people like themselves. So it’s unlikely that those male devs can pinpoint their female colleagues, not because they don’t exist, but because they don’t hang out with them.
Another reason why it is unlikely that the excluding group will be able to find their female colleagues is because women don’t publicly expose ourselves. Lack of exposition doesn’t happen due to shame, shyness or any other quality inherent to the female gender, it happens because whenever women expose ourselves we have to withstand the misogyny and harassment of the excluding group.
People are trying to put an end to the harassment code of conduct, that was created when two men took pictures of women’s asses that went to the Unity Developers Day without their consent and uploaded them to the internet with a hashtag of the event.
To these acts of misogyny we can add the fact that there are hate groups in the videogames environment that encourage violence against women who chose to work in the scene. The public opinion of my male colleagues doesn’t help either, since some of them expect us to be 20 times better than a man to consider us their equals in the scene.
In the last couple of days I heard colleagues complaining about the technical and professional proficiency of some of the women who received the grant, one of the biggest I heard was that these colleagues hadn’t published a game yet. I have never heard those same colleagues complaining about beneficiaries from last year, almost all of them men, not having any published game either.
The issue with those men without visible or interesting games, is that they’ve been saturating all imaginable media ever. For instance, not long ago it was revealed that they saturate the literary scene with garbage applications. This saturation happens due to entitlement, their levels of privilege lead to such an inflated ego that they always believe that all they do is relevant and of great quality.
Entitled people never wonder about their qualifications or whether their work aligns with the criteria of the place that will receive their applications, they never wonder if they are the right person to comment about certain issues or generate certain type of content, nor if it’s okay to make suggestions to the groups they are oppressing about how to overcome their exclusion.
I have seen a local dev applying to a videogame contest that only accepted applications from a handful of countries, his wasn’t one of those. I also have to listen to well intentioned men tell me what is the biggest issue that feminism should be tackling and what I should make my games about everytime I release a Twine with feminist content.
The toughest thing about entitlement is that while excluding groups apply to everything without questioning themselves, we do question ourselves about whether or not we are qualified for a certain job, if we are the right people to deliver a certain message, if we have proper formation and information. We often question these things in an unhealthy way and fall into the clutches of impostor syndrome. That’s how I had to tell several colleagues that their work is valuable and they had to do the same for me.
DAILY PRAYER TO COMBAT IMPOSTOR SYNDROME: God give me the confidence of a mediocre white dude
— sarah hagi (@geekylonglegs) January 21, 2015
If to these we add the fact that several women didn’t apply to FundAV’s grant due to economic issues, be it because we earn 24% less than men or because the country is facing an economic crisis, the harsh costs of the GDC become harder to face under these circumstances. All these issues come together in a giant ball of caca.
If you belong to the excluding group and want to stop creating your 146 kilograms of personal caca, you can: treat your colleagues with respect regardless of their gender, self-evaluate in the most honest way possible, stop assuming that your disinformed opinion is valuable by default. You can also listen to the other person before commenting on an issue, which means, ask first, listen to the answer and only then make your comment. Finally, you can learn that even if something was easy for you, it doesn’t means it will be easy for someone else and people aren’t less valuable for having difficulties you didn’t have. Together we can stop the ball of caca =)
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