Discussion Part I - Here We Go

On Monday, I originally had a post that I was going to make but halfway through, I decided that I would like the discussion to go in a different direction. The post was going to be about Japanese gravure idol and game fanatic Anno Haruna (Congrats to Keyweez for being able to identify her correctly in regular clothing).

I've seen her mentioned on other gaming blogs before and recently I've taken an interest to do some research about her. I was going to post some pictures and then some videos of her playing games. That is when I became confused on how to proceed. I could post pictures of her which I knew would get people interested. She is a bikini model so the pictures are not too hard to find. But what would be the point of that? Some people would read my blog post because there was a picture of half naked chick at the top of my post and then a few would respond by saying "She's Hot!" or "I'd Do Her." A couple more would concur and then blah blah blah, as a species, we would stay stagnant.

Women have a tough time. I'm not trying to make them all out to be damsels in distress, but it's a male dominated world. And in video games, it was even more so. At SXSW, I had the opportunity to sit in at the Girls in Gaming Panel and afterwards was able to have a discussion with some of the panelists about when girls/women will truely ever be accepted and what would have to happen.

Ultimately to be accepted, we have to stop pointing fingers. By this, I mean that the occurance becomes common place and people aren't standing around in awe pointing their fingers at something going "Oh Look At That." Sure when something rare happens, we natually react in that way. We can't control the frequency of when something happens, but we can control how we react.

For example, when I first met one of my now closest female friends, she was working in video game retail. In meeting her, my first question to her was, "You play games?" as if her working in a gamestore wasn't enough proof. And then after her response, I replied with "So then what's your favorite game?" At the time I didn't realize anything was wrong with the way I handled myself and maybe some of you reading this won't either. I think problems are there because I couldn't just take it that she played games. There was that searching for legitamicy. If she answer, Tetris or Mario Bros. she's not a real gamer. But if she answers ICO, I'm totally in love with her.

Therein lies one of the biggest hurdles to overcome. The differences between Men and Women and the intricacies of attraction and friendship is something I will never be able to full understand, let alone explain. But more importantly, I think that just recognizing that it exists will help to aleviate further complications.

To Be Continued...
David