This thread is replete with patriarchal attitudes, both subtle and blatant. There are posters here who outright deny Lilian's experience; there are posters who undermine her arguments by questioning the validity of her claims; there are posters here who appropriate Lilian's desire for a more inclusive community to gratify their own sexual fantasies. Whether antagonistic or ostensibly helpful, most of the posts in this thread reaffirm male supremacy by either dismissing Lilian or agreeing to allow her into the boy's club, but only on the boy's terms. After reading a few of the responses to Milktea's post, I was reminded of the following essay (which I've excerpted; the full essay can be read
here):
Being “equal” to men, by the current definition of what men are supposed and expected to embody is not about liberation, its about individualization of acts, the deliberate betrayal of the very core of feminist politics, the abandonment of a communal confrontation of patriarchy, but rather a negotiation of it that allows some of us the ability of assimilation. Instead of saying “we desire to be like men” and “this is about equality” ask yourself “with the destruction of patriarchy, what are men? How will they embody such a role if there is none ascribed to them? And how can we be equal to them if they have no cohesive definition?”
Our community (that is, the tournament community specifically), like many communities both inside and outside of gaming, is a microcosm of our society, distilled into a purer form by barriers. In our case, the barrier is technical competitive play. Whereas our larger culture is negotiated and transformed simply by people who dare to be different getting out of bed in the morning, our community's culture is guarded by entrance fees, l-canceling and glide-tossing. These hurdles have to be crossed before you can even enter the competitive community, and have the effect of protecting and reinforcing some of the most misogynistic and retrograde attitudes imaginable. This is a community which
actually had a debate about whether it was appropriate to refer to a devastating loss as "****;" this is a community where the term "tourneyf*g" is still bantered around.
With her writing, Lilian has taken the first steps in not simply asking for equality, but in challenging the patriarchal, hyper-masculine structure of the Smash community. These structures simultaneously have demeaned her as a woman and fetishized her as an Asian Gamer Dream Girl. Her presence cannot be taken seriously as a competitor, but only as a sex fantasy come to life for men who feel completely at ease in their privilege. The openly hostile and misogynistic people in our community have done us a favor by revealing themselves. There's nothing to say to them; we must actively oppose and marginalize them in the way that they seek to marginalize others. Those who wish to extend "equality," though, have to realize that sentiment, while well-meaning, does not deconstruct privilege, but
reaffirms it by turning a woman into "one of the guys": that is, maintaining the structures and attitudes of aggressive patriarchy, but letting a few select women in on the party.
Lilian's essay is not to be taken as a teachable moment where we take a look at ourselves and decide to let more women through the gates of patriarchy. It is an eloquent and damning indictment of what our community's patriarchy does PERIOD- it devalues women, drives them out of the community and prevents them from feeling secure in our presence. That is OUR problem, not theirs. The question isn't what Lilian and other women have to do in order to get along with us, or what we should do to make them feel better. No, the question is, how do we reconfigure this whole thing to not elevate women into a structure that oppressed them, but tear down the structure,
our structure which benefits us, so that we stand with them?
