Life, Love, and Gaming

What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.

Let me tell you something: as someone who faces sexism on a very personal level, I have no interest in politely trying to educate misogynists when we live in a culture in which their misogyny has no repercussions. Our government is introducing bill after bill of offensive, woman-hating legislation, murder is still the leading cause of pregnant women, and rape is under-prosecuted at staggering numbers. Birth control is up for debate, governors are rolling back equal pay laws, and you think I have the energy to be polite to these people?

No.

Because it doesn’t do any good. There’s no evidence that being super nice to sexists, or racists, or homophobes, or bigots of any kind will make them see the error of their ways - it’ll just make them more comfortable to be around you because you’re playing by their rules.

My blog is one of the only times these people will face any repercussions for being bigots. And you know what? They can turn off the computer and go right back out into the world where they are sexist jackasses and people tolerate it or even encourage it. When I turn off the computer, I’m still in a world of sexist jackasses that are tolerated and even encouraged. There’s this culture of not having any accountability for being a bigot, and I’ve created one tiny space on the internet where that’s no longer true.