Hi guys. I'm a contributor for a brand-new blog called Geek Girl, a nerdy-interest magazine written by women (but not necessarily just for women). I thought you might like to know that I mentioned Thinking With Portals in my latest post. It's about geeky wedding proposals, so of course I had to talk about Linking Annex, and I linked to the download page.

Read it!

In my completely personal experience, the best way to get taken seriously as a woman in gaming is to make mention of it as infrequently as possible.

But thanks for the link.

msleeper wrote:
In my completely personal experience, the best way to get taken seriously as a woman in gaming is to make mention of it as infrequently as possible.

I know, and that's a damn shame. We want this website to be a safe space where no one feels like they have to hide their gender.

logicalDemoness wrote:
I know, and that's a damn shame. We want this website to be a safe space where no one feels like they have to hide their gender.

The point is: it doesn't matter whether you're a gaming man or women. Mentioning you're a girl everywhere doesn't make you cooler, people will just get annoyed. Same with mentioning your length, height, hair color and other facts that don't matter at all for your gaming skills.

So yea, people with whom I've talked to on skype/steam know I'm a girl and it's absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. And I'm not the only girl around here, I know various girls who are on these forums, and I never ever heard them complaining that people weren't taking them seriously because they were girls. So basically I think your website is a bit overkill, a solution for a not-existing problem, but that's just my two cents

I think the underlying problem is that there is a specific group of males who give the rest of us bad names.

Yes, that and that many people just assume that everyone on this kind of forum is male.

Random fact: 5 out of the 6 posters in this thread are female.

Actually, I think you'll find thats 4/6....unless im missing something here?

Spam Nugget wrote:
Actually, I think you'll find thats 4/6....unless im missing something here?

Spam Nugget wrote:
Yes, that and that many people just assume that everyone on this kind of forum is male.

You contradict yourself! Blasphemy!

EDIT: Unless you are a girl, which makes 6/6

I typed out a kind of long response, and then realized lpfreaky90 said literally the same thing I was going to.

chickenmobile wrote:
Spam Nugget wrote:

Actually, I think you'll find thats 4/6....unless im missing something here?

Spam Nugget wrote:

Yes, that and that many people just assume that everyone on this kind of forum is male.

You contradict yourself! Blasphemy!

EDIT: Unless you are a girl, which makes 6/6

Well, im not and as WinstonSmith said about giving the rest of US bad names, i assumed he was male too. So no hypocrisy there. And dont get me wrong, i really couldnt care less about someones gender, im just trying to prove a point here

What? You are all girls? I didn't know that. I should stop calling you "guys" in my posts.

And now everyone is going "omg we got girls here"? Oh come on...

I think it would be better to make a website that appeared "genderless." Websites that appear too girly or manly makes me cringe.

WinstonSmith wrote:
I think the underlying problem is that there is a specific group of males who give the rest of us bad names.

I'd also like to point out that girls can be just as bad as guys can be.

MasterLagger wrote:
WinstonSmith wrote:

I think the underlying problem is that there is a specific group of males who give the rest of us bad names.

I'd also like to point out that girls can be just as bad as guys can be.

In what way?

Hey, I was just asking for clarification. Did you just mean some females can give others bad names just as males can?

WinstonSmith wrote:
Hey, I was just asking for clarification. Did you just mean some females can give others bad names just as males can?

Yes, I don't mean that in just video games. I'm just pointing out that both genders are guilty of hating for stupid reasons.

Djinndrache wrote:
And now everyone is going "omg we got girls here"? Oh come on...

If you think this is bad, you should have heard about what happened when videogame players in the 90's first found out that Samus (in the first Metriod) is female.

On a somewhat-related note: JUSTIN BAILEY and NARPAS SWORD are classic cheat codes.

lpfreaky90 wrote:
logicalDemoness wrote:

I know, and that's a damn shame. We want this website to be a safe space where no one feels like they have to hide their gender.

The point is: it doesn't matter whether you're a gaming man or women. Mentioning you're a girl everywhere doesn't make you cooler, people will just get annoyed. Same with mentioning your length, height, hair color and other facts that don't matter at all for your gaming skills.

So yea, people with whom I've talked to on skype/steam know I'm a girl and it's absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. And I'm not the only girl around here, I know various girls who are on these forums, and I never ever heard them complaining that people weren't taking them seriously because they were girls. So basically I think your website is a bit overkill, a solution for a not-existing problem, but that's just my two cents

I see your point, and I mostly agree. Our intention with the name wasn't to draw attention to ourselves, but to tell people to expect articles about typically "feminine" topics like fashion. It is a fine line to walk.

Honestly though? I'm really glad you posted this. The six of us running the site are postgrad publishing students, and this is a school project. It's our first exercise in branding. I'm going to take your criticism into consideration for the future of the site (we do want to keep it going beyond what we need for the project).

I hope I haven't sparked any negative feelings in this thread. You've all been such a great community so far.

That site of yours and your friends is a school project? Huh, didn't see that one coming. I helped a few friends with designing webpages (through Notepad) a few times but never actually got it up on the web. One of the things that my friends and I thought of when to design a webpage was to to keep it gender neutral. By which I mean, not to make the site seem to stick with one gender (as lpfreaky90 mentioned, it kinda irritates people). If you want people (of both genders I'm assuming) to visit your website without clicking the "back" button, then suggest that you make the webpage in a way that wouldn't look too feminine or masculine, although, that doesn't necessarily mean to get rid of everything you have so far, just balance it out.

For some positive feedback, I do have to say that I like the background for the website. You can't go wrong with black, grey and white unless it's hypnotic related.
The wedding article is pretty good, those were some pretty crazy wedding proposals.

I haven't checked everything out yet but I'll let you know if I have anything else to say. I hope my criticism wasn't too negative.