There's been a derth of zombie-related stuff here, so here's a link to an article about a sexist name in the video game Dead Island. I don't have much to say, except that, yeah, there's tons of sexism and homophobia in the gaming community, so it's not surprising. I guess it's a good thing that we can see this sort of stuff behind the scenes, and hopefully someone will have learned a valuable lesson.
It does remind me, though, that there's also a considerable amount of sexism in the zombie genre as a whole. From what I can tell, the fandom includes a large amount of people who would feel quite at home at one of those southern militia conclaves where they're all waiting for the end of the world so they can put their weapons stockpiles to good use, and historically these survivalist communities don't always have the greatest track-record when it comes to equality, feminism, dealing with race, etc.
I'm not big, necessarily, on the guns and shooting stuff aspect of zombie fiction (I've never touched a gun myself...wouldn't know how to get one in a zombie apocalypse scenario, and if I did would likely end up harming myself or a loved one before I harmed a zombie), but there's a huge swath of guys (I assume mostly guys) who love to talk about types of guns, shooting things, explosives, blowing stuff up, in relation to the zombies. I'm more about the social dynamics, the body horror, and how even with zombies clawing at the door, it is us humans who are the most dangerous, and we bring with us the seeds of our own destruction. To me, the blowing stuff up, gun-worshipping fandom is missing the point.
To them, though, I'm probably just taking all the fun out of it.
Anyway, this is a reminder to myself that I want to write about a podcast/radio drama called "We're Alive" and it's (possible, I'm only on episode 2) heterosexism and its treatment of gender roles. But that will be later....
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