Tenko Kitsune
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GameTrailer.com and their "fauna" of "booth bHere's a copy of the e-mail I just sent them. I think it sums it all:
| Quote: | Dear GameTrailers staff,
I've been a regular user of your website since 2007, and I can tell you it's one of my favorite gaming websites on the web. I always resort to your reviews when I'm thinking about buying a game, and I tend to have a lot of fun with your countdown videos, retrospectives and ScrewAttack content.
However, today as I browsed the E3 coverage videos, I had the displeasure of finding a clip (http://www.gametrailers.com/video/e3-09-e3-2009/51224) named "E3 09: Booth Babe Safari", described as "We get intimate with the fauna at E3 2009".
While I do have some problems with the whole "booth babe" tradition, I understand it's part of gaming convention's appeal. But I have to point that the video's title and description are rather sexist. As it's already been pointed in the video's comment section, it's really demeaning to refer to women as "fauna", specially in a "safari" context, that unfortunately implies that women are animals to be hunted and leered at.
I'm sure the GameTrailer's staff didn't mean to be sexist, and all of this is just a bad choice of words, but imagine how a female gamer feels when, vising your website to watch the latest E3 trailers or interviews, she finds herself compared to a non-human animal. Imagine how she feels when the site staff implies that she is nothing but a wild beast to be leered at by male gamers. I can tell it can be a very upsetting experience, and I wonder if this gamer would be confortable visiting your website again.
This declared, I'd like to politely ask to the video title to be changed to something that doesn't offend and demean half of humankind. While I understand this was not the staff's intention, the gamer subculture is already a very sexist one. Female gamers already have a hard time, and are often disrespected and treated as less-than-human by their male peers. It's hurtful to see a great videogame website like GameTrailers make this same mistake.
Thanks for your attention
Respectfully,
(My name)
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So, what do you gals think? I am not only a gamer, but a game designer, and this kind of stuff really pisses me off. What else can I do, besides sending them e-mails and getting flamed at the comments section for pointing obvious inequality?
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