I'm no stranger to a bit of sexist backlash, but I was surprised by the level of vicious and misogynist hate I received.
One of the most radical things you can do, is to actually believe women when they tell you about their experiences.
I really wanted to explore a range of women who aren't necessarily perfect, heroic women. I wanted to series to influence creative people to include more women in their work, especially historic works.
The gaming industry has been male-dominated ever since its inception.
I wanted to make feminism more accessible. And I really wanted to engage with my own generation, one that is increasingly speaking in an audio/video multimedia language.
Here are examples of real women who have done real things: good, bad, and in between. We're expanding not just the definition of the female or feminine hero, but also villains and more complex, nuanced female characters. Too often I hear men say, "I don't know how to write women." Here you go, here are five incredible women you can use to inspire your own stories.
When we look at these historical women and what they've gone through, it's shocking to recognize some of our own experiences in theirs. When you look at someone like Ada Lovelace who is the first computer programmer, during her lifetime doctors said that was really sick because she was trying to use a masculine kind of brain that she didn't have. Today, her legacy of being the first programmer is stil disputed.
I wouldn't call it a silver lining, but with more women speaking up, online harassment is beginning to be taken more seriously.
I came back to this idea of telling the stories of women who aren't in all of the history books. Their names are not up there next to male names that we've know since we were little kids. Ching Shih, for example, was a pirate commander from the late 1800s to the early 1900s. She was one of the most fearsome pirates, why is her name not included when we list the names of great pirates like Blackbeard?
It's been really exciting to work on a collaborative, creative team where we got to bounce ideas back and forth and figure out the best one.
Maybe today we aren't being told that our brains are not capable of such things [like programming], but we [as a women] are being told that we are not good enough or smart enough or that our successes do not belong to us.
There is a clear difference between sexist parody and parody of sexism. Sexist parody encourages the players to mock and trivialize gender issues while parody of sexism disrupts the status quo and undermines regressive gender conventions.
I hadn't mentioned, but Ching Shih is a pretty villainous character. She is a real person, but she was a pirate commander, so she probably murdered a lot of people.
I got to focus on my performance - learning how to perform is something I've been working on both personally and professionally.
I am not a fan of video games, I had to learn a lot about them. I would love to play video games, but I don't want to go around shooting people, and ripping off their heads, and it's just gross.
The other thing is that it's really hard to separate out the harassment from everything we do. When we started creating Tropes, we were hyper-aware of the intense scrutiny, the intense harassment, and the intense pressure to do something meaningful given the attention both positive and negative. That's carried over in terms of making sure that I produce the best work that I can, that's the most accurate, the most sensitive and engaged.
For me, if folks who are watching YouTube can pitch in a bit to help cover the cost for creating this work, that's great, but I don't want folks who can't helped to not have access to it. I really like the crowdfunding model in that regard.
I want these to be names that young girls and boys and kids of all genders grow up knowing. It shouldn't just be when you take a feminist class in college, if you happen to do that. I hope this is fun and engaging for folks to watch.
My writer and I sat down and wrote a huge list of names of women to consider. It was really important to us to have a broad range of women from across generations and cultures. We didn't want to make it Western-focused, we wanted to make sure it was international and that it had an intersectional lens.
There’s no such thing as sexism against men. That's because sexism is prejudice + power. Men are the dominant gender with power in society.
It is both possible (and even necessary) to simultaneously enjoy media while also being critical of its more problematic or pernicious aspects.
Ordinary Women was shot on a soundstage with a professional crew and a professional animation studio creating everything.
Some male gamers with a deep sense of entitlement are terrified of change.
The struggles of dealing with online harassment is the same harassment that women have been dealing with, it's just a new medium in which it's happening.
I find crowdfunding to be one of the most ethical ways to continue doing the work that we do because the idea is that I want my videos to be free and available to everybody, and that's why I use YouTube and online platforms.
The struggles women face today are simultaneously very, very old and very new.
The US bombed them back to traditional values – feminism does not exist in Japan. While I don’t like judging an entire culture…that does not excuse them.
I really want to help write women back into history.
Well maybe the princess shouldnt be a damsel and she can save herself.
I'm really thriving and enjoying being a part of a really vibrant creative team and doing creative work.
