misogyny | Polygamer

Lilian Chen, aka Milktea, joined the competitive gaming scene in high school, when her younger brother introduced her to Super Smash Bros. Melee for the Nintendo GameCube. As she toured the country participating in e-sports events, she discovered that she was one of the few women in a male-dominated scene. She set out to raise awareness of this gender imbalance by empathizing with, not shaming, the men in the community. After penning a series of Tumblr posts that attracted mainstream attention, Chen hosted "The New Meta" panel at the NYU Game Center and more recently delivered a TED-Ed talk, "How I responded to sexism in gaming with empathy".

In this interview, Chen shares her enthusiasm for competitive gaming and how it’s helped build a community; why some gamers may respond to the threat of increased diversity with gatekeeping; how benevolent sexism works, and how women can internalize and propagate misogyny; why we need women-only but not men-only gaming leagues, as the Hearthstone community discovered last summer; and why, despite being semi-retired, she’ll always be a part of the Smash Bros. international scene.

Download the audio edition of this interview below or from Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Overcast, Pandora, Pocket Casts, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, RadioPublic, or the Internet Archive. Click past the jump for links to resources mentioned in this episode.

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GTFO is a documentary about women, discrimination, and misogyny in video games. Featuring interviews with Brianna Wu, Maddy Myers, Courtney Stanton, Jenny Haniver, and more, the film examines gamers’ experiences as developers, journalists, competitors, academics, and community organizers. Filming began in 2012 and concluded in mid-2014, months before GamerGate broke, demonstrating that these issues are systemic, extending beyond a few high-profile incidences.

In this interview with director Shannon Sun-Higginson, we discuss what prompted her to make gaming the subject of her debut film; how being a casual gamer helped rather than hinder her approach to this topic; pursuing funding on Kickstarter; how she incorporated GamerGate into the film’s coda; who the film’s target audience is; how she hopes the film will change perception of the gaming industry; and her experiences as a woman director showing GTFO on the film circuit.

Co-hosting this episode of Polygamer is Monica Castillo — film critic for International Business Times, co-founder of the Boston Online Film Critics Association, co-host of the Cinema Fix podcast, and feminist who introduced me to Anita Sarkeesian. You can find Monica on Twitter and Tumblr.

GTFO released on June 9, 2015, for streaming via multiple outlets, including Vimeo and Apple Podcasts. Monica saw GTFO at SXSW, while Ken was comped a ticket to its Boston Independent Film Festival screening by Women in Games Boston co-organizer Nina Huntemann.

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Tag Archives: misogyny

Polygamer #25: Lilian Chen (Milktea) on Smash Bros. & sexism

Polygamer #23: GTFO director Shannon Sun-Higginson