Scorching Buttons

Name a hot-button issue and I’m sure I have an opinion for it. I’m a pretty opinionated gal and I’m very strong in all my reasons for them. I know my history. I know my human decency. I know my bible. I know my literature. I know the news. But when it comes to feminist issues – well it’s not just because I have a couple of xs in my chromosome list that lends me some creditability on the subject.

Growing up I can’t remember a time I wasn’t told that boys are built differently than girls. That a woman will never be as good as a man in sports, because she has a different body type. That women can’t handle math, can’t handle science, because their brains are different. Even if it wasn’t stated outright it was always there. I never believed this. I never had someone telling me not to, but I never believed it. I was a feminist by the time I was six. A feminist is just someone who believes that women should be equal to men. A guy can be a feminist. I hope there are a lot out there.

I always believed this. In every aspect. I still believe it.

I went on to believe it even more when I had to a research project for my senior year in High School. I wanted to find all these ‘scientific studies’ that proved that women were so different and so incapable of all these things.

After countless hours of research – I found nothing.

Which was great for my theory and made me pleased, but left me a little screwed when it came to the paper. That’s besides the point.

Later, in my junior year of college, I found a scientific article on why men and women are built differently and women can’t work up to the same things. It was a propaganda published extensively in the 1700s.

It’s amazing that it is still around today.

That I still have to deal with sexism at school, at work, everywhere I go. That I get boys thinking I can’t play video games. That I can’t know about sports. That there is surprise in the industry that women read comic books, when they’re a huge part of the consumer process. That a lot of the games out there are bought by women and played by women.

If that’s the case, there should be a female character for us to play in every game. There shouldn’t be the default of thinking everyone is a guy in every case. We’re out there. I know a huge community. I also know a lot of men writing for the industry who think we’re not.

It’s that absence that makes me feel like I’m six again, hearing that (like the new playschool commercials are proudly pronouncing) : “Boys are built differently.”

And I still don’t believe it.