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“ Is it still a big deal that girls are gamers and geeks?”

This should be the part where I make the obvious jokes of “girls don’t game” and point out that every chick you meet online is really some creepy dude named Dave simply pretending to be a chick to dick with you, or not-so-simply pretending to be a chick in order to REALLY dick with you.

But the truth is…

No, it isn’t. Being a female geek or gamer is like being a midget dishing out a hand of poker***.

I know that I’ve gone on my little rants in the past about the genre and the persona and the whole gamer “my r key is tragically stuck” grrrrrrrrrl gimmick; but to be perfectly honest, the fact that women game or that we have female geeks really isn’t news anymore.

As much as we LIKE to make a big deal out of it, (usually in hopes of inspiring more women to come out of the gaming closet – preferably while wearing skimpy clothing and maybe kissing up on another chick) the fact that women are real gamers, or attend geek gatherings in almost equal numbers to their male counterparts, just isn’t that out of the ordinary.

Today that is.

Now that the whole world has like, come together and we’re able to connect on PURPOSE with other geeks, and not just occasionally bumping into each other in the fantasy section of the school library. Because back in the day, finding a girl who gamed, read comics, or did anything even remotely geeky was like stumbling upon the holy grail.

You held her in reverence.

You stared at her in disbelief.

And then you and your friends all took turns foolishly trying to drink from her, oblivious to the fact that you were about to choose poorly and end up dusted like that over ambitious Nazi dude in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

But this was like a zillion years ago – before the internet was popular and computers were common place in the home. The days before the world was made infinitely smaller by a network of social interactions that brought together scattered geeks from all over the globe like the Quickening from Highlander. But now that technology has brought us closer together, our numbers have grown by leaps and bounds. And among those numbers, we have found the female gamer.

And we’re kinda used to it.

Oh sure, at first the initial shock and awe of finding a woman cool enough to know the Konami Code, or the sequence of numbers that got you to the final fight in Mike Tyson’s Punch Out was devastating. But as the years passed and their numbers grew, we began to see that these women weren’t rare…

…they were just, like the rest of us, scattered.

But now?

Now you go to places like Comic Con, or a Fan Fair, or Dragon Con, and the women you see are not only there in abundance – they’re there with agenda. They’re going to panels, looking for toys, or thumbing through boxes of comics in hopes of adding to their collection. They are, what we are:

Geeks.

So why do we still have “Gamer Grrrls”?

Especially since that other than finding new and annoying ways to misspell “gamer girl” in order to signify that yes, you are a woman who enjoys gaming – there really isn’t anything unusual about the fact that you were born with those weird tucked in organs that no one understands. Well, beyond the fact that you HAVE weird tucked in organs that no one understands.

Not that we’d admit it.

We might not know what you have lurking up there in Pandora’s box, but we’d never let YOU know that we don’t know. If you pulled a step ladder out of your cooter and told us it was normal, we’d just shrug and act all nonchalant as not to appear as terminally virginal as we usually are. But the next time we needed to get the Frisbee off the roof – you can bet your sweet ass that we’d be knocking on your uterus for a boost up.

Face it - Vaginas are weird.

And past that obvious fanooter freakiness you’re a girl, you’re a gamer, and that’s pretty much the norm now. However - women who have to loudly and constantly remind the world that they are “Grrrls” who game, and are totally “hard core”, usually aren’t.

They’re USUALLY marketing tools.

Because if one thing in this world still appeals to the geek population and inspires them to buy, trade, or play games – it is boobies.

But go beyond that and making a big deal out of being a female gamer is like having a wet t-shirt contest at a nudist colony – sure it’s still kinda hot, but you’re trying to draw attention to something that we’re already staring at.

Once the Bat Signal is hoisted and shone into the night sky, you don’t have to huck fireworks at it…

…you already have our attention.

Besides, the Frisbee is on the roof again.

-Coyote

(*** No big deal. Hehe.)