Engender Zine Winter 2021

engender

winter 2021

a production of the

Visit us in the RMC women.rice.edu facebook.com/RiceWRC

contents “gobba goo” Elena M “Thoughts on curly hair by a Filipina” Alyssa Bernadette Cahoy “glitch femininity” ava johnson “Give Back” Shiyu Miao “Some SJW Shit” Jasmine Beveridge “Rainbow on Cream (Rain on Me)” Yiyi (she/they)

Thoughts on curly hair by a Filipina Alyssa Bernadette Cahoy For ten years, I lived in Louisiana towns where Asians accounted for an estimated 0.2-2% of the population. Deer roam freely in many people’s backyards, there is an annual festival dedicated to peaches, and walking on unpaved roads after dusk is considered a legitimate pastime.

My two closest friends were white, and I thought they were so beautiful (I still do, of course). I thought all the white girls at the majority-white schools I attended were gorgeous, and by comparison, I was ugly. Most of all, I always noticed their hair. Usually, it was straight with a smooth texture, which was in stark contrast to my frizzy, tangled hair. I remember helping one white girl fix her hair in the bathroom when I was in primary school, and the brush ran so easily through her ruler-straight, blonde hair. She sarcastically remarked that her hair was pure silk. All I could think of was how nice it would be to be her.

In the 7th grade, I finally was allowed to use heat on my hair freely, and I remember waking up every day before school to straighten my hair. I thought I looked prettier when my hair was straightened. Doing this almost every day for around three years made it difficult for me to re-cultivate my natural hair and coax my natural curls back out.

It wasn’t until I moved to Houston the summer after my sophomore year of high school that I was exposed to a more racially diverse population. I noticed many stunning women who had all kinds of hair types.

One day during my senior year of high school, I was sitting in my Calculus class. My seat buddy was a Black girl, and I told her how I didn’t do my hair that morning, that one side of my hair was wavy, and the other was matted down. I felt like I looked messy. I remember she took a lock of the wavy side of my hair in her hands and looked at it. She then told me how good it looked and that it’d only look better as I learn how to take proper care of it. I felt like I was given permission to stop straightening and damaging my hair.

As a student in her third year of university, I wear my natural hair most

of the time. I actually have white friends who tell me they wish they had curly hair too and Filipina friends whose hair looks like mine. I now feel beautiful with thick, curly, dark hair. I feel more like myself.

Reflecting back on my growth (character-wise and hair-wise), I realize I deeply associated beauty with physical attractiveness, and thus, societal value. I didn’t want to look like a white girl for solely aesthetic purposes; I wanted the acceptance and desirability that came with it. I was uncomfortable with who I was and felt like I had to hide. I grieve for how my younger self felt like she had to conform to a Eurocentric beauty standard, and I will never shame her for her decision. I had internalized the notion that I had to perform to gain approval, and I became an inauthentic version of myself.

Recultivating my natural hair and letting it be wild has been a personal act of anti-colonization. While nourishing my hair is one of the ways I have worked to reclaim and express my cultural identity, there is more work still to be done in other areas of my life. As I continue to protest Eurocentric beauty standards and other colonial disciplinary powers, I will remember and honor my roots. I am proud to be pinay.

“glitch femininity” ava johnson

“Give Back” Shiyu Miao

“Rainbow on Cream (Rain on Me)” Yiyi (she/they)

Some SJW Shit Jasmine Beveridge “Hey Jasmine, do you think you could talk a bit about some SJW shit in the next episode? You know, like what being a woman in gaming is like.” Steven is the head of Safest Games, the journalism outlet that he conceived and that we were both working to start up. He was trying to plan out our next few episodes of our podcast. I laughed at his phrasing.

SJW shit. An abbreviation for social justice warrior, usually used to mock people with strong progressive or left-wing views. He was using it ironically. His background in sociology has just made him jaded to the point that joking about heavy stuff is the only way to keep his sanity.

“Sure,” I replied. “When are we recording?”

“I’m figuring that out. Don’t feel like you have to. I just think it’s something that’s important to talk about, and it would be way better coming from you than from some white guy like me.” I could tell he was sincere.

“Oh, don’t worry about pressuring me. I want to do this. I need to start recording all of the profanities those gamer boys scream at me when I talk in team voice chat.”

He chuckled. “Yeah, can’t wait to hear what you have to say on behalf of all women.”

Steven and I communicated in a language that would be indiscernible to anyone that did not know us and tried to take our words literally. It was hyperbolic and sarcastic and stupid. We both knew that I, as one person limited to my own experiences, could not possibly summarize what every woman who plays video games has ever experienced.

This ended up becoming a running joke among our friend group. Every time something related to misogyny would come up in gaming news, one of the guys would ask me what I thought about it since I “speak for all women.” I played along too. Whenever I would give my opinion about something, I would preface it with “as the spokesperson for all women.”

I found the whole thing pretty funny, but it also evoked something that I had avoided confronting for a long time. If there truly was one spokesperson for all women, I think I would be the worst girl for the job. I don’t feel like I was socialized as a woman. In kindergarten, when all of the girls refused to swap their skirts for something warmer when winter came because it would eliminate their femininity, their mothers

would point to me and say “Look, Jasmine is wearing pants, and she’s still a girl.” In middle school, I would hang out with girls publicly but preferred to talk to boys. I will admit that I enjoyed the hormone-fueled drama it caused, but I also liked avoiding gossiping. A few years later, the friends I had kept from middle school got into online gaming. I joined them, and I quickly started cracking jokes about how we would lose the second we realized a girl had been put on our team. Everyone laughed a little bit harder when I was the one who made those kinds of remarks, so I pushed down my guilt and kept it up. All I wanted was for everyone to refer to the friend group as “the boys” without adding an “and girl” to the end of it. I wanted to disconnect from the identity of “woman.” ~~~~~ In 10th grade English, I was assigned to sit next to a girl named Emma. She was about five inches shorter than I was, but she had twice my confidence. She was the first to really introduce me to the concept of sexuality. She told me she was pansexual. Gender did not mean anything to her, she just loved.

Each class period, I would look forward to hearing her talk about her experiences as a queer person. Her struggle to find the right label for what she felt. The nuances between bisexual and pansexual. How all of her friends came out at the same time after knowing each other for years. It took me a while to understand the way she viewed gender and sexuality. I didn’t get why someone would be trans and homosexual when they could be cisgender and straight, completely avoiding all of the trouble and stigma. I guess it’s not that simple.

At night, when my parents thought I was asleep, I would open an incognito tab on my phone to look up what different words for sexuality and gender meant. I was scared of leaving evidence in my search history.

I learned about the concepts, but I became more confused about myself.

I was definitely in denial. I should have known from the way I got flustered when she asked me if she should wear her hair in tiny pigtails the day after she dyed her hair auburn. I should have known that the warm feeling I got when she hugged me as I cried in history class was more than just comfort. I should have known from the way I could still hear my heart pounding in my ears after time stopped when she told me she was moving to Georgia at the end of the year. Emma was my first girl crush.

~~~~~ go back to the kitchen dumb bitch “How do they know I’m a girl?” The messages the enemy team was sending in text chat surprised me. They could not hear my voice, and I had not said anything in text chat to them.

“Jasmine, your name is jazzberry. No guy would name themself that.”

“Oh.” My first boyfriend gave me the nickname. I started using it as my online alias any time something required a username. I know it is not unique because sometimes someone has already taken the name, so I have to add some number or an extra z, but it became my second identity, like Clark Kent is to Superman. It felt safer to use something that was not fully me, just like how some female scientists publish their papers under their first initial and last name. It is still them, but it gives people less information to make assumptions with. It forces readers to evaluate them based on their abilities until they figure it out.

For a group of dudes, we discussed feminism a lot. It would usually come back to the idea that the whole movement does not have specific goals, just demands for radical change. More progress would be made if feminists pushed for small, definitive changes one at a time. I convinced myself that they had a point and this wasn’t just some reasoning to be dismissive of the whole thing. It felt logical enough. In one of these heated debates, one of them said something so brainlessly that he actually got the point: “If the feminist movement was run by men, it would be done already.” Someone give this kid a Nobel Peace Prize.

In my efforts to fit in, my judgement became clouded with the haze of male privilege. I definitely recognized more disparities than the rest of the group did, but I became complacent. I did not see the need to demand change. I knew I could survive in a work environment composed entirely of men because I had been doing that my whole life. I don’t need representation if I can just do things myself. There are other, more important things to deal with, like racism. I slowly started to resent women’s rights activists for bringing such a negative light to the rest of the female population. How dare they act like they knew what every woman wanted in that way. ~~~~~ In online games where I would be matched with a random team,

I always let my teammates speak first. I have learned to tell if someone online hates women based on how they introduce themselves. Even so, sometimes I would slip up and instinctively speak when I had originally planned on staying silent. This would immediately change my mindset from playing a game to fight or flight, especially if I was playing badly.

In those moments, I really did feel like I was representing all women. If I kept us from winning by fumbling my flashbangs and drawing circles around bad guys with my bullets, I was just proving the stereotype to be true. I just wanted people to respect me and anyone else with a feminine voice in these games. Sometimes, that respect came in a backhanded way. If I was playing better than all of the guys on my team, I would get the classic “you’re really good for a girl.” My friends told me I had two different voices when I played online, one that was more feminine than my normal voice and one that was more masculine.

I guess I was doing this subconsciously. They told me that whenever I asked a teammate to buy me a gun when I was short on money, I would switch to the higher one, and if I was trying to give my opinion on what our next play should be, I would deepen it.

One day in June, I came up with a brilliant way to combat the more toxic players. In VALORANT, a first person shooter game developed

by Riot Games, players can choose from a set of images called player cards to serve as a kind of profile picture that shows at the beginning of the game and whenever you kill someone. In the spirit of Pride Month, Riot decided to include a handful of pride flags as player cards. The plan: set my player card to the lesbian flag so guys in the game would stop hitting on me. Yeah sure, I was bisexual and not lesbian, but I still liked girls and this was self defense. All is fair in love and war, right? I had to go through some process to unlock the card I wanted, so I just jumped into a game with my friend.

“Hey what does this gray and purple one mean?” he asked.

“Oh that’s the asexual flag.” I was honestly a little shocked. This was the most liberal straight guy I knew. I thought he would know these.

I didn’t say anything though. At least he wanted to learn. There were a few more rounds of this. Yellow, purple and black? Nonbinary. Cotton candy? Transgender. Printer ink primary colors? Pansexual. Hotel? Trivago.

“How the fuck do you know all of these? Do you have flashcards?”

Shit. Did I just out myself? I panicked for a second, debating whether I should be honest or not. Honest about the hours I spent searching for the vocabulary to describe how I experienced love. Honest to a friend who I knew would support me if I told the truth.

“Actually, I don’t know,” I finally said after a way too long pause.

“I guess I just saw this stuff randomly a couple times and happened to remember it.”

At that moment, I knew my perfect plan had a flaw. This stuff isn’t common knowledge. A lesbian flag only carries that meaning with the people who took time to learn what it meant. The people that hit on girls in video games are not those people. Back to square one I go. ~~~~~ For some reason, in esports, teams are divided by gender, partially because of people pushing teams that aren’t ready to compete just to get the publicity that comes from an all-women’s team. I don’t like it. I would rather see a team with one woman win than a team of five women get completely slaughtered. In March 2019, an all-female team named Vaevictis emerged on the League of Legends (a multiplayer online battle arena game also produced by Riot Games) competitive scene.

They had the goal of empowering younger female gamers. They wanted to prove that women could make it in the big leagues. Unfortunately, these were not the women to do it. They were significantly better than the average player, but they were against the best in the world. They set the record for the quickest loss at 13 minutes. The average competitive League match lasts 34 minutes. It was never framed as the fastest game won.

It’s frustrating, almost discouraging, to see groups of women being thrown into these impossible situations that end up doing more damage than good for the female gaming community. Needlessly gendering esports teams is setting up a future of a fully divided esports scene. Watching the same thing happen over and over to these teams has made me realize it isn’t the identity of “woman” that I want to disconnect from. I want to disconnect from the stigma. I want to be seen as an equal. ~~~~~ At Safest Games, I finally had an excuse to play games that none of my friends were playing. One of these games was Ikenfell, a pixel-art RPG focused on a story that is basically Harry Potter but without a

transphobic author. Before playing, I never understood what the big deal with representation in the media was. I just cared about other things like the plot and what message the creators were trying to get across. What matters is character, not their identity.

Ikenfell opened my eyes to what good representation felt like.

I had never felt so seen by something like this. This game knew exactly what I was struggling with, gave me a hug, and told me I was not alone.

Most, if not all, of the characters in Ikenfell are queer, and out of the six playable characters, three are women and three are nonbinary. There was something in all of these people that clicked with me. I did not have to force myself to fit into the shape of another cisgender heterosexual white male. These people were molded to fit me.

Diversity started to matter to me, not just regarding sexuality, but also gender and race. Everyone deserves this euphoria that so many people take for granted. Since finishing Ikenfell, I have been hungrily searching for something that feels that relatable. Riot Games’ Netflix show Arcane comes pretty close. One of the main characters, Vi, is a gay disaster of a big sister who just wants to take care of the people around her and does not take anyone’s shit. She’s also hot. Watching Arcane with the boys was incredible but also frustrating. I got to fangirl over all of the cute ladies in the show alongside them, but I had no way of explaining how much it meant to me. ~~~~~ By the time I got to college, I had internally become comfortable with my sexuality, but I had not actually come out to anyone yet. At least I did not have to fear my family would find anything out. Making friends was a slow process. I pulled a Jasmine and made friends with boys before I did girls, but these were just people to hang out with on the weekend. I needed to find some more reliable people.

I met Sophie about a month into my first semester. We got along pretty well and seemed to have a lot in common. More than I thought we would, actually. Over the next two semesters, a friend group began to form made up of Sophie’s roommates and a few strays, including me.

One Friday night, we were all hanging out and playing one of those stupid party games where you draw a card and have to answer the question or drink. I don’t remember what exactly led us to this conversation, but we were talking about our relationship experiences all of a sudden. The conversation went on for a while, and as everyone spoke, I

came to realize not a single person in this room was straight. I laid on my beanbag chair, staring at the ceiling, smiling as I remembered how Emma had told me about how her friend group came together and found out everyone was gay afterwards. I was experiencing that right now.

“To be honest,” I said, sitting up, liquid confidence pounding through my veins. “My biggest fear is that I will stay with my boyfriend until the end of time and I won’t ever get to sleep with a girl.”

“Jasmine, why the fuck are we the same person?” Sophie yelled in my direction. We both started laughing. I did it. I came out to someone. ~~~~~ While scrolling through Handshake, I stumbled across an internship that would ultimately change my life. Gaming Venture Scout. I was not going to pass on anything remotely related to an internship with the word “gaming” in the title so I clicked to see more info. I would be playtesting games for a venture capital firm to help them decide if they should invest in them. The application was pretty straightforward. What games you play (VALORANT, League of Legends, Oxygen Not Included), how many hours do you play in a week (10+ was the highest option), what is your Discord username (jazzberry). I hit submit and started waiting.

Three months later, I got an email from some guy named Francis. I had honestly completely forgotten what this was even about. It took me a couple of minutes to remember where I’d seen the name of the company before. I scheduled an interview.

I was so nervous. I know he said they were impressed, but I didn’t think that was the case. I felt like I needed to prove I was actually a gamer, partially from assuming the bar would be raised the second he heard a feminine voice on the other end of the call. Fortunately, I passed the test. I joined the Discord server that Friday.

Turns out this is more like a community with amazing opportunities than an internship. Over the next few months, I became more and more active on the server. I met with game developers to listen to them geek out over their creations. I played some games that were truly incredible and some that were just NFT markets disguised as games. I also made some really good friends. This is actually how I met Steven.

We had a little cluster of friends, but I was the only one to stick around

to help start Safest Games. My confidence began to grow. I was now in a position where I actually had a say in determining what games get to make it past the initial development phases, and one where I can bring smaller games the attention they deserve and would not get otherwise.

I think the fact that no one ever knows what anyone looks like is one of the best parts of Discord. All you know is what someone’s voice sounds like and what games they like to play. We all hide behind aliases, but we are all completely ourselves. Here, jazzberry is almost a matriarch. She takes care of everyone and makes sure no one gets left behind.

Her voice is heard and respected, but she also pokes fun at everyone she knows can take it. She’s a bit like Vi in Arcane. I try every day to bring that version of womanhood into my real life. I think I can be that kind of woman. ~~~~~ I never actually recorded that podcast episode. While representation of any woman within the gaming ecosystem is meaningful, I knew I would just end up ranting about how terrible things are and follow that up by minimizing it with humor. I could do something better with that airtime.

“Steven, you know that creative writing class I’m in?” I asked him one day.

“Yeah, what about it?” he replied.

“We have to write some kind of personal essay thing.”

“Oh yeah? What are you thinking about doing?”

“I’m going to write about why I hate women.”

“No way. Actually?”

It wasn’t exactly that. It would be about my relationship with femininity through the lens of games. At Safest Games, we like to talk about the process along with our conclusions.

“I’ll probably add some other stuff too.” I’m pretty sure he already knows, but I’m still working on remembering that I can talk about my sexuality with people.

“That sounds dope. You can publish it on the website when you’re done if you want.”

“Yeah, I think I might.”

letter from the editors Hi, friends!

We’re Margaret and Bria, your Rice Women’s Resource Center Zine Coords for 2021-2022! This year, we’re excited to release editions of Engender on a semesterly schedule in a series of two seasonal issues(you’re reading the winter edition right now). Get hyped because you will have another opportunity to submit to our zine for the Spring edition!

The winter edition’s themes is “expression”. Students are able toexpress their creativity through means of art, writing, photography, poetry, and design. The freedom of expression provides outlets forstudents to showcase aspects of themselves and what they have passion for.

Thank you to everyone who submitted. We’re amazed by the depth of vulnerability, creativity, adaptivity, and resilience you’ve shared with us through your works. Thank you to you, our dear reader and supporters, for your desire to witness and experience the perspectives of others by opening engender today.

Sincerrly, Margaret Li & Bria Weisz 2021-2022 engender zine coords

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Cover art by Elena M