The other day I got an email from an Escapist reader who had “written an article about my article,” a somewhat amusing rant in response to my “Women Monsters and Monstrous Women” piece that, like many others, raised a heated WTF?

It’s not the first time or, I’m sure, the last, that someone has had a violent reaction to the things I write. But when I get responses like this it does always make me wonder what things would be like if I were a man instead of a woman, if there was a sauve, macho name behind my articles instead of a cutesy, Jewish one.

Would my ideas be more often respected and less often branded “feminist”? Would male readers give my points more consideration on the grounds that we would already share something in common? Or would my comments, coming from the mouth of a man, seem sex-obsessed and strange (not that they don’t sound that way already)?

Of course, the obvious argument is that I wouldn’t have the same things to say if I were, in fact, a man. As for a pen name… There are so few women gamer writers out there as it is, should those numbers be cut down by one? But it is tempting, in theory at least, to run a test and write something twice — once under my own name, once under a man’s — and see what the difference would really be.

I’ve got to admit, I was losing faith in cybering.

Not in a larger, analytical sense (I know cybersex is here to stay), but in the more personal, “Why?” kind of way, I’ve been having my doubts. Besides, most of my recent encounters have left me wondering, “Do this even turn me on?”, or does it just make me crave a better, non-virtual equivalent.

After all, I have a super fun RL sex life to compete with, and “innovations” like Xcite!, while interesting in some ways, have hardly helped spice things up. But I’ve been waiting, keeping my fingers crossed that the internet would turn up something, just something, that could get me going better than in real life.

That is, until the other day, when, while doing linguistics research in Second Life, I stumbled across a male hottie (and I don’t use that term lightly; most SL guys look like hot air balloons of muscle, waiting to explode) who began chatting about his RL kinks. As I was on my way out the door, he mentioned one he thought I wouldn’t be so into. When I asked him to explain, he launched into a 2+ hour story about the details about of a very sexy situation.

Needless to say, I didn’t go anywhere. I was glued to the screen, literally on the edge of my seat. Watching that interesting, well-written story come up line by line… The tension was amazing. I went from not caring to addicted in thirty seconds flat.

Here’s something the internet can do that real-life can’t: interactive erotica. With a book, you can read text fast; you can spoil it. But when someone feeds it to you line by line, you can’t help but read carefully, and then beg for more.

I just put up a post over at Terra Nova, called “Say Please and Thank You,” about what defines politeness in virtual worlds. Specifically, I was looking at whether or not it’s rude to ask someone in Second Life their real-life gender.

It is curious how the normal rules of manners shift online — especially the manners of conversation. Call me old fashioned, but I for one have never been able to adjust to chatroom etiquette, where interruption and non sequiturs are more than okay, they’re the name of the game.

What other strange norms of virtual politeness can we think of? Has anything ever happened to you/have you ever done anything that, in real-life, would be totally unacceptable, but online was a-ok? Who/what decides what’s polite? And have our internet expectations begun to bleed into our definition of rudeness in the real world?

A few days back, I was working on an Escapist piece about a humble, if predictably bizarre idea I’ve discussed here on the blog before, called Sexual New Games Journalism. In writing the piece, I did some reading up to refresh my memory on, well, normal New Games Journalism, a movement I personally found, in it’s more common forms, often irritating and juvenile. Along the way though, I discovered something that surprised me: What were people citing as a contemporary example of New Games Journalism but my very own Escapist?

Now, I get that The Escapist is a far cry from the boredom and lifelessness of so-called “old school” journalism, but, for me at least, calling it New Games Journalism (Yes, those are capital letters, ladies and gents.) implies something rather different, namely a strong emphasis on the personal experience of the authors. I also get that, sometimes, The Escapist does feature pieces of this nature, and respectable ones at that. But to stamp the whole publication with a big New Games Journalism label… It just doesn’t seem right.

Granted, maybe the problem is mine. A year ago, when the big clamor broke loose, I found the excitement and self-importance with which writers adopted the New Games Journalism slogan somewhat shallow, somewhat cocky. I felt — and still do — that works like My ‘Tiny Life, which became attached to the movement, were innovative outside of any catchy phrase, and that, in effect, all the followers of New Games Journalism were really achieving was an excuse to rant about themselves.

But it’s definitely possible that I’m alone on that front. And what I’m wondering, in April of 2006, is how other people feel about New Games Journalism? Does it make you feel all teary-eyed and patriotic for the world of video game writing? Does it make you want to stick out your tongue and scrunch up your eyes like you’ve eaten something sour and yucky? Could you even care less?

While I’d like to toss out some fun, catchy pitch for this article of mine, “Won’t Someone Think of the Children,” that went up last Tuesday at The Escapist — all about the strangely dissimilar social and legislative fates of pornography and sex in games — it’s already been called less “edgy” and/or “thought-provoking” than my normal work by one respectful commentator, so who knows, maybe it’s not worth the read. I don’t even mean that in the bitter, sarcastic sense. Seriously, it just might not be that interesting. I wouldn’t want to lead you astray. Anyways, if you’re curious in art, politics, or the sexual adolescence of video games, check it out.

In other news, I’m back in Ireland! I’ve traveled far (well, at least all the way across the UK), eaten things that probably should never be eaten (think fried Mars bars and vegetable haggus), and even learned what the hell a minster is. I’ve also been in a fair share of independently-owned games stores, and marveled at the consumer games culture, albeit a non-electronic one, that seems to be flourishing in Great Britain. As souvenirs, I’ve brought home a shirt with a cow on it, a pot of honey, and a case of the flu. It’s nice to be home.