Kotaku's Sexist "Gamer Girl" Article

I'm sure you will be shocked - shocked! - to hear that Kotaku has published an incredibly offensive article about gamer girls.  The fact that the article was written by a woman, and that she feebly defends it as being meant to be a joke, doesn't dilute the horror of "Five Steps to Total Pwnage of a Gamer Girl's Heart."

The title is an excellent place to begin.  For one thing, it assumes that a gamer girl at a public LAN party is interested in having her heart pwnd.  I submit to you that a gamer girl at a public LAN party is far more interested in playing the networked game on hand than on falling madly in love with a fellow player.  (Where is the article about how gamer girls are constantly having to fend off the unwelcome advances of random male gamers, which is why so many of them decide to pick a gender neutral name and pretend to be a guy?)

It also sets up the gamer girl as a token, a piece to be won, an item to be conquered.  Nice, right?

The article starts out with, not text, not description, not the author's byline, but a picture of an attractive girl lying in a submissive position on the beach.  According to this ruthless evisceration of the article on Shakesville, this is a picture of the article's author.  Is it also the author in the rest of the pictures?  

I find this to be a very interesting question, because the pictures are posed such that the girl in them has zero credibility as a gamer.  Is this on purpose?  She looks completely incompetent.  And what's with the "Oh My!" expression in the picture where she's holding a can of Red Bull?  These are awkward cheesecake pictures, which do nothing but insult all of gamer girl-kind.  

The last lines of the article undercut the thrust of the rest of it, in a very interesting (and mercenary) way.  The article's reader is told that if these tactics fail, they can always visit the author's site to look at porn.  So what she's saying is that she has no vested interest in any of these "tactics" working, and a strong financial incentive to drive them to her own porn site.

This makes me think that the entire article is a work of Irony Porn.  Like a third-generation version of a joke letter to Penthouse Forum.  Get the boys all hot at the thought of successfully dating a cute gamer girl, then crash them back to reality, and drive them to your porn site.  An interesting tactic if true.

The article revolves around what I've seen called the "unicornization" of women in gaming.  They are fleeting, miraculous creatures.  Look!  I think I see one!  Dashing through the distant woods in a sprightly fashion!  [Insert your own "virgins" joke here.]

This kind of thing does nothing to make women feel welcome, and everything to drive them away.  The unstated Kotaku attitude that all gamers are straight white males is appalling.  The fact that people still express surprise that more women aren't involved in gaming remains mysterious.