Hello, I would like to understand why the rules of the Femininomenon Jam state that allowed genres include wargames and brutal horror games. How are these supposed to be connected to the feminine world? I want to clarify that this is not a provocative question, but I am genuinely interested in understanding the reasons behind their inclusion, because these are issues that matter to me, and I use these opportunities to learn more about equal opportunities. Thank you.
Hi! Thanks for the question- I want to clarify first that the part of the jam page you’re referring to is not a set of rules on what genres are allowed for this jam, but ideas for what a game submitted to the jam could look like! We have placed no restrictions on what a game exploring femininity can be, apart from this specific jam being for analog games and not allowing AI content.
My personal answer for these two genres is that violence and horror are big parts of life for many people, whether they be feminine or masculine. Women have been soldiers in wars for a long time, feminine people fight for their lives in a literal sense all over the world to this day, and none of that makes them any less feminine. But wargames don’t have to be about the way violence looks like in the real world, and the genre carries with it no inherent gender aside from the historical connotations and stereotypes assigned to it. What does it look like for a wargame to be specifically feminine? I don’t know! But I’m excited for someone to give me their answer some day.
Horror, as a genre, is about vulnerability, about a lack of control, about the uncertainty of the unknown. Life for feminine people has included these things for a long time, and even as we dream of a day when that might not be the case, we can use our creative work to explore those feelings ourselves. The body horror of growing old in a culture obsessed with beauty, the terror of an abusive partner beating on your door, the tension of walking down a dark street alone late at night- these are rife with potential for exploration in art through the lens of the horror genre. Horror has a long history of final girls, of the feminine as monstrous other or as the vulnerable victim, and of presenting male protagonists with the horror of having to live a life similar to the ones that women lead every day.
These are incomplete answers, and the analysis that could be done here is beyond the scope of this question. But as one of the people involved in putting this jam together, I will also say that we included these ideas at least in part to specifically challenge the preconception of what a feminine game has to look like. Any game can carry themes of femininity within it, and our hope is that the list of ideas we included with the jam will spur people to broaden their horizons and explore how femininity can be portrayed outside of the strict boundaries of tradition and patriarchy.
Thank you for your open curiosity, and I hope this shed some light on our thoughts here!
