When I say I’m tired of always being identified as a “female games journalist,” I absolutely don’t mean to entirely diminish the relevance of being an outspoken woman in a male-dominated space. My perspectives in my writing come from my identity and my life experience, and being a woman is a part of that I absolutely don’t intend to reject.

For example, I was happy to be photographed by Gay Gamer and called a “fabulous femme fatale”. Some of my earliest writing was on sex games, and I don’t know if that would have gone over so well if I’d been a man (I still write about sex games– just last week I published a new Escapist column about Anna Anthropy’s unusual text-based sex adventure). As everyone always points out, yes, my blog is called Sexy Videogameland and there are pretty girls on it. Everyone knows I think Big Boss is hot. I’m proud to be a strong woman, and sometimes I’m happy to be a silly girly-girly-girl. I am who I am.

It’s not that I’ve suddenly decided I no longer want to be a voice for women, or to speak from a female perspective — how can I possibly do anything but? I’m just frustrated at the role I’m often asked to take in the constant wars that go on in gaming culture.

I write on a daily basis about things that have zero to do with my gender. I’m a survival horror aficionado. I’m obsessed with experimental storytelling. I love indie games; I love game development and technology. I love all kinds of culture and media. I’m not just here to fill the “lady quota.”

Some of the feedback I received so far concerns the hostility in the tone of the piece — yeah, I was angry. I’m not sorry for that. But there’s one thing I need to make clear: For all the anger I felt toward the people I told to grow up else crawl back to forums where they can argue about review scores? That’s how grateful I am for an equal number of you right now.

Thank you so much to my colleagues and friends, my longtime readers and my Twitter followers who’ve stuck with me and watched me publicly fumble as I try to figure all this out. I’ve had a lot of growing up to do, and I still do, and I’ve been doing it openly and messily in front of all of you. When I was younger I was one of those people who believed that if I didn’t speak about my gender then no one would make a big deal out of it. Not only did that attitude ignore all the women who wanted to look to me for an example, but it also didn’t work. I’m unhappy that it took me attaining a larger public profile and a painful degree of attack from the wider core community for me to start listening, learning and taking responsibility for being able to help change things.

These days I tweet about my crazy parties, I tweet snippy things about music, I tweet mean things from bars about the outfits of people who push me. I drink, I can be flippant, I can be arrogant, I can be confrontational. Sometimes I hardly tweet about video games at all, which is the reason you’re here, I know.

But there are so many of you who support me anyway, because you share my hopes and dreams about video games and because you believe in my work.

I couldn’t get through all the comments on the Kotaku piece. And I got all kinds of those emails that you think are just stereotypes, the “get back in the kitchen” and “quit attention-whoring” and all of that. I’ve heard it all before and it’s lost its ability to hurt me, but it can be disheartening.

I heard from so many of you on Twitter telling me you’re behind me, that you read the piece and you support me, and that you, like me, believe that nobody has to tolerate an environment of closed minds and cruel comments in video game culture. I often go around saying I don’t care what people think of me or if they find me controversial — that I’m going to focus on my work, on games and the people who make them, and do the writing I want to do anyway, and that’s true to an extent.

Yet it’s wonderful to know that so many of the folks who matter to me will stand with me and speak up, too. It makes me feel supported, but it also gives me hope that we can do this, you know? We — writers, players, creators — can have a wonderful, healthy culture in video games with discourse, debate, respect and equality. We can all keep helping each other learn and grow together. I’m really lucky to have you with me.

NOW GO GET DRUNK IT’S HALLOWEEN ~ !!