What do women want?

I don't know, Heidi...I really like the forum. It's hard to find a decent welcoming place for women, and you've created a great place. I like the idea of spotlighting members. Pretty-scary is informative, fun, encouraging, and it brings women all over the world together!

I like that too. And I'm fairly certain that I'll be dressing my cats up like Zoro when I go home. I'll be a female doing something... not *cool*- but something. I may come out with some cool bloody scratches, though...

I'm going to punch somebody if I go home and this cat isn't standing at the door waiting for me. I need this animal.

For those uninitiated in the ways of ceiling cat:

Hey.

Okay, so admittedly I'm not really a forum kind of person. I like the idea of them in theory, but when it comes down to the practice of it, I just never have an idea what to contribute (I've been trying to visit once a week, since you mentioned that there weren't enough women getting involved, because I want to be an active member of our community.)

But if like there could be a weekly topic posted someplace clearly - like a specific question directly related to horror: i.e. what is the biggest mistake novices make when making a horror film? or what's the best female heroine in a horror film, or what's the most sexist horror film of all time and why? or some such thing, I'd totally dig getting involved in that sort of discourse.

cheers,
Devi

Maybe you could have articles or interview female horror directors?

I second Ash on this one. To be honest as far as I what I want from this place is a website that caters to showing off what us girls do in the industry and stuff that affects or appeals to us, which is what it already does with the news and reviews on the main page. I like to think that Pretty-Scary is a place that pipes up and says "Here's what Sally Made Today" because it's true in the industry that they often get over looked and we need a place like this to really showcase the things we do that otherwise go unnoticed or unprompted. Heidi does a pretty fucking good job of that, n'est?

That aside, as far as the forums go, I don't understand why we would segregate or have any issue at all with the guys. The guys here are awesome and they have been very good with promoting the site and being awesome pals. There's also the issue of Sexism. We have a website that's fighting for women's rights to be recognized in the industry as a symbol of equality but we're going to do battle against the guys who do come here, increase the site population and actually contribute? I think if we went down that route it's going to make a bit of a black mark against us. I'm always willing to fight for women's right's to be equal with men but we don't help matters when we try to exclude them unfairly on the basis that "This a girl site!" Yeah, there's a lot of boy opinions on the web, that's not the first time it's been brought up, but it's not as though the boys take over here and we can all hold our own I'm sure. When someone has a different opinion on something, it's always fine to disagree with them but when we start getting upset because that person doesn't have boobs I think we have a serious failure of the system. I don't think it's fair to expect guys to take us seriously and equally if we're going to chase them off and exclude them. If we want to be recognized for our work we need to be willing to infuse ourselves in with them, not run away screaming "Cooties". Equality and the fight against sexism goes -both- ways.

Also, on a side note, I don't think it was a guy that sidetracked the thread. Unless there's something about Annie that I'm not sure of... Tristan did post a video, but it wasn't what pushed the divide. Posts get side tracked here all the time and it's not a matter of which gender did it.

So I guess I'm a bit backwards in the sense that I do want to see participation from the boys on PS. I hate the idea of creating a bubble where only a girl's opinion is valued because the industry, fan base, etc consists of both. If we didn't get feedback from a guy now and then we'd never know how the other half thinks about the stuff we bring up here. It would be like an artist painting a picture and then only letting his closest fellow artists take a look at it because "I can get the common unwashed opinion any time I want by going outside, you select few are the only ones that matter! (Insert dreadful chorus laughter here.)" Or perhaps a company launching a new product that they expect the whole world to want to purchase however they only test it amongst the three creators who say "it's awesome". Even though the product is meant for mass consumption, failing to get feedback from as many sources as possible is silly. Sure, boys sometimes have different opinions, but they have opinions and they do matter, just as much as girl's do. This place is a website to show off girl stuff and to have guys be willing to hang out here and offer input is a really good thing because diversity kicks ass. We're all people, we can't stop sexism if we're going to keep promoting it ourselves.

When I first started contributing to pretty-scary, It was the coolest website I had ever been on. There were forums pertaining to recently released films, old films, and just plain old films we like. I was super gung-ho about my contributions to the site, and reading others contributions as well. I haven't been on the website in a while; mostly because of school shit, and work-but also I feel like when it was women-in-horror, I felt like I had somewhere to go online that was just for me and people like me--boys too.
may not be relevant but that's what I feel.