At 17 I just enjoyed reversing the gender stereotypes of my peers. I was raised in a hierarchal, conservative area (read: small-town Ontario) in the 1960s. I recall a girl sitting behind me in my Gr. 12 business class piping up, "Boys cannot be secretaries!" Personally, I thought, was she for real?

With the final instalment of the Twilight franchise hitting cinemas soon, I am reminded that the fabled bad boy may make for good fiction, but seldom does he make a great catch in real life. Don't believe me? Just ask Rihanna. What duty, if any, do authors have to create strong female leads (and males who respect them)?

My mother's life is why I am the feminist I am. From the moment I saw her crying, holding her just-hit face, looking into my four-year-old eyes in helplessness, I knew she was something and I would dedicate my life to making her believe it. I once spoke at an event in which I touched on my mother's story. Imagine my surprise when I was later informed, by a woman no less, that one man in the audience didn't like my saying that I was a feminist and said that those he was with felt the same way. She hoped it would be food for thought for me.

Even though the euphemism "four-letter word" only came into use during the first half of the twentieth century, I think the first and most controversial anachronistic example must be "slut. I found an unusual modern-day definition: a woman with the morals of a man. Surprised? Slut is not just a term used for women.

Just when I think I've come to place of being comfortable in the video game industry, something happens that has made me question what I'm doing here. I'm talking about the harassment and hatred directed at feminist media critic and gamer Anita Sarkeesian. Sarkeesian is experiencing a hostility that many women in the games industry have experienced to varying degrees for many years. And it's ugly.

My business partner Deb and I have always considered ourselves feminists. However, that word seems to be fully loaded these days. Neither of us believe women HAVE to stay home with their kids. But nor do we believe that our frame of reference should be that both parents have to be at work full time and outsourcing the "nuisance" of child rearing to someone else.