it's wild to see stuff like this because there were SO MANY women that spearheaded this technology and were part of the movement to drive it forward, including at Macromedia, but we are literally never mentioned.

1/19
here's a thread, do read (you owe us that): https://twitter.com/JGamesCh/status/1285960536862216192

i still make Flash games today, but that's only brought up when it's to put me down (haha! you still use Flash? so dumb!)... my "Flash games" won a Nuovo Award fwiw + more than a decade of other influence and recognition that gets put down too often...
ok but enough about me:

when Flash was a hot thing & the Flash conferences where happening, women where often not even allowed through the door (I AM NOT JOKING, THIS IS NOT A JOKE).

if you where Not A Man, and you would go, people would assume you're a sex worker (i am not exaggerating, this happened)

joke was the only women there must be that.

having a woman speak at one of these events was like bastardizing the event. again, i'm not joking, it was that BAD.
i have plenty of stories from myself and others. most women i knew eventually had to just leave altogether.

which is wild because we where never even given a CHANCE to be remembered.
we where pretty systemically pushed out. it was obvious.

i'm in New Masters of Flash by FriendsOfEd. Every man in that book floated up and went off to start their own massive companies...

the two women that where in that book series. THE ONLY two women to be allowed the recognition of a man (that book series was huge and definitive at the time btw)... we where not even mentioned on the Amazon store listing as authors (at the time). all the men where tho...

at the time, we where just erased.
lol the stories i have from that time... it's wild.
this happened regularly.

i remember the thing "Flash Gods" being a big deal. it was basically more of the Big Name Men at the time celebrating their stuff (so "Gods of Flash" was a thing)...

we started a site called Flash Goddess to celebrate specifically women. it was kind of a reaction to all that...
and whoa boy...

...you will NOT BELIEVE the reaction that got. it was a wild ride.

there was ONE outlet that had the sense to actually cover it as a good thing happening in tech. the article got so much hate (why celebrate work from women? surely there is no need to make this about gender!)

and lol there was a popular dumb Flash meme at the time that was a "hot chick" pulling up her shirt and flashing her... so ok that was a popular comment toward "Flash Goddess" (haha! get it guys??)

i mean, it gets better. there's so much i could talk about... like then The Men In Flash made a reaction to our site that was "featuring women in Flash" and guess what they did to it?? it gets good, here we go...

it was basically a pin-up calendar thing. not a joke. women featured where photographed very sexily (they had to be hot to qualify) and then their work was "featured" along with that. it was a pretty cool website, and the initiative looked "cool", but it was really sexualizing...

i did the Flash Goddess gallery curation at the time.
it was to focus on work from women.
i covered a lot of what i could find... here's more... this gets good too:

most women that i reached out to didn't want to b covered because they didn't want people to find out that a woman was behind that work because that would surely tank the project.
i can confirm that this was a concern founded in reality.
me being "the woman" had that effect to me

i was invited to be a judge for Flash in the Can (FITC now) for an award section that would celebrate work from women...
haha guess what happened??
here we go...

it got a lot of flack for the reasons you can imagine, then it got canceled (the women specific part of the awards) because there was "not enough interest" and "not enough submissions"

i still have these old emails, in case this gets disputed.
but ok i still have ALL the old emails from all this old bs...
what a wild time to be a woman... and then they say that "women are just not interested in making games (Flash games)"
um no. we get pushed out...

but seriously, genuinely, and from the bottom of my heart:

when you cover historic work about Flash, make the f*ck sure you acknowledge the role women played in it because

i can guarantee you (from personal experience in actually being part of this tech) it would be NOTHING if it weren't for the women that drove that technology forward.
i was one of them too.
i had my work stolen and re-sold plenty of times.
i have plenty of these stories...

not that it matters now, because it's all "old and gone" but damn...