women in gaming by MAL4PREZ

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

women in gaming

POSTED BY: MAL4PREZ
UPDATED: Tuesday, August 20, 2013 14:15
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VIEWED: 1877
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Saturday, August 17, 2013 8:50 PM

This summer I have enjoyed getting fairly deeply involved in an online game. It requires regular activity to get strong but also heavily relies on teamwork. Because I have spent most of my life as a women in a field of men, I at first took this opportunity to blend, to not be the opposite gender and to take part in conversations as if I was one of the guys, which really fits my personality better. I didn't lie, just didn't bother to correct the assumption that I must be male.

I've now become one of the top players, and after I took part in a war and a passive-agressive almost-war in which I showed the size of my gamer balls, I "came out" to my team. It was no big deal, which was nice. (Except for one pseudo-enemy who said he wouldn't hold a grudge against me any more since now he knows I'm female. WTF? Really? He'll reconsider after I kick his ass!)

Today a newb has been sniffing about and behaving erratically. Saying crap about moms and such. And so followed this exchange, and yes I am going all out with the color. :)

NEWB: Can someone help me get a base tonight?
ME: I could. But I'm not sure about you. You've been saying some whacked out stuff
NEWB: I was just kidding :p Sorry son
ME: I'm not your son. First, indoor plumbing here. Second, it's looking like the old difference goes the other way.
NEWB:Oh I'm sorry is bitch any better bitch?
ME:Yeah, that'll convince me to help you out lol!
ME: Do your parents know you're using their computer?
NEWB: Bye I don't talk to little bieeetches I'm using my iPhone bieeetch
ME: Make sure they pay the bill for you until you're old enough to have your own job
ME: And good luck getting any woman to hang around you, cause daaaaam. Pyscho!
NEWB: I'll never work a day in my life because I'm not a little bieetch
ME: Bored now. Hey, you got a base on [the war planet] yet? Plan to? Ever?
NEWB: I want one but I can't. D:
ME: And guess what honey. You won't.
ME: Learn some respect and maybe someday you will.
ME: Gtg. Have fun.

And then he posted some tripe about how much he'd respect me if I helped him yada yada yada.

Just to be clear, I did mean that if he even tries to enter the war arena I will wipe him out. I can and I will. This is what I meant on the other thread when I said that men who fuck with and belittle women need to understand that they may be getting into something. They may not like the blowback. This little bastard will not be able to freely play this game on this server. Ever.

I hope he applies this lesson to the rest of his life. It may help him out.

Never mind that he's probably a 12 year old. How does a 12 year think that it's OK to talk like this as soon as he finds out he's talking to a female? WTH?

/My little corner of the feminist revolution

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Saturday, August 17, 2013 9:27 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

I'm not a gamer so I have never encountered this exact thing before (in a male-dominated field have had male coworkers repeatedly comment on my 'healthy' chest within my hearing).

First of all, I'm pleased that you are in a position to squash that dweeb. I hope you do so.

Second, how does he learn that? The same way three year old boys learn they dislike pink and three year old girls learn they like it. The parents, who, despite the evidence of the benefits of rational thought all around them like cars and electric lighting and TV, think that a medical condition that causes a boy to cry bloody tears is marked by the devil. The same way children can watch fantasy TV-land shows of smart powerful people as a thing to aspire to, and then get dressed up in their little KKK outfits jus' like mommy and daddy.

As to what SPECIFICALLY is going through his head, I'm not sure I even want to think about it. Though my mind has a mind of it's own, so to speak, and I'll probably be cogitating on it anyway.

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Sunday, August 18, 2013 4:00 AM

DEVERSE

Hey, Ive been in a firefight before! Well, I was in a fire. Actually, I was fired from a fry-cook opportunity.

Being a rude, obnoxious a$$hole is not exclusive to male gamers.
I play online as well and there are lots of female players and they can be just as bad as the male players - in some cases much worse. According to the site I play at, 43% of registered players are female.

Asking why individuals (male and female) act this way and where they learn it is easy to answer. They are on the internet - a nice safe place to be obnoxious and rude and an a$$hole because no one can do anything except be rude, obnoxious and an a$$hole back.

I see from your posted exchange that you learned from the internet as well.

I wonder why in the world would anyone even respond to someone who has shown they are not worth responding to in an online game world? What did you think was going to happen - he'd be so grateful for your help he'd change his attitude?

First rule of the internet - never, ever feed the troll.

If you ever run across a guild named Manumit in your online game, it'll be fun to find out how good you really are.

Oh let the sun beat down upon my face;
With stars to fill my dream;
I am a traveler of both time and space;
To be where I have been

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Sunday, August 18, 2013 5:08 AM

MAL4PREZ

Yeah deverse, I was a little snippy in this exchange, but what I didn't post were a few days of weird stuff coming out of this guy. He started OK but got perverted. The attitude I threw at him was following all that.

Yes, there are bitchy women out there but you're not catching my point. As soon as someone finds out you're a guy (assuming you are, maybe you're not?) they don't immediately start saying down-on-men stuff to you. They don't immediately insult you personally and suggest sex acts and stuff. They can continue a conversation. But there are players who, as soon as the find out there's a woman on, seem to immediately go insane.

It's a pattern that gets old. I learned long ago that ignoring it doesn't do much. So I've decided to make environments that are hostile to men who act like pigs, rather than hostile to women. That's the point of that other thread: it seems like too much of our world just accepts that anti-woman hostility. So what do we about it? What do you do in your game when gamers start talking shit about women? You just assume that's how it is oh well?

I'll look for Manumit, but my game is not a head-to-head shoot em up type thing. Your challenge sounds like it's expecting that. I'm a big fan of Doom but never been much good at it. My game is about strategy, making use of information, and organizing the team. I am VERY good at this stuff. :)

*---------------------------------------*
The French Revolution would have never happened if Marie Antoinette had just given every peasant an iPhone.

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Sunday, August 18, 2013 5:35 AM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!

Not into computer gaming, but when it comes to xbox and the like, I'd have to guess it's more of the same ?

Most players are guys. I'd suspect that leads to a false sense of security, in that live gaming is sort of a he-man-woman-haters club, by default.

Not seen any studies or break down of this, but the females who DO play, most have androgynous names or gamer tags. And while you can create a 'life like' avatar on some, that doesn't mean everyone stays true to form. Some guys will sport a cute, sexy avatar, to mess w/ opponents heads. Nothing ticks off a 13 yr old like getting pwned by a girl.

Of course, if you're using a mic and headphones, the gig is usually up pretty early. Most don't care, either way, and just wanna play the game.

Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen

Resident USA Freedom Fundie

" AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall

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Sunday, August 18, 2013 9:20 AM

BYTEMITE

I play MMORPGs so I hear a lot of the same kind of talk. Fortunately for my sanity they tend to be different people than the ones who hit on every female avatar.

Unfortunately for my sanity, there exist people who hit on every female avatar. How can they possibly not KNOW better? I play an even spread of genders, but all of the female ones have been hit on and it's not like I even act particularly girlish. I mean, how I act here is how I act in games.

And still they send messages asking if I want to be their girlfriend. What. Just. What!? RUN YOU FOOLS YOU KNOW NOT YOUR PERIL!

Occasionally if they're persistent I hint rather strongly that y'know, an equal number of guys roll up female avatars and that they've probably been hitting on guys. That usually does it.

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Sunday, August 18, 2013 10:47 AM

MAL4PREZ

Reminds me of undergrad Byte, in the big lecture classes with a couple hundred students including maybe 5 girls. The guys would ignore me all semester then hit on me the last week. Bleh.

It actually worked out well with this game I'm in to be non-gender specific for months. They got to know me for the very non-girlish me and hopefully will treat me the same as they did before.

Kind of curious about which game you're in deverse.

*---------------------------------------*
The French Revolution would have never happened if Marie Antoinette had just given every peasant an iPhone.

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Sunday, August 18, 2013 2:11 PM

KPO

Sometimes you own the libs. Sometimes, the libs own you.

Not really into online gaming, but this is something that annoys me every time I hear about it. I think if I ever got into online gaming I'd be tempted to pretend to be a girl so that I could take on these douchebags.

It's not personal. It's just war.

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Sunday, August 18, 2013 9:29 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Not into gaming but is it possible to get an amazon (no, not the online retailer) team together and just pwn the guys? That's what us girls did when we were kids.

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Monday, August 19, 2013 6:39 AM

BYTEMITE

Quote:
[Not into gaming but is it possible to get an amazon (no, not the online retailer) team together and just pwn the guys? That's what us girls did when we were kids.

You'd never know if they were really girls (unless you had ventrillo or something). Although I guess it doesn't really matter if a guy wants to say they're a girl or vice versa.

Really it's more an issue of that probably being more counterproductive in regards to getting more respect for female gamers. I have to say even I'd have trouble taking seriously a group that was organized just to make a political statement. Other reactions would be a lot more negative, and not just in a misogynistic bias kind of way.

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Monday, August 19, 2013 9:34 AM

FREMDFIRMA

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
Some guys will sport a cute, sexy avatar, to mess w/ opponents heads. Nothing ticks off a 13 yr old like getting pwned by a girl.

I am a bad, bad man.

One of my identies in Need for Speed: Underground 2 drove this absolutely adorable cotton candy pink Peogeot 206 laden with rainbow decals and such which just totally screamed someones-kid-sister, and dear me, some of the 'propositions' I got were totally disgusting, although it was terribly amusing (said 206 was maxed out and I was DAMN good with it) to watch guys getting stomped throwing hissy fits... although I think I have to throw credit to ColeTrain664 cause he wasn't truly-actually malicious in his ad-hoc marriage proposal...

Quote:
I don't care HOW old you are, I will wait!!!!

Even funnier was a certain bit in FFXI, where my avatar is a female, Mithra White Mage (healer) and prolly the sweetest person you might know... whilst our Paladin (tank) was female and so was our Black Mage (damage dealer), but man you couldn't tell it, cause when an expansion came out and we desperately NEEDED a warrior to help us with a certain mission, there's me the girly-cat-girl hanging all over this poor bastard "Oh mighty hero, help me! we need a warrior to protect us!...." - I had that poor bastard so totally mindfucked, and the worst of it, although slightly embarrassing, is that the ACTUAL girls of our party were TAKING NOTES, more horrible than THAT was that said Paladin/Tanker is my ex, although we were still "together" at the time!

And lets not EEEEEEEEEEven TALK about the horde of horny russian boys chasing my avatar around in Eve Online after a language barrier miscommunication resulted in my Caldari Naval Raven curb stomping four of their biggest and baddest - it took me weeks to convince them I was actually male, and another MONTH to convince them I wasn't Mister C's homosexual lover, and even after that they chose to drool over my CHARACTER instead of me, oi oi oi!!
(On the plus side, we really reamed those cheating BOB, Band-of-Developers, T20 aided slimeballs, take THAT, CCP you lying cretins, and you frankly DESERVED White Wolf cutting you off and drop shotting you for acting like a buncha trolling shits in mommys basement instead of professionals and dun think I didn't have something to do with that neither, since you bought EVE from SSI after being punted from Ultima Online and every other online MMO in existence for being griefer scum!)

Me, personally, I don't CARE what gender someone is so long as they can play, and sometimes folk who might be closeted, or potentially transgender, or even just want a viewpoint from the other side, cross my path and I just do. not. care. - I care that you handle you end of things though.

A special shoutout to AnthonyT's wife, whom I will not name - I have never in all my life seen someone who can forcibly MAKE the Leeroy Jenkins stormrush a viably effective tactic, but heaven help us, when she bulls right in (World of Tanks) Anthony generally loses his shit completely (messing with his girl being his one and only berserk button and even THEN he sounds like Ned Flanders on a rampage!), and me giggling like a maniac and backing their play just cause it's so damn funny... USUALLY results in the battered and terrified remnants of the enemy team fleeing in terror after we've slaughtered more than half of them without so much as slowing down, bwa. ha. ha. ha!

Seriously.... RUN!, run like hell, cause we come for YOU, and ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONGING TO US!!!

Oh, btw, did I mention I deploy voice-changing software online, resulting in most folks who actually "hear" me over the VOIP line or Skype getting the Evil Overlord treatment, which could every bit as easily, should it ever amuse me, get the sultry seductress or bratty kid sister voice.

ASSumption just makes an ASS out of U !

-Frem

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Monday, August 19, 2013 3:08 PM

MAL4PREZ

Frem, if I had time to learn a new game, I'd love to be on your team. You've gotta be a killer fun gamer lol! And yes I have finally learned the Leroy Jenkins meme. I never played WoW. Holy cow, how funny is LJ though?

Yeah I'm with you that I just want ppl to be good at the game. I admit that I have a tendency to get side tracked by folks being jerks, but I find that those who are actually good at the game don't tend to waste time on asshatery. It's interesting to see some guilds trying so hard to get any noob to join, but I have no interest in those who show themselves pretty clearly to be trolls.

Sig, I'm not into the team of Amazons because I tend to get along better with men, as long as those men aren't the above mentioned idiots with penis size insecurity. (Why else would they get so weird every time a female shows up?) I rarely do well in a group of all women. They seem to have rules I don't *get*. I prefer a mix of all types. In my ideal world, people play the game without any reference to gender necessary. Of course, in my ideal world there is no sharp divide between 2 genders, but a spectrum where everyone is what they are.

*---------------------------------------*
The French Revolution would have never happened if Marie Antoinette had just given every peasant an iPhone.

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Monday, August 19, 2013 6:08 PM

BYTEMITE

Quote:
Sig, I'm not into the team of Amazons because I tend to get along better with men

Yeah. Plus even though the numbers are evening out, there are still so many more guys than girls in most games (you're lucky if you have a 40-60 split), that it's worthwhile to try find some guys who don't have gender issues and everyone can get along.

Really I think that it might be a vocal minority that's the actual problem. Though it does depend on the game. Certain FPS games seem to thrive on competitors being as rude and belligerent to each other as possible. Those same games however tend to have pretty bad reputations about their communities though.

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Monday, August 19, 2013 6:59 PM

MAL4PREZ

Quote:
Originally posted by BYTEMITE:
Really I think that it might be a vocal minority that's the actual problem. Though it does depend on the game.

Very true. Sadly. There are many many very cool gamers of both genders, but it's the tools that make themselves widely known. Kind of like internet in general, including this place.

So, I am old enough to feel some hesitation about fully embracing the gamer life, but this summer has included more than fun gaming time. It's an interesting study in politics and human nature and confrontation and patriotism and such. I won't tell the whole story of who's fighting who in my gaming verse, but it's pretty complex. It's like dealing with world politics but in a much safer enclosed environment. There are many different levels to explore.

Hey, if anyone has ever enjoyed Starcraft and is looking for a new game, PM me and I'll let you know what this is. It'd be awesome to get some FFF people into my guilds. (I have more than one.)

One of my players is named Shiney. :p

*---------------------------------------*
The French Revolution would have never happened if Marie Antoinette had just given every peasant an iPhone.

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Tuesday, August 20, 2013 4:44 AM

BYTEMITE

Oh, Starcraft. My respect, because I'm actually terrible at those games. I'm not able to multi-task well enough to produce a functional build order at the same time as I'm directing units around the map.

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Tuesday, August 20, 2013 7:40 AM

FREMDFIRMA

Well I dunno about "amazons" but there was one team back when I played SOCOM online called the Death Dolls, which was either primarily or exclusively female, not sure which cause that was some time ago - and mostly they were snipers, who irritate me cause I for the most part the storm-rush go-to person... it's SO satisfying to get in the enemy backfield and go laughing mad with a big machinegun, oh yesss.

Anyways, they *did* have a rare passing few of their own storm rush people, which'd wind up mixing it up pretty hard with me in the middle of the map often as not, or brawling on a flank, and there was one in particular who'd hand me my arse about 60-70% of the time and maaaan I hated her for it.
And then much later I find out who she was....
Hell, this clip is SOOOOOOOOOOOoooo perfect for the dynamic we had.

-F

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Tuesday, August 20, 2013 2:15 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Also, if you are interested, Mal4 - one of the few games I still play semi-regularly is World of Tanks.
Free to play, learning curve not so terrible, pretty fun most times, and doesn't require ridiculous time committment, you can jump in, nail down a match (max 15minutes) and go on - but it's pretty addictive.
I've issues with recent dumbing down of the game cause they're gonna port it to the Xbox soon, but even so it's still quite entertaining.

I like the older instruction vids, they really showcase the "feel" of the game.

-Frem

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