here

Well, one of the best ways to counteract sexism (or any -ism, for that matter) is to stop making a big deal out of whatever trait you are atttempting to equalize. You want to make gaming an equal-opportunity passtime? Then stop treating female gamers like some sort of anomaly.

I never said they should be treated that way. I just this its absurd that women shouldn't be allowed to tell other people they are a women. Hell, most the games I play in, people don't know anything about me except some handle name. But the only way men can feel safe gaming is to work with the illusion that they are only playing with guys? If that is the case, grow the hell up.

7/13/2009 6:57:56 PM (Starkiller18)

There have been several people in this thread alone who seem to think it's not okay for women to identify themselves as women while playing games or even on boards. There are even more who seem to think that women should take rampant sexism as just one life long joke and not say anything. It's too frequent to be a joke, and it's not funny. And maybe if you grew up with a dick playing games, you might not know how early on, it wasn't that easy to find other girls and then women who shared the hobby with you. And maybe you don't think finding buddies to play games with is that big of a deal, but you wouldn't know would you, it was easy for you to find them.

You've got companies like IGN throwing in contests that blatantly exclude women. You've got threads wanting nipples in games, but does anyone bother to ask women what they might want to see in mature games. Nope. Not to mention men pretending to be women online and women who do self indentify could wind up getting harrassed and hit on which, apparently is their fault for actually having the nerve to share a part of their identity when guys do it ALL the time. Hey, I think in most gaming situations, it might not matter. You play a few rounds, you focus on the game, you talk about the game and little else, but if you play long enough and often enough, you're going to start sharing personal information, and I'll be damned if I am going to agree and say women shouldn't be allowed to do it because it might assault the sensibilities of some very insecure men.

I personally just assume everyone on games and the internet are dudes because I never feel like typing "him/her" or "(s)he" when talking about people.

However, if you I find out you are in fact female and can remember it, I refer them properly.

I just think its really easy to tell someone not to let a part of themselves be known when as a guy, a lot of people, not all, already make the correct assumption about you.  And since no one really defined what it means to go "out of their way" to tell someone they are a woman, when they are in fact a woman, then it seems any mention of it would not be okay. If someone refers to me as a "he" and i simply say something like actually I am a she, I just I went out of my way to correct them, when I could have said nothing at all. I did so because I am like everyone else, I have a sense of identity and gender is a part of that, and I don't want to be called a he or him when four little words can correct that. That's usually the end of it, unless its a slower paced game and then they, guys and/or gals I am playing with, might bring it up again. If i tell someone i am stepping out for awhile, time to spend time with a boyfriend, then I just identified myself as well as I assume most people will assume I am a a woman at that point and not a gay man. It's is so easy to reveal yourself, and I don't think there is anything wrong with that.

It's not as if i go around telling people not to call me dude or man, or other slang. It's not as if I am going out of my way to tell people I am a woman so treat me nice, or I am a woman so it's extra special I won... that kind of crap bothers me as much as anyone else. Have guys treated me nicer in games because I was a woman, maybe, I don't always know.  It's certainly not my fault if they do. I have had guys talk down to me once they know I am a woma.

Now if everyone here is talking about some girl jumping around and saying something like look at me, how cute I am, or spends the whole hour of play talking about her boyfriend, then you guys are playing with people I personally very rarely run into and certainly not enough to go around telling women to "don't ask, don't tell" about their identity. And some of that has little to do with sex and a lot to do with age, as in lack of maturity. Making dumb ass remarks about women not playing games, which I still hear, about how women only like xyz games, yeah this one never gets old, or that women wanting and verbally asking for content that appeals to them, you know sexually appealing to us, somehow means we are going out of our way to destroy mature content... umm no... these are legit issues. Some of us would like some cake too, and yeah, sometimes it's nice to see a character that doesn't make Barbie jealous.

Oh yeah, and it would have been nice if the gaming community had actually been more outraged as their female counterparts were blantantly excluded from a prize that really isn't gender specific at all. It was extremely disappointing to see, that after all these years, this man's only club mentality remains pretty strong at places like ign and gamespot and that joke known as G4tv. And while they certainly don't represent the entire gaming commuity, they are pretty much the visible representation of it.

Sexism and gaming isn't funny to me. Even if you overlooked that fact that terms like catfight, pics of people's definition of hot chicks showing up on the internet, degrading remarks about teenage girls, an attempt by one member to find my age so he could dismiss me based on that alone, treating the degradation of women in general as just one giant joke all showed up in this thread alone, it doesnt' change the fact that after gaming for 20+ years, this shit gets tiresome. It really does.

People make different assumptions based on their life experiences.Kitkun might make that assumption because she is younger than I am. Someone else might make that assumption because they are a guy. All I know is where I am coming from, and if you've been gaming for awhile, and you were part of the group that loves computers, that grew up playing console games, thought 14.4k modems was the wave of the future and then broadband speed blew you away and every time you walked into a retail store, some ass tried to sell you a barbie game, forget the fact its barbie, those games are just poorly made, or you're talking with your friends and they tell you you wouldn't like a game because girl's don't like those kinds games, or they make some nasty remark about women online, or dismiss any woman who even mentions the word Mario or Sims, or only show model type women as women gamers... yeah, enough is enough.

My sister met her guy online. They've been together 6 years now, longer than 2-3 marriages I know. So if someone wants to meet people online, in games, just let them.

And if you see a joke that is bad taste, why not stand up and say so? Maybe if a few more people stopped rolling with these never ending decade old jokes, we wouldn't see so many people gratify themselves at the expense of others.

Oh, and I think it's more of a logical error than a syntax error since I took the meaning of some of these so called jokes differently than others.

because she was changing her name when you clicked on her name.

Nesrie, you're taking this way too seriously. You're going to get that kind of stuff, no matter how hard you fight. The trick is to roll with the punches. Try and be a brick wall, and you'll just get sore from standing so still.

You think I don't get tired of that stuff? But getting angry will just draw attention to it, and in this case, that's just not going to do any good. I think you really should reflect on the old saying, "Boys will be boys." Fact of the matter is that most gamers are male, and competitive male gamers are just like competitive males in any other arena. Not to mention the fact that it's a two-way street. Remember the Porcelain Doll collection mentioned above? Yeah, men deal with things like that too.

Seriously though, this isn't worth getting worked up over. I already mentioned it in my last post, but working customer service for a bad company is a really great way to build up a thick skin.

Except the Barbie games. That stuff should be burned.

In regards to how I address people online in games, I simply use their handle/sn/toon name until asked to do otherwise. I don't think there is a right or wrong way to address someone. If they call me he, I simply correct them. It's not a big deal, but it is a concern if men are still working with this illusion that everyone they play with SHOULD be a guy.

Now, this idea that there are more men/boys are playing games then women... completely false. In the 25-34 age group, there are more women playing games than men. And if you didn't know, this age group is a shifting age group that grew up with consoles being pretty much mainstream as kids and is a pretty large group and significant in that this group is just not growing out of gaming, so to speak. They have haves careers, and families and other things going on, still play games. This BS about more guys playing only works if you remove things like the Nintendo DS, the best selling handheld at the moment, remove The Sims players, one of the best selling franchises in the industry ever, and remove the Nintendo Wii, one of the biggest surprise successes in recent years. Not only that, it would be a ridiculous idea that women who play these games, don't play other games or wouldn't be interested in other games.  I'm not floating around Stardock forums to get Sims information here. I have Gal Civ II and was thinking about an upcoming title and starting, slowly, to use Impulse as a service.

Second, boys will be boys so they can treat women like shit has been used to justify keeping women out of the workplace, out of sports, out of business, out office. It's not okay. It will never be okay and to hear someone justify that attitude in this date and age just proves that sexism is as rampant as ever. It's just veiled behind so called-jokes and people actually accepting the behavior.

Lastly, not all communities tolerate open sexism as this one does. They simply do not. It's either not allowed or when a pig open's his mouth, the others say oink and send his ass out of there pretty quickly.

I've not been in this community very long. I have been told its not a very good community to be in because you can't turn the corner without some sort of racist, sexist remark and that there is open hostility towards players that don't play very well or don't know very much. I've had the game for longer than I have posted here. In the short period of time I've been on these boards, I've had plenty of opportunities to show up and say hey, you know what, this isn't cool anymore, but I haven't. Kitkun, you want to paint me as someone who gets angry at every little thing, but that isn't the case at all. I am pretty tolerant, but it was past time someone said something. You can't go a day without seeing this kind of behavior here and the Stardock staff, they pretty much play along with it. It's despicabble.

If someone wants to insult you or something similar, he will try it in any way he can find, using against you your gender, age, beliefs... If they really want to hurt you in any way, any excuse will be good enough. Then we could talk about faulty socialization processes, the power of the mass over the individual, fanatics...

Bananas desgined by God, teenager movements that are based on being a brainless beings in which guys are supposed to be "cool" and very macho while their girls must be objects (willignly objects that seek the more "manly" of them), people ready to kill for their belives, emos... Humanity sucks, what else can I say? Education (good and proper one) would be the solution but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting.

It's broken for me, too. Maybe just a FF issue, though....