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Post by Deleted on Feb 7, 2012 15:34:32 GMT -5
This is why I like Barbie Explorer so much. You play a girl, and that girl goes around collecting jewels in pyramids and jungles and snowy mountains and there's nothing sexual about it.
Also, Harry Potter computer games. In the third game for PC, you play as Hermione at one point and she turns statues of small dragons into actual little dragons (rabbits too!). She is a powerful girl.
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Post by Gelquie on Feb 7, 2012 16:40:35 GMT -5
Tabletop gaming: the worst experiences I've ever had with male nerds in person all came from table top gaming. Oooh boy. I have never actually successfully started a D&D campaign because both of my attempts were such a disaster I never went back. The 'best' one being this one guy who suggested I roll a necromancer. Sweet, that sound fun. I distribute my stats, pick some talents, and show it to him for approval... he suggests I take the talent 'lich-loved', which will give me benefits from sleeping with corpses. Sleeping. With. Corpses. When I said absolutely not, it was pretty much game over. I didn't get to play. That has to be the most convoluted scheme I've ever heard of to get a girl to RP sexy-times with you. The other time I was invited to a game (different person, different group) the dude just badgered me all night to come over to his house afterwards. I just want to play a game, I don't want to be your freaky DnD hookup. Really? Because table-top gaming has had some of the best geeky experiences I've ever had as a girl. I think it may depend on the group you play with. I would definitely stay away from the groups who would do something like that. ._.; What I did was find a bunch of friends and casually bring up that I might be interested in trying D&D. Shortly after, I was invited, they gave me the run-down, and I tried some campaigns. And the table was pretty male-dominant too, but there were sometimes a few other female players. I never get "just because you're a girl" jabs, unless it was specifically in the context of the game, and even those didn't really happen as no one really had a chauvinist character. Yeah, but why should atmosphere be so oppressively sexist, where my only option is to "shrug it off"? Or feel like I have to prove myself as a gamer to get them to shut up? And if I'm a bad player, or a new player, why should I have to subject myself to their slurs just to enjoy a game? Why should discrimination be an inevitable expectation? You wouldn't want to go to the Neoboards if every time you visited you'd be greeted with racial slurs, would you? Or jabs at your sexuality when you went to the movies? (Though, as an aside, the movies still stereotype homosexuals as the "gay best friend.") It's not fun, and it isn't fair, and shouldn't be tolerated. (Also, a mute button isn't a good option if you're playing any game that involves teamwork, like Team Fortress 2.) Oh, I agree that the atmosphere should be a lot more friendly to girls, and that that sort of behavior you mentioned shouldn't be tolerated. (Even though I don't really have that problem, but I can see it's not the same for everyone.) I just find that when I shrug it off/ignore them, most people tend to shut up more. I think there'll still be the occasional immature guy who will make these comments, but I don't think it's as bad as it used to be. I did used to see it all the time when I was a kid, but even then, there were some safe havens, with guys who would go: "Oh, you're a girl? *Shrug.*" For online play, there are better servers out there. There may be some that highly discourage that kind of atmosphere. I can't vouch for any now, given my busy school schedule shelving time for games, but there might be at least better people out there than the ones you're getting. (I'm sure I had a better way to word this post. Oh well.)
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Post by M is for Morphine on Feb 7, 2012 17:00:02 GMT -5
Really? Because table-top gaming has had some of the best geeky experiences I've ever had as a girl. I think it may depend on the group you play with. I would definitely stay away from the groups who would do something like that. ._.; Yes, really. It's great that you didn't have bad experiences. Though I don't really appreciate your incredulous reaction to my stories. You having generally great experiences all around in geekdom does not mean there isn't a problem. Sure, in theory I could find a more friendly server... though that would mean either re-rolling and giving up my old, established and well-loved toon or paying real money to transfer. Anyway, I've tried re-rolling and have not yet found that magical place where I don't get told to get back in the kitchen. You seem to be putting this all on me: if I have a crappy time, it's my responsibility to find a safe place away from misogynists. Well, I've tried this. The safe place so far is single player games. Which is grade A horse crap. I payed my money like everyone else. I'm a gamer like everyone else. Why is it ok for me to be forced of of servers and out of games? So it's my fault I'm having a bad time, because I'm not trying hard enough to find the good places. Is it my fault when I'm catcalled at in real life, because I should have worn something less sexy or gone down a different street?
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Post by Crystal on Feb 7, 2012 17:52:52 GMT -5
People will PM you and demand cybering, and then insult you when you refuse. I could go on forever, for real. : / I remember getting that on Yahoo too =/ The Internet can be pretty messed up at times. However, I'm surprised you've had such a bad experience with table-top gaming. I've never played, but a lot of my female friends do, and they enjoy it. I don't know of any female DMs, but none of my D&D playing female friends seem to want to be a DM in any case. From time to time I play board games with a bunch of guys, and they're all invariably nice and even courteous to me. I'm sorry that you've had such bad experiences with gaming, though.
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Post by Gelquie on Feb 7, 2012 18:17:38 GMT -5
Really? Because table-top gaming has had some of the best geeky experiences I've ever had as a girl. I think it may depend on the group you play with. I would definitely stay away from the groups who would do something like that. ._.; Yes, really. It's great that you didn't have bad experiences. Though I don't really appreciate your incredulous reaction to my stories. You having generally great experiences all around in geekdom does not mean there isn't a problem. Sure, in theory I could find a more friendly server... though that would mean either re-rolling and giving up my old, established and well-loved toon or paying real money to transfer. Anyway, I've tried re-rolling and have not yet found that magical place where I don't get told to get back in the kitchen. You seem to be putting this all on me: if I have a crappy time, it's my responsibility to find a safe place away from misogynists. Well, I've tried this. The safe place so far is single player games. Which is grade A horse crap. I payed my money like everyone else. I'm a gamer like everyone else. Why is it ok for me to be forced of of servers and out of games? So it's my fault I'm having a bad time, because I'm not trying hard enough to find the good places. Is it my fault when I'm catcalled at in real life, because I should have worn something less sexy or gone down a different street? Woah woah, I'm not saying that at all. ._.; I'm not saying it's anyone's fault and I'm not trying to put it on anyone. I'm just bringing up ways of trying to deflect it. I'm not saying it's right. Just that it happens. I'm just saying that it's possible to find better servers. I just forgot about MMOs where you have to pay to change servers. I didn't think about that. I was thinking more of things like TF2 when I said that. I will admit that maybe I did have some of the better experiences, but I admit that the experiences are not far out there. I'm sorry if I gave off the wrong impression. It's just that a few experiences are more weird to me now and I'm trying to comprehend it, since there's a chance that I could just be more shut-up than others.
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Post by Sheik on Feb 7, 2012 18:55:53 GMT -5
Oh, I've had more than a fair amount of problems on Runescape. It usually happens when I'm playing with my friends, too. One time, my friend had to log off because some guys wouldn't leave us alone and I guess she got really uncomfortable. We had to call her to ask her to get back on.
Yeah. I think all of my experiences combined from just that one site have made my best friend and I utterly invincible to sexism. Someone says something offensive? Nah, we're not freaked out. We play RUNESCAPE.
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Post by Komori on Feb 7, 2012 20:18:21 GMT -5
Toughening up to the sexism isn't going to make it go away, though, and hardly makes the experience much more pleasant.
If there was a restaurant where all the patrons attacked you with racial slurs, you wouldn't just say, "Well, there are other restaurants you can go to." You would want something done about that restaurant, wouldn't you? No one would just shrug and say, "Eh, that doesn't happen at the restaurants I go to."
And the fact that this problem persists throughout a majority of geek culture makes it even worse. That would be like if every burger restaurant greeted you with racial slurs. How fair is it that I have to submit myself to verbal abuse just because I happen to like burgers?
EDIT: Okay, I reposted the text of the article in my first post, with the language cleaned-up. I'm pretty sure I took out all the bad pieces.
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Post by Sheik on Feb 7, 2012 20:31:35 GMT -5
You're right, it doesn't. That's part of the reason I hardly ever get on Runescape anymore, actually. XD It's hard to get away from it all, especially when there's so many players who are like that. You can't report all of them.
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Post by Char on Feb 8, 2012 6:39:54 GMT -5
It's generally assumed that you're a guy when you play games like Counterstrike or Battle.net. When I played the latter, we always referred to each other as 'guys' no matter what the gender simply out of necessity, since it was faster to type just 'guys' than 'guys and girls'. Nowadays 'guys' encompasses both guys and girls, but that's not the point.
I still remember playing one game of 3 on 3 [Battle.net] and near the end, after our team was getting cussed by the losing team, I noted how I was a girl. Their shocked comments were followed by ragequits.
I still keep getting mistaken for a guy on Battle.net because of the default assumption that the only folks who play the game are guys.
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Post by Nimras on Feb 8, 2012 10:28:16 GMT -5
When I went to buy NeverWinter Nights (several years ago) the guy behind the counter asked if I was sure this was the game my boyfriend wanted. You know, because BioWare doesn't have girl players at ALL. On several MMO's I've played, I get a lot of comments asking if I'm a girl in real life. Answering in the affirmative usually was followed by requests for my character to strip her clothes off and dance -- even if we were in a combat zone. Or for phonesex over the mics. Even on Neopets I've gotten some comments via Neomail. Several of them implying self-stimulation at either myself or Mareian. Those always get reported.
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Post by Nut on Feb 9, 2012 10:29:58 GMT -5
I remember reading that article. I thought it described the problem pretty well.
It varies depending on where you go, yeah, but in a lot of places—especially on the internet—the amount of misogyny in the culture can be pretty depressing. It’s there even if you don’t have bad experiences with personal interactions; it’s evident in the way news is presented and in the user-created content and in the fandom in-jokes, and it’s hard not to be affected by the mindset. I think sexism tends to be a symptom of general ignorance and immaturity, which manifests itself within geek culture in all sorts of ways—the endless arguments, the gaming trash talk—and it doesn’t help that a majority of the games/comics industries seem to cater to the adolescent crowd that thinks it’s funny to be offensive and insulting. I’ve reached a point where I just don’t want to be in this environment anymore, and I avoid a lot of gaming sites nowadays because of it. It’s easier for me because I don’t play multiplayer online games; I can choose to shut the culture out and just enjoy a single-player campaign on my own. But for people who want to play with other gamers and don’t have a lot of friends to play with, there isn’t really a good way to escape.
There are online games that I have wanted to try playing (like TF2), but I haven’t because I don’t want to deal with the other players—not just because of sexism, but because of the entire culture, with its competition and trash talk and the pressure to not suck. Sure, there must be some nice players out there, but the general atmosphere tends to be overwhelmingly hostile and not particularly inviting for a newcomer.
What we need are more mature voices in the geek communities, and I think that as fans get older and more women enter the media industries, things can only get better. In the meantime, I guess we just have to keep pushing the message that not the entire geek audience likes being bombarded with what the industries think teenage boys want. And not by replacing that with what they think girls want, but by making products designed to appeal to people for their own merits and not what seems to sell.
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Post by Stal on Feb 9, 2012 13:36:50 GMT -5
Not to detract from the actual topic, but how much of this is sexism in geekdom (I.e. portrayals), and how much of it is people being... Uh, less than savory?
Take CoD and even TF2. I refuse to call those geek games. They're mainstream. I know far more "Bros" that play them than "Geeks". Video games aren't a geek thing anymore. They're much more mainstream and accepted in culture as a whole.
Not that there isn't something to say about sexism in geekdom, but I would be more careful to separate what applies to geekdom and what applies to people in general.
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Post by Komori on Feb 9, 2012 14:03:56 GMT -5
Take CoD and even TF2. I refuse to call those geek games. They're mainstream. I know far more "Bros" that play them than "Geeks". Video games aren't a geek thing anymore. They're much more mainstream and accepted in culture as a whole. I wouldn't really consider TF2 "mainstream." You can't just go up to anyone on the street and say, "Hey, what do you think of Team Fortress 2?" without people saying, "What's that?" Also, Teow mentioned her bad experiences while she played her MMOs. Perhaps WoW? And you can't deny that WoW is a geek game. And again, these games actually being mainstream makes them even worse! This isn't just about players being complete pigs to women in games, it's also about the games themselves! The fact that video games are becoming mainstream and you still have nothing more than boob-bouncing babes as female characters just makes the sexism worse.
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Post by Nut on Feb 9, 2012 14:35:49 GMT -5
Not to detract from the actual topic, but how much of this is sexism in geekdom (I.e. portrayals), and how much of it is people being... Uh, less than savory? I was trying to get at that when I mentioned sexism as a symptom of a larger problem; I do think that most of the issue comes from people behaving immaturely in general. But that kind of behavior tends to be encouraged by games industries and their fans, and this shouldn't be tolerated. I'm not sure what difference it makes to argue about the definition of "geek". Would it be better if it were "sexism in games and comics and their surrounding cultures"? Also, as far as mainstream goes, I agree with Komori that this just makes it worse.
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Post by Stal on Feb 9, 2012 14:40:57 GMT -5
Right, I'm not saying that there isn't a legitimate complaint here. But in some ways it seems like there's combining topics between sexism in general, or media portrayal of women across the board, or what have you instead of just sexism in geekdom (and also the separate but related topic of why people are unkind in online gaming scenarios)
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