Gaming & Sexism

j_bark

Decent read of someone's personal tale. Sadly she is not the only one with the tale. PS Don't be a dick to other humans.

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Tabletop Gaming has a White Male Terrorism Problem
http://latining.tumblr.com/post/141567276944/tabletop-gaming-has-a-white-male-terrorism-problem

I am a gamer. I followed the call of Cthulhu and ran in the shadows with hackers and shamans. I traversed the ancient lands of Greyhawk, Faerun, and Eberron with companions new and old. I swung from an airship and buckled swash over London for the Kerberos Club. I threw dice and flipped cards and ground men into dust playing table-top wargames.

I don’t do that anymore.

Since July of 2015 fans of the game Malifaux have been attempting to overwhelm me with death and rape threats for no other reason than I am a woman who has opinions on the game. ...

More at link.

Afura

That's friggin terrifying. I help run an open-female LARP group and we get that conversation now and again, and while nothing was near as far bad as that (because we will call the cops as a group), we do see harassment continually from people (not just men, or white men) who get their jollies from putting people down or harassing others, it's sad.

tomteboda

This stuff makes me so angry. The legal system is really woefully set up to handle this kind of intimidation and harassment.

rowlandsw

Sadly this is why female gamers aren't more open about wanting to game. I know in video games there are a lot of women who play male only characters and stay off the mic just to avoid any issues. There's some groups on Destiny that are clans for women but they get bashed all the time.

tomteboda

I have the absolute BEST guild in World of Warcraft. No toleration for harassment of any kind, and because of that its a very relaxed and fun environment in which we achieve great things for our -very- casual status. A few of our members are game bloggers/vloggers/podcasters and have spoken about these issues openly.

rowlandsw

My friend used to play a lot of Halo reach but always just with one group of friends, which is what i think most women do, and I know she got harassed just for using Kat even if they didn't know she was female. Sadly companies and the government don't take this stuff seriously enough and put things in place to protect victims and to make sure false claims can't be used against someone.
I have a theory that a lot of these abusive pvp players are the jocks who used to beat us up for gaming in school and now have ruined gaming with their cavemen-like need to be competitive at the expense of fun.

Afura

I MMO game, and I haven't necessarily always stuck with one group, but while I've gotten the general BS from people, very rarely have I been attacked for being a female basis. Then again, I give as good as it gets, so who knows. And I tank or heal, also not a wise position to harass someone in...
@rowlandsw I wouldn't even go so far as to say they are jocks. Most of the ones I've run across have seemed to have been introverts that are trying to seem like they're one of the 'cool kids'/have low self esteem and picking on others is a great way.

tabbyblack13

This is why I won't get into MMOs. I can cuss since I work in the Mining industry but the last thing needed in my life is more stress.

Arthemise1

This makes me so mad. I'm glad I haven't had to deal with this. I only associate with a small group of people that I know aren't dicks. It also helps to be a large, tall woman who does not put up with crap. I haven't had any problem in MMOs personally.

mangrothian

I can be very thankful that I've never had these issues, and I've been an mmo gamer for years (and an online gamer before mmo's came to the masses). Tbh, even now most of the guys I game with probably don't see me as a girl, but as a guy with a higher pitched voice and just as dirty a mind. Any time there is harassment from other players, it's usually because the other person is a jerk in general, regardless of if they know that I'm female or not.

And as @afura said, it always helps to give as good as you get, providing you're dropping to their hatespeak levels

As to the tabletop scene, I always played with friends rather than the situations the article describes, so I can't really relate to it. Then again, maybe the girls in Australia are more likely to wallop someone when it happens, so people are a little more wary about doing it.

thehexenbiest

mangrothian wrote: »

I can be very thankful that I've never had these issues, and I've been an mmo gamer for years (and an online gamer before mmo's came to the masses). Tbh, even now most of the guys I game with probably don't see me as a girl, but as a guy with a higher pitched voice and just as dirty a mind. Any time there is harassment from other players, it's usually because the other person is a jerk in general, regardless of if they know that I'm female or not.

I'm late to the party here, but I think that's actually one of the key things. I think it's more about stereotyping than just sexism alone. It's more about what society sees as typically male or typically female. As a female in the gaming scene you're usually okay as long as you 'go with it' and act like 'one of the guys'. Which isn't a bad thing, don't get me wrong. If that's who you are and it just fits, that's fine. It's just not something that should be required to be included.

And often that's even down to how you play a game. Like, I play WoW and WoW gives you all these infinite options of how your gaming experience can be. You can go and follow the story on your own, you can even role play and create a whole story for your character, or you just get really tough in the PVP and focus on gear, specs, etc. In theory, it's all up to the player how they wanna play. But the practice is a different story. When I told someone I'm not really into PVP, I don't like the whole process of raiding, battlegrounds, etc. I was told that that's okay, I mean 'you're a girl, so that's fine'. People don't even notice that's offensive!