There are a lot more female gamers then people would think, most women I knew that gamed did not tell people that they were female just because of this type af attitude.

 I drove truck for several years and it was the same there, the guys would talk about the women drivers like they were a lower life form when there did not seem to be any listening but, let one lady break in a channel to get local information or just to add to a conversation and the men lose there damn minds, you would think they have never seen a girl, women or anything female before.

 The same thing happens in games from what I have seen let someone find out your a woman and now every guy that knows is stuting and acting like an idiot trying to help, impress the woman or the idiots that want to come with the insults although I agree that the insults generally come from little boys and I mean little like 13-16 range this I attribute to bad parenting.

 When I played SWG we had about 100 active members and half of them were women playing male charactors or telling people they were guys. We were a guild of couples that liked to game but, had grown tired of the entire child like mentality towards women in games.

 In this day and age if you think you have never faced off with a girl or woman in combat then your just stupid, chances are high that you have and more often then you think. There is no gender check when you role a charactor so anyone can role either with just a click of the button and if you don't know them you have no idea in reality what gender they are.

 Look at it this way, there was a guy in galaxys that went on and on about people being down on the "black man" because he was getting beat up in pvp, I told him one time, you do realize that no one had any way of knowing you are black until you told them. Same for girls/women unless they tell you you have no way of knowing.

Originally posted by Dubhlaith

I agree with the idea that there is prejudice still both that gamer girls are very rare and that they are not as skilled as guys, but I have two bones with this article.

Firstly, the beef you seem to have with the very world "girl." I'm not young enough to be literally a girl anymore, myself, but people say "girls" and "guys" all the time, and they don't mean to be condescending when they say it. It is a very petty semantic thing to get worked up over. Most people tend to say girls instead of women for the same reason people tend not to say "men." They say guys, because it feels more casual and less forced. Regardless, you shouldn't read too much into the words people use. It matters much more how they behave towards gamer girls, and each other in general.

Secondly, the more we post things like this, the more it sounds like the ladies doth protest too much. This is the same problem we continue to have with racism. The more you talk about, the more it persists, and the more you give it power. Of course women play games, and of course they do it for the same reasons as men and have differing backgrounds and skill sets and whathaveyou. The people who don't know and understand this are not going to be convinced by posts like this, and are actually more likely to continue to believe stereotypes about gamer girls because of them. I think heated feminism like this has done more to hurt the cause of equality of women than anything in the past three decades or so. But that is a totally different post.

The only real way to combat this perception is to play games, and not take nonsense from those who hold those stereotypes.

Yes, it's much better to just keep quiet and hope people change. What's done the most damage to equality of women is other women who prefer that we be quiet and not fight so hard, dont rock the boat. You don't give attention to a naughty child, this is something completely different.  I am not offended by being called girl, but the general language I have found in games is offensive and the derogatory way women are talked about is. But this is why I no longer play with people, I find it extremely difficult anymore to find mature people in games to play with. But maybe I am just starting to get too old for all of this. I am sorry to be argumentative but something about this pricked a nerve.

I think my MMO 'career' start was very lucky. I got into a very nice guild in EQII. Quite many of the guild members were women so I didn't get any of this *peep*.

Oh actually, I did get one invitation to fly over to US and have a weekend of sex. yeah right (I didn't play that character for a long time - just to avoid this pervert).

Next game that I played was Vanguard which also had a great community. No funny business there either.

AoC had a good community as well... or maybe it was because I chose RP servers for all these games.

Then came a time when I quick-visited quite a few games and I started to notice this behaviour. I guess it was 'visible' from my behaviour and chat (helpful ie not asking to do my quests, and not using short language.. don't know *shrugs*.) as I started to get questions if I was a girl... and then it was downhill from there as the missconception was that it meant I wanted relationship or something. Eh...

I used to be quite a flirt with my characters (as my forum name even says) in those 'safer' games as it was fun and didn't mean anything and it went well with my rogue characters roleplay. But now I just play alone, don't talk to folks - and certainly don't flirt... Bit sad as I miss people to play with ... these are mmo's after all. Currently I play Rift and the feature where you can just pop into a group and leave to do a mission/invation is great for me as there is no need to talk and thus I don't get any of these stupid questions.

Oh and that question: Are you a girl? hmm first: what does it matter? second: why do you want to know? third: I wouldn't call myself a girl as I'm 41yo.

I have great hopes for TOR. Not only is it a Bioware game (which I love) but it has lots of story etc. So I hope it attracts certain kind of players at least on the long run. And I hope there I find myself a guild and a bunch of friends to play with. Where it wouldn't matter that i'm a g... woman.

Originally posted by Ysharros

Still waiting on a single woman to post that this is no longer an issue.

Just sayin'.

Not an issue.

What a misleading title...snorefest.  I can care less what gender a gamer is, I'm not playing an MMO to find a soulmate.  I learned that girls don't have cooties many years ago.   Not my fault if most fat, sweaty truckers named Tom who live in their parent's basement haven't gotten the memo yet.

Oh, by the way, show me your tits.

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Originally posted by Gayia
Yes, it's much better to just keep quiet and hope people change. What's done the most damage to equality of women is other women who prefer that we be quiet and not fight so hard, dont rock the boat. You don't give attention to a naughty child, this is something completely different.  I am not offended by being called girl, but the general language I have found in games is offensive and the derogatory way women are talked about is. But this is why I no longer play with people, I find it extremely difficult anymore to find mature people in games to play with. But maybe I am just starting to get too old for all of this. I am sorry to be argumentative but something about this pricked a nerve.

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The vast (and I mean *vast*) majority of people understand there is no substantial difference between genders for the most part, at least in my experience. The negative experiences tend to stand out by virtue of the emotional impact they have on us, but they are not the majority of cases. Actually playing games, and like I said, dealing with individual cases, is the only way to combat this prejudice. And the only real way to do that is to show people the stereotypes do not exist.

Equality for women has long since been reached. There are places in the world where sexism and gender bias is still rampant, and they, like was done in the west decades ago, need to be vocal and demand rights, but to deal with lingering bias on the part of a few, this chest-thumping rhetoric is actually detrimental to the cause. Guys who actually are biased read things like this article and they see it as an affirmation of their bias, not contradicting evidence. Things like this actually do a disservice to the cause of total equality, and I believe they move us backward, not forward.

The only game I had trouble in was AoC, and that made me sick to my stomach and I had to quit (not that the game was that good to begin with). There are groups, mostly younger children or teens, who behave as you describe, but that is largely trying to act cool and tough, which happens in any number of situations.

Things like this article have the same effect for women that things like The Voice and BET have for blacks: It "proves" to those people who still hold on to prejudice that there is a difference and they are deserving of prejudice because they need such things to have equal footing.

You have to educate and deal with individuals (in games that mostly can only consist of telling the jerks off), not cry into the void like this. I am sorry, I feel as if I went a bit overboard with this post, but I feel very strongly on this point. The longer women whine about the few people/groups who persist in prejudice, the longer those prejudices will continue.

Edit: Ysharros, this is only still an issue when women make it an issue.

I think I shouldn't say much else; the more attention we give something like this, the worse it is.

Bah! Here I come expecting some Gamer Girls XXX action and instead read a rant about yet another area where we should feel sorry about females.

Get over yourselves, in the West, discrimination against women is not what it used to be and for sure I dont see any of that in any games I played. Possibly the scantly clothed women in some games but that is just as offensive to me as any other women.

I know an equal number of female gamers as there are male gamers.  my best friend is a female gamer mmorpg gamer and one fo the best out there. when she get into a game she is usually  on rankings 3-5 months into playing the game in the top twenty to the top ten.

games are for people.

not men , women, girls or boys just ...people

Plenty of women in MMO's. From the lady that is really bad at healing raids because she is trying to pay too much attention to whispers from e-friends, to the lady that does that god-awful "seductive" voice in vent  that only seems to work on 19 year old lonely guys.

I applaud the variety(?) of women that play MMO's!

The fact that there is even an article on this topic is pretty pathetic.  It's 2011, I was hearing this crap when I first logged into an online game in 1995. 

I will say one thing: Im actually thinking of leaving my Corporation in EVE Online due to the drama caused by the MALES.  Very tiresome.  Perhaps as women have become more independent, men more sensitive and emotional?  Bromances and all that.  I told one guy that was going off in Corpchat to shutup the other day (he was being annoying and said something rude to me) and he ragequit, citing me as the reason.  Then I got a whole bunch of questions from the other males about it.  Children.  I would have much preferred if they just begged for stuff.

Originally posted by Nixish

Originally posted by Ysharros

Still waiting on a single woman to post that this is no longer an issue.

Just sayin'.

Not an issue.

I also have to say this has not been an issue for me now or ten years ago when I started in EQ1.  Maybe it is the company I keep or the specific MMO's I choose to play.  I'm sure there are a minority of players that might make it an issue, but you will find a minority of players with all other sorts of prejudices.  Dwelling on those few players and whining about the unfairness of it all just makes us seem....well whiny.

I have to agree with a previous poster that these sort of rants do nothing to help any cause, just justifies the bias some may have.

My only problem with the "girl gamer" image, is that most boys, and yes I said boys, that play games think that every gamer girl is a hot chick behind a keyboard wearing next to nothing drooling at the chance to get with the prepubescent screechy voiced child, who can barely manage to log into a game without mommy and daddies permission, let alone drive around and pick up a girl. 

The way I think of most girl gamers is the wait I think of the ones back 20+ years ago that used to show up to those PnP games.   They were often as bad of hygene as the male counterparts, many of which were already more damaged mentally than your typical girl their age.    Sure they were the only thing that paid ANY attention to some geek as he went off on a tyrade about how powerful his level 15 Paliden of Tempest is.   But trueth is the girl gamer, that is in those pics in the original rant, are a myth.   Or more correctly as rare as a BNR34 Skyline GT-R spec Nur in the USof A.   

Just saying that its partly sites like this that have pics of hot gamer girls and then dont show the typical gamer girl that goes with the typical gamer guy.  

So before you go off on a tyrant about how gamer girls are real and they are whatever shut up and look at the pics your attaching to those statements.

Heh-heh.  You might like this one Isabella, as it's an example of the Man / Woman thing:

A WoodTurning Smock at No Cost! http://t.co/Co9Uejv

In spite of the title it is a short, humorous look at Men "looking down" on women practitioners in a past time mostly thought of as a "Man's thing".  (historically, but changing)

Short read, actually happened, good chuckle had by all at the time.

Originally posted by babyeater

games are for people.

 

not men , women, girls or boys just ...people

I think there are a lot mor e"hot" girl gamers these days than you think, but ya I thnk the norm woudl be ones who look like the characiture of the author. Just as the norm of guy gamers are probably pimply faced twerps... Not me though. I'm an Adonis.

Originally posted by Hodo

many of which were already more damaged mentally than your typical girl their age.

Amen to that! Every girl whom I knew, who was even remotely interested in gaming, was a frigging NUTCASE!

I welcome girl gamers in any game I play...

...especially if they look like the girl top right in the first pic.

Seriously though. Who someone is behind the keyboard makes no difference as to how they play the game, or at least to me. I'd rather group with a girl gamer, who plays intelligently and maturely, than any of the many adolescent teen boys out there in MMOland. You know, the ones who call you dude all the time.

I've played a female character in many an MMO, and I think I know some of the things that nark Isobel. I haven't seen it frequently but I've seen it. I was chatted up a number of times in EQ2. I was even asked if I'd marry an ugly little dwarf in Thundering Steppes once. That put an awkward slant on the continued killing of giants, I can tell you.

I don't think people judging each other in MMOs is going to go away any time soon though. It is just a microcosm of real life after all.

im not really the social type so to speak. but i dont look down on anyone unless they fuck up me or some other m8's farming, rading or whatever we are doing.

that being said i have been in one guild in a mmo before where females were just not allowed to join due to the drama it can often cause. not because of the female individual herself, cuz they are just as good gamers as we dudes are. the reason was that there could be someone blinded by the fact that a "girl":o is playing the game and then takes that persons side nomatter what. i dont like this kind of policy, but i have seen this kind of drama happen before over silly things. call it a internet crush or whatever. these are just lonely males i guess.

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Originally posted by Hodo
My only problem with the "girl gamer" image, is that most boys, and yes I said boys, that play games think that every gamer girl is a hot chick behind a keyboard wearing next to nothing drooling at the chance to get with the prepubescent screechy voiced child, who can barely manage to log into a game without mommy and daddies permission, let alone drive around and pick up a girl. 
 
The way I think of most girl gamers is the wait I think of the ones back 20+ years ago that used to show up to those PnP games.   They were often as bad of hygene as the male counterparts, many of which were already more damaged mentally than your typical girl their age.    Sure they were the only thing that paid ANY attention to some geek as he went off on a tyrade about how powerful his level 15 Paliden of Tempest is.   But trueth is the girl gamer, that is in those pics in the original rant, are a myth.   Or more correctly as rare as a BNR34 Skyline GT-R spec Nur in the USof A.   
 
Just saying that its partly sites like this that have pics of hot gamer girls and then dont show the typical gamer girl that goes with the typical gamer guy.  
 
So before you go off on a tyrant about how gamer girls are real and they are whatever shut up and look at the pics your attaching to those statements.

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The first part of your post is largely accurate, I think. Boys idealise the physical appearance of gamer girls and initialising their mental capacity.

But then you go on to stereotype both male and female gamers. The typical gamer, male or female, is pretty much the same as the typical *person.* Gamers are no different from other people, save in that they play games. What you describe was once the case, back during the time that you reference, some twenty years ago. But that hasn't been the case, for guys or girls, for a long time.

I realise this perception persists, though. At the risk of bragging, I am a pretty fit young woman, and when I go to a store and start browsing games I get odd looks, gawkers, and sometimes questions like "are you buying a present for your boyfriend/brother?" I try to explain politely and casually that no, I'm a gamer and I am totally normal.

So, you are part of the problem, Hodo. Yes, there are gamer girls like you describe, but there are also girls like those in the top photo in the article. Both are about as rare among gamers as they are in the general populace. There is no longer a marked demographic difference between gamers and non-gamers. The only difference is that gamers are skewed towards the young end of the spectrum. You have to realise that people are people are people. Some play games, some don't. Some are hideous and unwashed, some gorgeous. Some too old to be in their parents' basements, some working professionals.

The "typical" gamer guy or girl is no different from the "typical" non-gamer guy are girl. You have to realise that simple face before this problem will go away.

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Originally posted by holifeet
I don't think people judging each other in MMOs is going to go away any time soon though. It is just a microcosm of real life after all.

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I wish I had said it so eloquently.