Discrimination against females in the video game world never
seems to end. It’s just foreign and apparently uncommon for females to tread in
such masculine territory. It can be seen as impressive and epic to see a female
conquer and take part in these activities, but there will always be those
little hints of discrimination that weird guys out causing them to go: “what,
who, why, how?”
In the gaming community I keep the fact that I’m a girl
anonymous. I’ve read previous posts that say girls who openly admit they’re
females in game are either drama creators or those who seek
favouritism/attention. Personally, I don’t admit it because people will either argue
with me or become creepy. The use of voice chat isn’t a good option for girls either.
Females have higher voices than males, so obviously the comment: “that dude
sounds eleven” may appear. This is because of the obvious stereotype and
assumption that only guys play video games.
Assumptions that
females aren’t good at games (or well just not as good as guys are)
Sure, why not? It’s such a sexist generalisation xD when it comes to video games, skill can vary between any individual. It’s not like sports, such as martial arts in which girls can have trouble swivelling around to kick because of their wide hips.
Sure, why not? It’s such a sexist generalisation xD when it comes to video games, skill can vary between any individual. It’s not like sports, such as martial arts in which girls can have trouble swivelling around to kick because of their wide hips.
I’m gonna rant a bit. During my long love affair with the
game LoL I have experienced the moments where friends who play with me for the
first time think I suck. I’ve been told what to do and when to do it. One of
the important things with LoL is learning how to play the game how it’s played.
There are many ways to play it and you can always develop your own. Play it how
you like, just play well. I’m not going to boast, but I have been playing the game
long enough to know that clicking is vital.
I can admit that I do have friends who treat me equally when
playing games. For example, in League of Legends I have friends who know I’m a
girl and accept it without trying to protect me while in game. If I do
something stupid, they’ll rage at me like they would anyone else on our team.
In my experience playing video games, I have kept myself
from using voice chat or at all revealing I am a girl. The last time I ever
told anyone I was a girl was while playing League of Legends. It was with a friend
of a friend from uni who didn’t use skype. During a game, I apologised to him
because I kept taking kills from him and then being silly in chat, saying that
I was a bit of a dick for a girl. My friends on skype instantly raged. Saying
that I shouldn’t do that, it’ll only make people want to stalk me. It really
upset me that I was told off for such a thing, saying that I am what I am: a
female. I felt scared and then bad, as if it’s rude to mention your gender and
only appropriate to let everyone think you’re male.
Ever since then, I only laugh to myself when people in chat
refer to me as a guy.
Awkward chat relating to this happened on Team Fortress tonight for me; I was playing Mann Up mode on Mann vs Machine, which puts you with five random players from across the globe to fight an army of robots for prizes. At the beginning of the round, one of the players signing on was using Brooke as her username-- so everyone on the team made the reasonable assumption she was a girl (she never confirmed but I'm also working off this assumption).
ReplyDeleteWhen she joined, one player on the server said 'Brooke, you're late to the round, so you'd better hurry up and help, dude'. Another player responded to the first and said 'hey, don't call her a dude-- it's gotta be a girl with a username like that'. The first player laughed it off and apologized, agreeing with the second, but then the second player continued:
'Though she's probably just pretending to be female, most of those 'girls' are'. The other players on the team laughed at this comment and we began the round, but Brooke made no comment, and neither did I.
Definitely shows off that mindset of 'females are fakes', doesn't it? The four other players also went on to discuss how they wanted to have sex with women and the like, so the entire game was sort of awkward for me, and probably Brooke as well. I just kept to myself and my Engineer adventures and stayed out of the chat.
I guess sexism towards girls in video games has to do with history really. Women are stereotypically seen throughout the last 20 or 30 years as been useless with technology when the opposite is true. I may be a man, but anyone who thinks that it's okay to reject a fellow gamer because they're a girl, makes it a shameful media form for men at times.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is (regarding Lol) it probably isn't too far fatched to assume girls aren't as good. I mean it is a stereotype but quite often it is true. In my group of friends the guys really like to Lol and so recently us girls decided to give it a try and yea we well i in particular was terrible at it. I mean we all had a lot of fun but it just seemed like we were so far behind in terms of skill level and the instincts for the game.
ReplyDeleteSo I think the issue with many games is that perhaps girls are slightly later to play particular games and that is why there is that stereotype even though the stereotype is quite often wrong.
That is pretty much exactly why xD it shouldn't be a stereotype when it comes to a moment like that. Your friends who play LoL prolly weren't that great when started out either. It takes time to get used to how the game is played. If you dedicate a lot of time to playing it and learning roles to play, you're likely to be just a good :) there's no saying you wont be.
Deletehttps://xkcd.com/385/
Delete- Kevin