Normally, I don’t consider myself a feminist. I don’t consider it to be a bad word – but I had college classes with real, third-wave feminists and I never quite fit in with them. To put it simply, I had grown up with typically male-dominated interests and skills, and I had never really encountered any problems. If anything, I seemed more respected when I was the only girl in the group.
Lately, though, playing World of Warcraft has made me witness more woman-bashing than I ever have, and it’s sort of making me disappointed in men and geeks and the world in general.
I’m no stranger to the world of gaming. But I began playing video games before there were things like XBox Live and Ventrilo. Anyone in an arcade could plainly see I was a girl, and could easily see if I was skilled or not – and, in retrospect, they probably tempered their comments because they had to deal with me face-to-face. Common courtesy, and all that.
But now the whole “dark side of internet anonymity” can come into play. And, frankly, it can be depressing.
See, I’ve got a night elf rogue. I belong to a guild that is probably 50% women. I didn’t realize how comfortable I had become until the last few months, when I started joining raid PUGs.
So here I am in a PUG, waiting for it to begin. Sure, I’m a female toon, but that doesn’t mean anything. I’m sitting there on vent, waiting for the other twelve people to get to the raid, when the “girls don’t play Warcraft” jokes begin. Not like I haven’t heard them before, but these quickly took a darker turn.
I had said something on vent earlier, and there was at least one other woman on vent talking already. The guys doing the talking knew there were women in the “room,” as it were, but it didn’t matter. And just to clarify, these weren’t jokes about a particular “type” of player, the stereotypical OMG<3 girly girl; these were simply crude jokes about the female anatomy, etc.
I’ve always considered myself a girl who could roll with crude humor, who can make a “get back in the kitchen” joke with the best of them, who likes listening to Howard Stern every now and then, and here I was, blood pressure rising. I would like to think it’s because I can discern when people are joking and when they’re just being jerks, but let’s face it, it is the internet. Maybe I just didn’t get the “humor.” I don’t think so, though.
So I had two choices: passive or aggressive. Aggressive would mean dropping the group, bitching them out. But I really needed the possible drop from this raid, and just bitching them out would play right into their hands – I’d be a shrew. So I went with the passive – didn’t say anything. At all. And felt a little mad at myself for doing so.
Seriously, I had never encountered something like that in my life. In my career, or with my friends. I’ve had a good dose of “Mean Girl” style drama, but that’s completely different – it’s personal, it’s sticking the knife in and wiggling a little. This was… being faceless, being less than a person. It was disturbing.
I’d like to think this was just one band of jerks, but I’ve since seen it, to a lesser degree, in other PUGs. So I’ve been sticking with my girl-friendly guild for now (I’ll get over it), but it makes me a little sad to know what’s out there.
So what do you all think? Am I overreacting? Am I the only one with an experience like this?
About j
Whenever someone is being bigoted, they will usually stop if you call them on it. Don’t have to do a diatribe…a simple “hey, that’s not cool…” will usually put a damper on it with decent folks. If you’re with NOT decent folks, bailing is the only and right option. No drop is worth that.
-gen
I’m a guy… so probably not the best person to be responding
Still, I always feel uncomfortable with the overtly nasty type of jokes you’re referring to.
I’m from England, and my sense of humour originates ‘up north’ as we say over here. It’s overtly self-deprecating, and you have to be able to laugh at yourself as much as others. But, the main point I’m trying to make is, it’s laughing WITH people, not AT people. So, if I make a joke about someone, it’s because I know them well enough to be reasonably sure that they’ll take the joke, laugh with it, and probably back-talk to me in much the same way. All of which means that I wouldn’t make a joke that’s inherently offensive, demeaning or abusive (Unless there’s someone who likes that sort of joke, of whom I’ve only ever found one – probably one of the funnies guys I know, but still, just one).
I think, however, that the whole Internet F-wad idea holds very true, and events like this are sadly getting more and more common. It’s as though there’s no real person behind the screen, instead it’s just another bucket of bits that doesn’t matter…
Sad, really.
Hey E, I think the main problem is – WoW is a game that has no particular audience. It’s overrun by a lot of different types and several of them just lack a certain maturity. I’ve played in my younger days a lot(³) games, mainly shooters and I have to admit I became very quickly annoyed by the audience when I grew older. I (simply) had to switch game from the most popular (I think it still is the most popular) to a very much smaller game.
Anyway it sounds a little bit like you’re already an addict when you decide to stay passive because you need a certain drop
. I’ve had this with a predecessor of WoW (Starwars Galaxies) and I’m very happy that I’ve made my way out of these kind of games. They certainly were some time-wasters and had severe (bad) fx on my life. Hope you got it better under control.
take care,
Markus
@Markus – Psst, it’s J, not E.
I laughed when I read the ‘addict’ bit because, truth be told, the bit about the drop was sort of a half-joke/condensed for brevity – I think the main factor for my silence is that it’s sort of ingrained in me to “not feed the trolls,” plus I knew we’d be starting the raid in a minute and hopefully people would crack down and get to business (which they did, and if they hadn’t, things might have gone differently).
It’s true that the general audience might be less mature – I’m lucky to be in a guild that has mature players (in personality, regardless of age) and that’s probably spoiled me.
I think a lot of it is that SOME guys aren’t comfortable around women, so when women “invade” what they consider “their territory” they get really defensive (despite that being based on flawed assumptions).
And then there’s the myth that women simply aren’t as good at wow (or any number of things) to upset the ignorant (or willfully under-exposed) because they “have to carry the weight” of any girls they raid with.
And of course, there’s the study done by a sociologist wow player who discovered that changing her toon from female to male instantly garnered her tons of respect that transferred even after people discovered she was female (maybe a function of human’s visual natures)
And one can’t discount the possibility of backlash against feminism. After all, there are few social outlets where you can be obviously intolerant against women and not see significant backlash.
Faced with this situation, there’s really only one thing for a girl to do:
http://www.wowbash.com/image-4828.html
I generally stay away from online gaming for precisely that reason. Dealing with the morans that are inevitably there just requires more emotional energy than I have.
I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t fit in with feminists either, for the same reason that Ayn Rand is not a feminist icon.
So what’s to be done? In my experience, it’s best to try to lighten the mood by returning fire with better insults (best to think them up before you need them), or sarcastically admitting that everything they say is completely true (this works better in real life – sarcasm is difficult online). I try never to let a a jerk (of either gender) know that they got under my skin – it just makes the problem worse. But if you don’t say anything, you lose your self-respect and often the respect of those around you. So, having a repertoire of clever comebacks is critical.
Being a girl who has been playing WoW since the closed Beta… yeah I have quite a bit of experience with guys like that.
I usually just don’t talk at all on Ventrilo unless it’s a raid with my guildies. I’m rather lucky with that, as there always are a couple of them up for a raid. Apart from that, I play the same class as my brother and he’s known as a really good holy paladin. So most people who know our guild don’t have much problems with me in the group.
If I have no choice however, I usually say something like “Lololol Girls dun play WoW” in a VERY lame way as soon as I notice guys starting like that. Never had a guy so upset with a girl in the group that he wanted me to leave after that. I _DID_ have the other side of the ‘problem’ though…
By the way, Matt Neagleys link seems familiar, though not with a wet top. :>
j,
I’m sorry if you enjoy online WoW, but it is unfortunately the type of ramification-free, id-driven, socially-inept pastime that will attract more than a fair share of participants who indulge in the ‘darker turn’ of interaction.
There’s a reason that Pixiedragon and others with a long history in WoW notate lots of familiarity with the problem (and the ‘other’ side of the propblem is a different side of the same coin). The context is ripe for it.
It may not be fair, but this is the type of behaviors you’d expect to find in the context.
You’d never find this kind of behavior in a live game…because there are social/cultural ramifications. WoW would be made better if players could decide certain broad catagories of social behavior that were acceptable.
I hope for your sake (and my sister’s) that happens soon.
.-= LordVreeg´s last blog ..edited Steel Isle Town =-.
I am a feminist and a long time gamer (since pre-school in the 1970′s).
If people get too much into ripping on female gamers I will calmly discuss why they are wrong. I will “pretend” to not understand that they are “just joking” and explain why what they are saying is offensive.
I rarely get called a bitch for my calm explainations, but I do get called humorless… A few sentences later I will have them laughing at something I typed or spoke (on purpose) about that is offensive to no one.
Being a feminist is really just believing that women are worthy of equal rights and respect as men. Many people think it is the demonization of men, but that is not at the core of feminism at all.
There is nothing wrong with asking for the same respect for women that men give to themselves. If the male gamers don’t stop ripping into women, then I feel free to rip into men about how they are incapable of proper gaming skills due genetic problems based on their sex. It usually shocks them into silence.
Hey J,
Sorry to hear that a bunch of jerks have been bring down the game for you lately. I have been on break from WOW for about two months now, and I am tempted to say that I got tired of guys being really stupid. It could be my fault for having a character with a name that has more than one meaning. My main character was Laputa (which apparently can be translated as La puta, the whore, in spanish). While I didn’t know that when I was naming my character after a place in one my favorite movies (Laputa is the castle in the sky in one of my all time favorite animes but is also a place in Gulliver’s Travels).
I tried to think on the bright side that I could use my name to weed out people that I didn’t want to game with. And I mostly played with my guild (the guild leader is my sister’s boyfriend and other people I have meet a few times in person and I felt like I knew well enough even though we now live in different states). But once I hit level 80, my husband wanted to do more end game things like raids. And when the guild wasn’t around, he would usually end up talking me into joining a PUG raid, and that is where things started to become less fun. Again I don’t know if I got sick of people being jerks or if I was just too open about being a girl gamer (and it backfired).
I guess all I can say is that my experiences playing with unknown players has always been very hit or miss. And again I will admit that I do not take any form of sexual harassment lightly and would usually get very upset or frustrating and have to stop playing. But then again I don’t think myself or any other person out there should have to put up with it.
As Miriam pointed out, feminism is about equality of women, not about driving men down into a subservient position advocated by a number of rather extreme, ‘bra-burning’ women over the last few decades.
It is very sad that behaviour like you describe takes place in what should be a family friendly game with a community that should be considerate and helpful. However, just like the real world, horrid people do exist. Unfortunately even in the real world it is getting harder to effectively police such inflammatory comments due to the pervasion of the ‘right to free speech’. Yes…people are free to say what they please but they forget they have a responsibility for what they say (indeed all ‘rights’ come with corresponding ‘responsibilities’ that people conveniently seem to ignore).
The best thing you can do is report them for offensive behaviour and leave the group. No drop or item in WoW is worth listening to such offensive language. I applaud your bravery in sticking with it, but even I would have told them they were offensive and left.
Stick with your guild as much as you can. They are a safe area because they are like-minded people who understand notions of respect and decency. At the end of the day…they are the people you will go back to, not the pugs.
Dice_Girl, that’s really unfortunate, but when you’re admittedly running around with a character named “The Whore” (however accidentally) it’s going to be assumed that you’re one of the two types of people who name female wow characters degrading sex-themed names:
-a guy who thinks it’s funny to be sexist and/or touches himself while watching his character dance
-someone of any gender who enjoys the constant attention (Good or bad ideally, but always bad really) that blatantly advertising your sexual availability brings you.
Of course you’re neither, but that’s what everyone will assume when they see that name (given they know what La Puta is), and if you get indignant about it and give them crap, then you’re suddenly perceived as the kind of troll who “innocently” gives people a negative false impression of yourself to attract inappropriate behavior specifically so you can then act angry and indignant and humiliate them.
Again, of course you’re not, but you’ve accidentally painted yourself into a no-win corner here. Your only options really are to stop playing, to play exclusively with people you know, to level a new character to 80, or to shell out the $25 for a name change.
.-= Matt Neagley´s last blog ..Johnny’s Five – Five Things That Puzzles In RPGs Should Do =-.
A friend of mine linked something to me that reminded me of the discussion here. Though it’s seen from the ‘positive’ side of girls playing WoW, there are some interesting points in it. Especially the amount of girls who actually play WoW. It might be me, but I’m starting to wonder if those statistics mentioned are really true. Because then quite some of the guys I’ve played with might be girls.
And I had another thing to add to this discussion… I have quite a low voice myself but I’ve seen 3 girls getting abuse on vent because they had a high-pitched female voice. All in the past 2 weeks. :E So just saying it’s your own fault at some point (with the name of your char, like Matt Neagley thinks) doesn’t really make sense. I mean, it’s not like you can change your own voice. o_O But are there others who have seen this?
I’ve played WoW since it was released. I’ve usually stuck with my friends but have done many random groups. my experience has been that many ppl bend over backwards for women in these games or just think they’re men. Maybe some part of me wishes the player really was a woman but I’ve always assumed they where men. I’ve grown to resent women characters for that and have treated them as men. Maybe hostility is due to that also. im not saying I’ve bashed women for there ability to play.
@pixiedragon:
I’m not saying it’s ALWAYS a woman’s on fault they get treated poorly in wow or on vent. But sometimes it is. We’ve all seen the people who bring it on themselves, or who have made some accidental grievous error that brings it on themselves.
.-= Matt Neagley´s last blog ..Happy GM’s Day from the Gnomes! =-.
well there are alot of geeks and nerdy guys in wow who will never ever speak to a girl, and most likely feel good trashing on them even over the internet. I myself, being a guy, really hate these people, i wouldnt worry bout it considerin they are going no where in life, and that a 2 year old could probably beat the hell out of them if need be.
*looks around* Ok, missed this post…but I’m airdrying here so I’ll say something… … Actually, I think college humor already summed up my thoughts on that matter. It should have been called “Sammich Revenge” in my opinion… http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1939725