Are Women Tournaments Sexist?

[GoaThief]

This is going to sound very bad and I expect I'll pick up some flak for it but I've yet to see a female be the #1 player at any video game. Now I'm not saying they don't exist at all but even expanding it further into the very top tiers, I really struggle to name any females at all. Good, certainly... but never great. Why is this?

For the record I don't think separate competitions for women in gaming are the way forward, but I wouldn't say single-sex competitions are inherently sexist either.

 

[veloper]

I don't begrudge anyone their little pleasure of a women-only tournament.

Any type of segregation goes, even down to religion and skin color, as long as it's only unimportant stuff like sports and tournaments like this one.

Let them have their own fun if X want to be seperate from the rest.

Okay . Let's assume what you say is true . Let's start holding men only turnaments . Suddendly people will be crying sexism .

If the next fightin game tournament or whatever. Decide . Hey this is going to be an all male tornament . Shit will go down . And the worst part is . Most likely , nothing would have changed from the tournament due to the low/non-existant participation of women .

OT: this is just silly . This is basically saying , "we cannot beat guys , so will make our own tournament! With hookers ! And blackjack!". NO , what you should do is play against the guys and come out in first place . THAT's how you get takken. Seriously.

It would help there if the organizers make it less of an open tournament, but more a private event.
Ofcourse even then some people will be crying sexism, but people always are. The boys will survive that.

The reason why the sexism card won't be played as often in this women-only scenario is because of a simple hypocricy: women are often seen a minority.
Not a true minority for their non-existent lack of numbers, but for a perceived a lack of strength or ability.

 

[Something Amyss]

Video Games are not real sports where Men hold an advantage because of body composition

Oh woooooow.

Is this a sexist thing?

Sure it is. However, integrated tournaments tend to end up with sexism problems of their own, so what's the solution? Personally, I'd opt for the one with the least chance of sexual harassment.

 

[Dr. Doomsduck]

Ideally, there shouldn't have to be different divisions based solely on gender, but given how often women are treated differently when they game, I honestly can't blame them for wanting their own division.

I've participated in a couple of general fighting game tournaments at anime conventions (along with a bunch of other women) and they're a lot of fun. Everyone gets along and has a great time, but those tournaments are FAR from the "pro" level. Why we don't have that in the "pro" level is beyond me.

Basically this. Aside from the fact that girls are often discouraged from gaming by parents/society/culture or whatnot, the mentality on those pro-tournaments aren't exactly welcoming to female gamers either. If people are just going to insult me or ask me to tell them my bra-size, why the hell would I want to participate in a competition with them?

Plus, women are, according to the same kind of bullshit social research people are so fond of in this thread, better at collaboration and multitasking, which are pretty important in these team-oriented games.

 

[Dr. Doomsduck]

Joke answer:maybe they do that protect the women from getting bullied/raped/sexual harassed by the male players? The male team could try to rape the female team before the match?

real answer:But in the end I think they do this because in real life men and women have to play separated from each other so they do the same in e sports

I fail to see how this is a joke...

or a real answer.

 

[Something Amyss]

Joke answer:maybe they do that protect the women from getting bullied/raped/sexual harassed by the male players?

Ummm...You do know that the bullying and sexual harassment part DOES happen, right?

Kind of tasteless "joke" answer there.

 

[PirateRose]

On a certain level, it is sexist. In a way it's beneficial because it creates a girls club to counter the boys club. The women will encourage each other and will become better with time. But it is potentially harmful because it's enforcing gender stereotypes. You can already see it in this thread. The problem is these women are being told they suck and need a separate area to be safe from the big, mean boys. However if introduced to playing with a group of men, they'll be told they suck either to their face directly by big, mean boys, or subliminally thanks to social stereotypes.

The idea that men can perform better with video games than women just falls into the social conditioning. If you're told you will suck at something before you even try, because you are born a certain way, then you won't bother. If you do try, you'll believe you suck by nature and you will not try very hard. As a wise Jedi master once said: do or do not, there is no try. These women need to start thinking I can do better.

In Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference by Cordellia Fine, Chapter 3 talks about how there have been many experiments run to essentially trick the mind into reversing gender roles. They keep the task the same between different groups of people, but tell the different groups that it was designed specifically for men, specifically for women, or both men and women perform equally or they don't mention any gender specifics at all. And it works as planned every time. They've even been able to get men to be better at reading emotions than women in these tests.

The one example that the book was provided by the City University of New York psychologist Catherin Good and it was performed on students enrolled in a fast and difficult calculus class that would get them into the hard sciences.

"The students were given a calculus test made up of questions from the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) Math test and, to motivate them, were told they would get extra credit based on their performance. (In reality, everyone received the same credit.) The test packet handed out to each student included some information about the test. Students in the stereotype treat condition were told that the test was designed to measure their math ability, to try to better understand what makes people better at math than others. This kind of statement can on it's own create a stereotype threat for women, who are well aware of their own stereotyped inferiority in mathematics. But added to this, in the non threat condition, was the information that despite testing on thousands of students no gender difference had ever been found. So what was the effect of this extra information?
...
Amoung the participants, men and women in the threat condition scored about 19 percent on this very difficult test. But women in the nonthreat group scored an average of 30 percent correct, thus outperforming every other group- including both groups of men.

There is also another example where before performing the math test, the men were told the test was specifically designed for women and men struggled with it. The women and men passed relatively equally, but the men under the stereotype threat took twice as long on the test as the nonthreat group of men because the very same math test was intimidating for them.

 

[rbstewart7263]

Research found that men tend to use one side of their brain (particularly the left side for verbal reasoning) while women tend to use both cerebral areas for visual, verbal and emotional responses. These differences in brain use cause a difference in behavior between men and women. Women tend to be better at sensing emotional messages in conversations, gestures, and facial expressions, and are thus more sensitive. Women start to speak and read at an earlier age than men and are generally better in verbal skills, such as learning a different language. They tend to have a better grasp on grammar and spelling, and girls have better handwriting than boys do. Women have better sight at night and have a more acute sense of smell, taste and hearing.

Men are better in spatial coordination and have a better sense of direction (usually!). They excel in math and are great at interpreting three-dimensional objects. They have a better hand-eye coordination and more precise control of large muscle movement. They have poor peripheral vision but better sight in bright light and a better sense of perspective. Since they use one side of their brain more than the other, they tend to use the left side for verbal reasoning and the right for visual and emotional activities (if they are right handed).

These differences are not rules. It is easy to find women who excel in math and men who have excellent language skills (and it is even easier to find men with no sense of direction). Chances are the above statements are not going to work for your everyday situation, but these have been shown to be true in scientific studies, based on large, diverse populations. When looking at large populations, these differences between men and women become evident, and proper statistical analysis takes care of the exceptions.

Source: http://www.columbia.edu/itc/anthropology/v1007/jakabovics/mf2.html

Emphasis mine.

Do you even know how DotA is played or do you just enjoy quoting stuff?

EDIT: Okay that was pretty condescending sorry, let me elaborate. DotA is a team game, coordination between the 5 people (not coordinating your arm and brain, coordinating 5 people, that's very very different) having a really good reaction time to be effective at high level plays (specially with heroes who require positioning or have skills that affect the tide of the battle. Example Mekansm, Chen's Hand of God, Tidehunter Ravage, Rubick Spell steal and so on) and being able to understand and predict what is going on when everything's going to hell in a highly chaotic team battle, do note that when I play invoker I by myself usually cast 10 considerably flashy spells in a 11 second window, often using items as well in between skills all while changing orbs between spell compositions and switching back to orbs for attacking (wex or exort) so it also requires some skill but that's mostly practice.

actually that spatial awareness thing does give men a good edge in the game department. That would explain the disparity in male and female gamers in sports and shooters so it could be possible that a woman would have either a harder time being competitive or would have to train twice as hard as a man would to be competitive.

 

[blackrave]

Joke answer:maybe they do that protect the women from getting bullied/raped/sexual harassed by the male players?

Ummm...You do know that the bullying and sexual harassment part DOES happen, right?

Kind of tasteless "joke" answer there.

I fail to understand why women don't trash talk back
You know, talking about small penis size and overcompensation
Mentioning him being mommas boy, whiny and annoying
Stuff like that- it can't be that hard to figure out ways to insult and humiliate back.
From my experience women are excellent at emotional violence, and trash talking isn't anything more than emotional violence.

 

[TheMann]

I remember reading an article a few weeks ago about a South Korean woman who was a Starcraft champion in the women's league, I thought it was odd that they segregated players by gender.

They went on to say that when she entered the "Men's League" her performance level wasn't as dominating.

I'm also reminded of the time Stevie Case defeated John Romero in Quake deathmatch.
If a woman can beat a man at a game that he helped CREATE than I think it's obvious that a woman can compete against a man on equal footing in this venue.

Huh, I thought that Starcraft leagues weren't segregated by gender. (Ah, I Googled it. Some tournaments have separate divisions, others are mixed.)

Anyway, the fact that a woman beat John Romero in Quake doesn't prove any sort of gender equality or inequality. Just because Romero was one of the main developers of Quake in does not automatically mean that he is a superior player. Starcraft is a great example of this. I'm willing to bet that almost any pro Starcraft player, male or female, would absolutely kick the shit out of any member of Blizzard's dev team.

 

[Dr. Doomsduck]

Joke answer:maybe they do that protect the women from getting bullied/raped/sexual harassed by the male players? The male team could try to rape the female team before the match?

real answer:But in the end I think they do this because in real life men and women have to play separated from each other so they do the same in e sports

I fail to see how this is a joke...

or a real answer.

Its a joke because no one would rape a another team for a advantage

Joke answer:maybe they do that protect the women from getting bullied/raped/sexual harassed by the male players?

Ummm...You do know that the bullying and sexual harassment part DOES happen, right?

Kind of tasteless "joke" answer there.

true it does but most women can handle/ignore it and prove that trashtalking doesn't make you a better player it just shows how shitty of a player you are.

(the internet is full of tasteless jokes)

And people wonder why we want a league of our own...

Listen sweetheart, I'm gonna go and guess that you're a white male, ranging between the age of 13 - 30 and that you've never even taken a moment to envision the horror that is rape, the dehumanisation of sexual harrasment and the ongoing rape culture that still exists everywhere on earth.

Basically, as long as women are accused of provoking rape in courts, there will never be a funny sexual harrasment joke. As long as our gender gives us a negative view on society, you don't get to make those jokes. Speaking of Rape: there was an article here a couple of months ago called the R-word. I suggest you read that, then picture it happening to you and THEN think about that thick skin people are supposed to have.

Just, drill that in your thick skull mkay, and realize that it really isn't up to you to decide what's okay when you're not the one duped by it.

 

[rbstewart7263]

Joke answer:maybe they do that protect the women from getting bullied/raped/sexual harassed by the male players?

Ummm...You do know that the bullying and sexual harassment part DOES happen, right?

Kind of tasteless "joke" answer there.

I fail to understand why women don't trash talk back
You know, talking about small penis size and overcompensation
Mentioning him being mommas boy, whiny and annoying
Stuff like that- it can't be that hard to figure out ways to insult and humiliate back.
From my experience women are excellent at emotional violence, and trash talking isn't anything more than emotional violence.

aaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnddddddd THIS! Id rather be equal in the sense that I can trash talk a woman and she can trash talk me back! thats much more in the spirit of competitive gaming than, " lets all be nicey nice and make her feel welcome"

That said I do believe you should know the person first. This may come as a shock but there are plenty of girls who laugh there ass off at sexist jokes and can dish it out.

But I think this what happens when we confuse a "difference in rights and privelege" and whats simply one person having a thicker skin than the other.

 

[(sic) humor]

I remember asking the same thing about women's Go tournaments. A friend suggested that maybe they were necessary to cultivate female players who would otherwise be turned away by the male dominated game.

He later said he was bullshitting. It sounded convincing at first, but it was still sexist and patronizing.

So no, we shouldn't divide non-physical activities between men and women, we should encourage skilled women to enter coed tournaments.

 

[Dr. Doomsduck]

Joke answer:maybe they do that protect the women from getting bullied/raped/sexual harassed by the male players?

Ummm...You do know that the bullying and sexual harassment part DOES happen, right?

Kind of tasteless "joke" answer there.

I fail to understand why women don't trash talk back
You know, talking about small penis size and overcompensation
Mentioning him being mommas boy, whiny and annoying
Stuff like that- it can't be that hard to figure out ways to insult and humiliate back.
From my experience women are excellent at emotional violence, and trash talking isn't anything more than emotional violence.

Because that kind of talk doesn't change the fact that 91% of all rapes are inflicted upon women and only 1% is done by them. It doesn't change the fact that, in this society, a man has a better chance of getting a job when he applies.

You cannot compare a case of racism or sexism to general trashtalk, because being a 'momma's boy' isn't a structural problem in modern society that can be tracked back to the stone age. By enforcing the 'fun' in rape and sexual harrasement, you're enforcing stereotypes that not hurt us as a person, but our perceived inferiority to men.

And believe you me, when a guy start yelling that kind of shit at me, I always get the tendency to make neutering jokes, but, again, that would just enforce his idea that he is allowed to make jokes about it.

 

[Chemical Alia]

Men are better in spatial coordination and have a better sense of direction (usually!). They excel in math and are great at interpreting three-dimensional objects. They have a better hand-eye coordination and more precise control of large muscle movement. They have poor peripheral vision but better sight in bright light and a better sense of perspective. Since they use one side of their brain more than the other, they tend to use the left side for verbal reasoning and the right for visual and emotional activities (if they are right handed).

Source: http://www.columbia.edu/itc/anthropology/v1007/jakabovics/mf2.html

Emphasis mine.

That theory does does sure seem interesting and relevant to a top down orthographic game played on a monitor that displays flat 2d images! This would also explain my shittiness at 3d modeling, what was I thinking with that pea brain of mine. I can't make heads or tails of what I see!

But anyway, it doesn't seem necessary, and it's not something I would choose to participate in unless it was a more casual setting just for fun (I tend to be competitive and I don't like to feel patronized) and to make women feel more welcome to playing the game. Don't really see what the big deal is, though.

 

[rbstewart7263]

Joke answer:maybe they do that protect the women from getting bullied/raped/sexual harassed by the male players?

Ummm...You do know that the bullying and sexual harassment part DOES happen, right?

Kind of tasteless "joke" answer there.

I fail to understand why women don't trash talk back
You know, talking about small penis size and overcompensation
Mentioning him being mommas boy, whiny and annoying
Stuff like that- it can't be that hard to figure out ways to insult and humiliate back.
From my experience women are excellent at emotional violence, and trash talking isn't anything more than emotional violence.

Because that kind of talk doesn't change the fact that 91% of all rapes are inflicted upon women and only 1% is done by them. It doesn't change the fact that, in this society, a man has a better chance of getting a job when he applies.

You cannot compare a case of racism or sexism to general trashtalk, because being a 'momma's boy' isn't a structural problem in modern society that can be tracked back to the stone age. By enforcing the 'fun' in rape and sexual harrasement, you're enforcing stereotypes that not hurt us as a person, but our perceived inferiority to men.

And believe you me, when a guy start yelling that kind of shit at me, I always get the tendency to make neutering jokes, but, again, that would just enforce his idea that he is allowed to make jokes about it.

I would check where your statistics come from alot of second wave fems and fems who hold key positions of power would and have admitted to fudging statistics as to create an air of ongoing conspiracy against women.

Like that 90 percent of rapes go unreported thing? Turns out the true number of reported rapes is around 55 percent. When asked about the disparity the ladies who issued the test simply said that "the numbers dont matter" and they do when trying to figure out for example if we are a violence loving rape culture or simply a culture with a few bad apples.

that said our judicial system does not favor rape victims at all and I cant for the life of me figure out why.

http://www.freewebs.com/feminism-evaluated/

and people hate men that live with mom???

 

[Dr. Doomsduck]

Joke answer:maybe they do that protect the women from getting bullied/raped/sexual harassed by the male players?

Ummm...You do know that the bullying and sexual harassment part DOES happen, right?

Kind of tasteless "joke" answer there.

I fail to understand why women don't trash talk back
You know, talking about small penis size and overcompensation
Mentioning him being mommas boy, whiny and annoying
Stuff like that- it can't be that hard to figure out ways to insult and humiliate back.
From my experience women are excellent at emotional violence, and trash talking isn't anything more than emotional violence.

aaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnddddddd THIS! Id rather be equal in the sense that I can trash talk a woman and she can trash talk me back! thats much more in the spirit of competitive gaming than, " lets all be nicey nice and make her feel welcome"

That said I do believe you should know the person first. This may come as a shock but there are plenty of girls who laugh there ass off at sexist jokes and can dish it out.

But I think this what happens when we confuse a "difference in rights and privelege" and whats simply one person having a thicker skin than the other.

I trashtalk every one of my male friends when we're gaming, and obviously there are sexist jokes happening there, but they know me, and I'm not being singled out for being a girl, whereas that chick in the Tekken tournament was picked on because she was different from the others, by her own team even! The question is, are you trashtalking me because I'm a girl, or because I am a person competing.