Frankster said:
My initial reflex was to think this is a very silly thing, if I can understand gender segregation in contact sports and areas where biological differences apply then I can accept it.
But in gaming where there no such barriers? It seemed silly.
But then I read other article about how the end result is few girls want to become progamers due to it being male dominated and the competitive scene+community being hostile to female gamers and now am not so sure, it seems segregation is needed to allow for female gamers to play without hassle and in turn get people used to the idea of a pro girl gamer without flipping out over it.
It reflects poorly on the progaming scene that this measure is even needed though :/ In a sane world this shouldn't need to happen anymore then gender segregated trains in japan.
CrazyCapnMorgan said:
That's a really bad example to use there along with your choice of wording "born without a dick" since as far as I understand it Scarlett was born with one...
Alright, for starters, I will say that this discussion is kind of over because they decided to make the league in question co-ed.
I'll also point out again, that I think a lot of people are missing a big part of the point here. I went through all the physical reasons for sports segregation, but there are mental and psychological ones as well, which as I mentioned are probably more important.
For decades there has been a lot of analysis of male and female thought processes, and the genders instinctively gravitate towards specific things and ways of doing them without any prompting or cultural reinforcement. It's pretty much the whole "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus" thing. People argue about it frequently, but it always comes down to the basic truth that men and women are wired differently. In an absolute sense our different tendencies tend to compliment each other and have served to preserve the species.
In the arena of gaming the thing to understand is that while there are exceptions, women tend to not be very aggressive or competitive in the same way, as most games are simulated battles or competitions, with violence of one sort or another being involved, even if just implied, women tend to find themselves at a disadvantage. Not to mention that for all "blue aisle/pink aisle" discussions one of the big issues in gaming is ironically a call for the end of segregation existing right alongside the call for more female developers because games are such a "testosterone fest" and how women want games with more relational responses as opposed to purely rational cause-effect solutions (ie... bad guys so I might fight them off). Barring the development of puzzle games or whatever that become popular without the battle/ inherent competition and domination elements yet can still be played competitively to some extent, I think women will tend to find themselves at a signifigent disadvantage.
Now do not get me wrong, SOME women do thrive in this environment, and will continue to do so, but at the same time you need a comparatively uncommon combination of the drive for that kind of conflict, combined with the ability to actually succeed against the best people out there. What this means is that rather than creating a co-ed environment where your going to see both men and women present at all levels of play in fairly equal numbers, your likely to still see very few women, and what's more it's going to lead to even worse sexism issues, because you'll hear people claiming conspiracies to keep women down, while at the same time any female player, especially if she's attractive and marketable is likely to be unusual enough to garner a bit of suspicion as well as to whether she got there under her own merits.
Now I could be wrong here, but understand I've been following this for a while, and I look at things like Ubisoft's "Frag Dolls" who have acted as a team representing Ubisoft with mixed results, as well as how the really infamous all-girl teams like "Team Siren" typically wind up actually being fairly low ranked. This is to say nothing of how you can even go back as far as multi-game MMO alliances like "Da Valkyries" (not sure if they are still around) who were an all-girl answer to hardcore male gamer guilds as far back as things like "Ultima Online", "Everquest", etc... and while they spawned a number of MMO chapters not once did I ever see a "Da Valkyries" affiliate wind up competing for serious domination of a server in either PVP or PVE. I also look at XBL and how they have organized groups like "Gamer Chix" specifically for women to play against other women without having to worry about dudes being involved, something which apparently has run it's own internal rankings and such.
While many people will of course call me sexist, I think the most practical thing here, and probably will make the most people happy, is simply to have men and women in separate leagues. Given that the differences are not atheletics, I'd probably also say that competitions should be arranged in the finals pitting the best from the mens and womens leagues against each other. This would mean that you wouldn't have to worry about girls getting "frozen out" by aggressive guys, and wind up with all the garbage that will probably go with a male dominated co-ed (on paper) league. Our lady E-athletes would get to play regularly, and at the end of the day the best would get to compete in a general sense.
Of course the problems I see might never transpire, but we'll see what happens. I don't imagine what I think is going to be very popular here of all places. I personally think people like the idea of a co-ed league more than they would like the results or the reality. Of course we'll see what happens, online CCGs aren't that big a deal, and while a simulated battle, it's actually something that has a chance of making one work without controversy.
Oh and let's be honest about something else here as well. Part of this is all the QQing about the sexist comments and such. To be brutally honest with you, half of the point of competition is being able to intimidate the other guy and get into their head. If your not confident in your gender and/or sexuality to just throw off people making comments about them (whatever it is) then you don't belong there. Just by whining about sexist comments and such during competition sort of makes the point about why women on average aren't really suited for this kind of environment. If you need someone to protect you from the other guy being intimidating and rude, you don't belong competing with him. This is something that applies to all kinds of seruous sports, in Football for example a scrimmage line is not a friendly place. If some huge guy can tell another guy that he's going to rape him or stick his fist up his arse in a scrum and get a reaction sufficient to distract/intimidate him he's going to do it. Conversely if it really "gets" a girl if someone on the other side talks about raping women (or them personally) and hampers their performance, people are going to do it... and again if you need to cry to left wingers, the media, and officials to protect you, you aren't secure enough to be there. Sure rape is horrible, but let's be honest, all jokes about homosexuality aside, guys have been threatening to rape each other in events like this since time immemorial, which is how "raping" someone has become synonymous with "domination" in competiton, with of course women being the ones who get all upset about the term because they aren't able to mentally throw it off and stay "in the game" the way a guy can. In fact it's become so casual in places much to the annoyance of many that it becomes almost a joke.
At the same time though, understand that when your not seriously involved in competition this kind of behavior is despicable. As a result during casual PVE raids and such when people talk like that it's stupid, the same for low ranked or relatively irrelevant RTS or MOBA matches or whatever. On the other hand if someone does it while competing for a serious ranking against someone else who is really good (where it will probably be back and forth and get really personal) it's sort of expected. It's sort of like telling a guy in football on the scrimmage line that your going to break both his legs in the next play so you can rape his kid and he won't be able to stop you. It's a ridiculous threat overall, but if it gets the guy thinking about that or pissed off at you to the point where he does stupid things so your team can score... well then it worked. It might seem "sick" to people that don't get it, but that's
all part of the game. It goes along with the *ahem* "Eye Of The Tiger" and the attitude it represents, in reality the guys who have that tend to be all about the intimidation of the people they compete with when they can pull it off.
But then again I do see the world a little differently from those who have been sheltered (even if they don't see it that way) and very little gets to me as people have tried to intimidate and threaten me and my family every way you can think of and some you probably can't (oh and the insults, the many insults). Part of being a pro when you confront other people in any context (I was casino security) is not letting anything, or anyone, really get to you. For a lot of people it's not that easy, but the bottom line unless you can develop a really thick hide to the most extreme things, you really don't belong putting yourself into adversarial situations professionally (and that's what we're talking about, pro gaming competitions are by definition adversarial, with very predatory people competing to see who can ultimately take a prize and/or high ranking).
