Exclusion in gaming.

[deadish]

There has been quite a bit of "discussion" about certain gaming communities being hostile to women.

But I do wonder, is it that big a deal?

I mean, even married couples have their own exclusionary activities.

Guys have "poker night", "going fishing" or just a night out drinking.

Women have "girls night out", where they do I don't know what.

Neither would want the opposite sex around for those aforementioned activities.

So why is it a big deal if certain games communities are guy-only?

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

For people to whom equality means identical mirror image and not freedom to do anything one likes to do whatever it is, there's a problem with all of those activities since to their angle these activities have a behind the scenes power imbalance shaping them.


To them it doesn't matter if people like to do these things or are happy doing them. The only thing that matters is that the thing which shaped these fine activities is inequality and they will not stop at anything to rid the world of the results of this inequality, be they positive or negative. Have they something better to offer as an alternative or not.



Basically, in simple terms, there's nothing that "guys have" and there's nothing that "women have". No activity is innately gendered. We're societally conditioned to simply think like that. The thing arises after this step. Some people just go with the flow and be happy, other people try to change things due to their personal individual issues. Some people will go so far to decry the first group of people who can simply be happy while knowing this is an issue that exists. They'll be of the opinion that if you don't decry something you support it (when in fact people simply don't care one way or the other and just do the thing which demands less effort) and this is where friction erupts.


Basically, don't bother with this mess. Just live your life.

 

[Phasmal]

Me and my boyfriend play poker (and videogames) together so I guess we better reassess our world view.

And there's your problem.
You can't be like `this for boys, that for girls and never the twain shall meet!`. It doesn't work that way, it's dumb.
Plenty o' ladies like games, so it's not a guys thing.

Stereotypes are not the best way to run your life.

 

[nomotog_v1legacy]

Because guys poker night or girls night our are about being gender exclusionary. It's kind of their reason for existence. They are made as a way for guys to be guys and girls to be girls. Games are more about games, so the exclusionary is really necessarily. Also games are kind of bigger then your poker night. It's not really a big deal to have a poker game that excludes women, but when you have a large institution (like gameing) that excludes women, it gets problematic. Well more problematic that is.

 

[Starbird]

There has been quite a bit of "discussion" about certain gaming communities being hostile to women.

But I do wonder, is it that big a deal?

I mean, even married couples have their own exclusionary activities.

Guys have "poker night", "going fishing" or just a night out drinking.

Women have "girls night out", where they do I don't know what.

Neither would want the opposite sex around for those aforementioned activities.

So why is it a big deal if certain games communities are guy-only?

Because these are small scale social events, not massive global industries with significant cultural impact.

 

[Spanglish Guy]

Gaming isn't really comparable to those examples you stated. Gaming is a massive medium where anyone should be able to find something to enjoy, there shouldn't be any exclusivity at all.

 

[Racecarlock]

Well, here in modern times, women can do anything men can and are allowed to do so. Even the military lets women on the front line should they pass the physical requirements.

Plus, there is no good reason for any activity to be exclusionary. Hundreds of shit reasons, but not one good one. And that goes doubly so for gaming. Nobody gets to decide which gender can play which games. That's not how freedom works.

 

[Colour Scientist]

I know, right?


Those icky girls coming in here, ruining our fun, not laughing at our fart jokes or crude sexual innuendos (intheirendos though, amirite?).

 

[Booklover13]

There has been quite a bit of "discussion" about certain gaming communities being hostile to women.

But I do wonder, is it that big a deal?

I mean, even married couples have their own exclusionary activities.

Guys have "poker night", "going fishing" or just a night out drinking.

Women have "girls night out", where they do I don't know what.

Neither would want the opposite sex around for those aforementioned activities.

So why is it a big deal if certain games communities are guy-only?

The primary reasons 'communities'(not sarcasm) would be unable to be exclusive is that most 'communities' are extensions of 'business' and other 'entities' that, at least in the US, are prevented by law from excluding other genders. Note by extensions I do mean they are in some way supported by a business. Like how this form is supported by Defy Media, LLC. Defy Media, LLC would not be able to refuse sale of a pub club subscription. This does not mean that gendered parts of a 'community' can not exist, just that they can not exist in a proper business sense. Of course there are exceptions and stuff, I am mostly speaking in general.

To be more clear lets look at it from the prospective of another 'community.' How about foodies? There is clearly a 'foodie community.' Restaurants are a major part of this community. A restaurant would not be able to serve a customer based on gender. Thus the restaurant must not be exclusive. However another aspect of the community is dinner parties. Because the dinner party is a private individual in a private home. They can choose to only allow one gender to come in. Note how one is business based and one is personal. That is the main issue.

The major problem gaming runs into is that the community's primary meeting location is online. The facilitates are businesses that can not discriminate based on gender and therefore cannot be excursive. Exclusivity in large groups in general is hard for this reason.

Also I think I understand what your trying to get at. Please let me know if I am wrong in what I say next. Your concern is that you will no longer be able to have an all guy time/event. Because mixing genders does affect dynamics. I do a agree to the idea that a male or female focused areas in these larger communities can be a good thing. The problem that arises is age old "separate, and not equal." One side being favored over the other, and it is less about each side having a 'safe space' and more about not letting people in. There is also the argument that there does not exist the same kind of spaces for women gamers and therefore it is an issue.

I also write this from the point of view of being female, and loving poker, and not having exclusionary activities in my relationship, and having girls day out(ours involve yarn), and being okay with the boys spending that time playing video games. Just in case anyone cares.

Disclaimer: Not a lawyer, may be wrong, but this is how I understand/see it.

 

[deadish]

Guys have "poker night", "going fishing" or just a night out drinking.

All three things that only exclude women because there is a consens from the group of people participating that they want to spend some time with people of the same gender. Nothing of that is exclusive for men. One of my closest female friends organises poker nights at ther home and when I go out drinking I have women participating all the time. And fishing... well, the last time I was fishing I was 7 years old and lived in Ukraine in an area with bodies of water close by.

And no-bloody-one talks about "certain gaming communities" being male only.

People talk about certain communities being hostile/unwelcoming to women ...

My question is, what's the problem?

Girls night out frequently don't include men - wouldn't be a girls night out if it did. We accept that without much protest. So why all the outrage if a gaming community isn't friendly towards women.

 

[C. Cain]

People talk about certain communities being hostile/unwelcoming to women ...

My question is, what's the problem?

Girls night out frequently don't include men - wouldn't be a girls night out if it did. We accept that without much protest. So why all the outrage if a gaming community isn't friendly towards women.

The activity itself is not the domain of one gender. The "Night out community", if you will, consists of males, females, and everything in between. Your example mentions a specific group of people who participate in said activity with "house rules", e.g. No guys allowed.

Gaming, by the same token, is also not the domain of one gender. Gaming communities also consist of males, females, and everything in between. Individually you can find yourself a group and exclude whoever you want.

That still doesn't give you a free pass to be hostile to the minorities within the community.

 

[Lieju]

Girls night out frequently don't include men - wouldn't be a girls night out if it did. We accept that without much protest. So why all the outrage if a gaming community isn't friendly towards women.

You're still free to call your guy friends and have a gaming night together without icky female cooties.
And, I dunno, talk about Reality tv or building houses or whatever it is guys talk about. Your gender is a mystery to me.

Or only invite red-heads.

Or people called 'Sam'.

You and your buddies doing stuff together as a social group =/= the gaming community.

 

[beastro]

For people to whom equality means identical mirror image and not freedom to do anything one likes to do whatever it is, there's a problem with all of those activities since to their angle these activities have a behind the scenes power imbalance shaping them.


To them it doesn't matter if people like to do these things or are happy doing them. The only thing that matters is that the thing which shaped these fine activities is inequality and they will not stop at anything to rid the world of the results of this inequality, be they positive or negative. Have they something better to offer as an alternative or not.



Basically, in simple terms, there's nothing that "guys have" and there's nothing that "women have". No activity is innately gendered. We're societally conditioned to simply think like that. The thing arises after this step. Some people just go with the flow and be happy, other people try to change things due to their personal individual issues. Some people will go so far to decry the first group of people who can simply be happy while knowing this is an issue that exists. They'll be of the opinion that if you don't decry something you support it (when in fact people simply don't care one way or the other and just do the thing which demands less effort) and this is where friction erupts.


Basically, don't bother with this mess. Just live your life.

Good sensible, advice.

Sadly there'll be people that'll scowl at this as blasphemy.

When I think of "meet too" kind of people I think of my cousins kids when all four of them were treated the exact same, they were miserable because they weren't treated as individuals, but God forbid you'd try to break the mold or accusations of "unfair" started being thrown about.

 

[Aesir23]

Guys have "poker night", "going fishing" or just a night out drinking.

All three things that only exclude women because there is a consens from the group of people participating that they want to spend some time with people of the same gender. Nothing of that is exclusive for men. One of my closest female friends organises poker nights at ther home and when I go out drinking I have women participating all the time. And fishing... well, the last time I was fishing I was 7 years old and lived in Ukraine in an area with bodies of water close by.

And no-bloody-one talks about "certain gaming communities" being male only.

People talk about certain communities being hostile/unwelcoming to women ...

My question is, what's the problem?

Girls night out frequently don't include men - wouldn't be a girls night out if it did. We accept that without much protest. So why all the outrage if a gaming community isn't friendly towards women.

You're still free to have a gaming night with just the guys just like I'm free to have a gaming night with just my female friends. That does not mean that you are free to be hostile/exclude a group from the activity at large. You can not put a figurative "No Girls/Boys/Flying Spaghetti Monsters Allowed" sign on the actual activity of playing video games.

 

[Bad Jim]

When you play poker with your friends, or go fishing, or drinking, you only exclude women from one unimportant social gathering. Women can still play poker, go fishing or drinking, just not with you.

When a gaming community is hostile to women, it can make it difficult or even impossible to enjoy that game.

 

[Irick]

I've been seeing the sentiment being thrown around here that basically gaming is larger than one meeting. Which is very true.
It seems like perhaps the analogy you picked isn't very apt to the comparison. Lets instead compare the exclusion of women in professional level sports. This is a bit more tricky of a problem. Is it right to bar women from the NFL based solely on their sex? There is a long standing tradition of it, there are justifications for it, and people seem to more or less accept it as the thing to do.

If we compare that to gaming though, we see that there are women on all levels of play, from casual to pro circut. I don't know of _any_ communities that are 'guy only' within the gaming community at large. Even my D&D group occasionally has a female player. I think that it may _appear_ like some of the hard core gaming audiences are guy only, but that is really only because the interest level for girls is markedly lower. About one college age girls to every seven college age males are interested in games at the level where they play 20+ hours a week. ( http://www.heri.ucla.edu/monographs/TheAmericanFreshman2013-Expanded.pdf )

Of those that play, I do think that there is more or less a representative number across gaming. The majority of gamers just don't care enough to exclude them.

So TL;DR: Mu (the question is wrong)

*edit*
Linked the basic findings rather than the (useful in this case) expanded tables

 

[Ushiromiya Battler]

There has been quite a bit of "discussion" about certain gaming communities being hostile to women.

But I do wonder, is it that big a deal?

I mean, even married couples have their own exclusionary activities.

Guys have "poker night", "going fishing" or just a night out drinking.

Women have "girls night out", where they do I don't know what.

Neither would want the opposite sex around for those aforementioned activities.

So why is it a big deal if certain games communities are guy-only?

Because as far as I know, those activities doesn't involve actively being hostile against the other gender they want to be included.

And no, contrary to popular belief gaming communities aren't generally guys only.
And turning it into it is not a good idea.
What we do have is young male kids and men that can't stand the fact that woman also likes games, but they aren't spokespersons of the community no matter how much other people tell us they are.

 

[LawAndChaos]

I don't know, has gaming ever been some sort of mutual boys club? I just assumed girls weren't as into games is all. Of course everyone is an individual, so gaming depends on the person, not the gender. And back when I was younger, gaming itself was just treated as something nerdy unpopular kids did. It didn't matter what gender you were; so long as you liked gaming, you were a nerd.

I never really saw gaming as something that was gender-exclusive.

Games are fun, people are assholes, and everyone should have the right to play games if they want to. I don't see why it's such a humongous problem to be inclusive.

Issues with gender are in our society, and our games are a reflection of society. But then we should be trying to change society, not gaming (not to say gaming doesn't need to change. It does). You can draw a moustache on your relection in the mirror, but it won't actually give you a moustache. Not to say I don't see the reasoning behind trying to clean the mirror to get a better look at the reflection.

I dunno, it just seems like it's the usual business of gamers being caustic because they are, and because they can. People are assholes on the internet, and someone's going to shit on you online or in a game because they can.

Of course it's not that simple, I'm just kinda following my train of thought on it.

 

[Mikeybb]

I know, right?


Those icky girls coming in here, ruining our fun, not laughing at our fart jokes or crude sexual innuendos (intheirendos though, amirite?).

You forgot the danger of cooties.

 

[zen5887]

There has been quite a bit of "discussion" about certain gaming communities being hostile to women.

But I do wonder, is it that big a deal?

I mean, even married couples have their own exclusionary activities.

Guys have "poker night", "going fishing" or just a night out drinking.

Women have "girls night out", where they do I don't know what.

Neither would want the opposite sex around for those aforementioned activities.

So why is it a big deal if certain games communities are guy-only?

You're thinking on a different level. Having a party with just your guy friends or a bunch of girls going dancing isn't a "community". The Escapist, /r/games on Reddit, the LoL tournaments at the local LAN centre, the university gaming society are "communities". Surely you can understand the problem with having those exist as "guys only".