Callate said:
lilmisspotatoes said:
Gaming is a hobby often practiced by those who are already slightly on the outside of society due to high intelligence (and yes, this is my arrogance talking. Shush, I've earned it).
I can't help but wonder if this isn't a factor. There sometimes seems to be a fear among some women that men will be put off by them if said men realize the women are smarter than their male colleagues. (Nor will I deny that for some men, this may actually be an accurate supposition.)
This one always bugs me. If I am as intelligent as (or more intelligent than) a man who is my peer, I was taught to be proud of that fact, without showing off or being rude about it. And it's a gender-wide thing that won't be taken care of easily, but being a smart woman should be another thing that we take pride in, just as smart men take pride in their brains.
I agree that gamers often seem to be smarter than their non-game-playing peers. Without an ability to quickly understand and integrate fairly complex systems, one simply isn't likely gravitate towards gaming. (I'm waiting for the chicken-or-egg study that suggests that intelligence is born from exposure to games from an early age rather than games being the territory of intelligent people. Maybe some of the "games are turning our kids into murder machines" money could be siphoned off...)
Now that is a study that would make the world a MUCH more interesting place. It will likely never happen (but I bet Shigeru Miyamoto and Hideo Kojima could be convinced to produce something for it).
The slightly arcane nature of gaming to non-hobbyists, and the social isolation it creates for many (whether intelligence-born or not) also creates for non-hobbyists a tendency to view gamers as almost a foreign culture or a cult, with the attendant tendency to play amateur anthropologist whenever a member of the subgroup behaves outside the greater social norm. ("What is it about this strange, primitive tribe that lends itself to such baffling acts of violence?")
...that makes sense, and is a vaguely frightening idea.
I find it curious (TMI here, feel free to skip this part) that I have found more acceptance about talking to people about my interest in BDSM than I have discussing gaming pretty much anywhere away from these forums. It is more okay for me to go outside wearing a collar than it is to wear my favorite gaming shirts.
Interesting. It does raise oddly parallel questions about what people expect from stereotypical gender roles... It may also be that what one does in the bedroom is still treated with a degree of courtesy that's extended to private matters while what one does for socially for fun is "public" and fair game for judgement.
I do believe it is a mixture of both.
Video games are becoming more mainstream, but tabletop gaming is still mostly male-dominated, I Hit It With My Axe aside. And really, I'd give my right foot to be able to find a group of people that I could spend a few hours gaming with every week.
But again, it's a dream that will likely never come to fruition.
Without a good game store or college/university nearby, I'm somewhat at odds for advice. I recently visited a game store in Victoria B.C. and was issued a completely impromptu invitation to join the proprietor's group for the evening after a conversing for a time about what was new and good in the store. I guess if there are any local film festivals or book stores with good science fiction sections you might also run across regulars with whom there might be overlap.
Best of luck with that dream, in any case.
There's a coffee shop about 2 towns over that has a lot of gamers coming in. With luck, I'll be able to spend more time there and meet more people.
I'm hoping that this will be remedied if/when I move to Illinois, as my boyfriend is the GM of a decent gaming group, and has offered to teach me to run games of my own. That brings up a little more stigma in the 'I'm the GM's girlfriend' kind of way, but at the same time, I am excited.
