Women Belonging in Video Games: #1ReasonToBe
- Thread starter Rowan Kaiser
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Which part? The equal opportunity part of the equal outcome part? As far as equal opportunity goes I mean under the law. Obviously someone who is born into a poor family will not have the same opportunities as someone who is born into a rich family but those are not really standards you can measure its just the luck of the draw. Both the poor and the rich have the same opportunities in theory and have the same rights under the law. Same logic could be applied to men and women.softclocks said:
If you are referring to the equal outcomes part of course I believe that is bad. That is basically saying if we both go to school for the same degree with the same effort and grades that we would both end up getting jobs that pay well. This is not the case and it never should be. Maybe in a perfect world but in reality there are many more variables that will play into how successful you become regardless of what you did to try and become successful. Maybe I am a great student but an awful employee. Why should my going to school guarantee anything?
I can't speak on behalf of female game designers, but I haven't forgotten about what happened to Zoe Quinn with Depression Quest.
Now I CAN discuss the experience of being a female gamer who likes to play co-op games. I can't even count the number of times I've had to deal with sexist and rather disgusting attitudes and behaviors. Sometimes all I hear are comments about what I'd be like naked, how I should sex up my talk in chat, or that we women are the cause of every failure the team experiences. And no, I'm not talking about CoD, which I've never played and never will. But I HAVE played GTA Online and the sexism there runs rampant. It's almost like some men take the same attitude that cheap-shot and cowardly players take: "It's GTA so we're supposed to be nasty." I stopped playing that game (and others) for the most part because it was so hurtful, and now I only go on there when my respectful friends, all of whom are men, invite me to do missions with them because they believe in my abilities.
Don't get me wrong - this isn't about men in general, but about the situations I've experienced far too often. The guys I choose to play with have progressive attitudes toward women in gaming; however, I've actively selected those particular guys as friends, as well as people I truly like to game with. They invite me to everything and never degrade women or my performance.
There ARE plenty of guys like that in the gaming community, so again, please don't take this as a rant against guys in general.
Now I CAN discuss the experience of being a female gamer who likes to play co-op games. I can't even count the number of times I've had to deal with sexist and rather disgusting attitudes and behaviors. Sometimes all I hear are comments about what I'd be like naked, how I should sex up my talk in chat, or that we women are the cause of every failure the team experiences. And no, I'm not talking about CoD, which I've never played and never will. But I HAVE played GTA Online and the sexism there runs rampant. It's almost like some men take the same attitude that cheap-shot and cowardly players take: "It's GTA so we're supposed to be nasty." I stopped playing that game (and others) for the most part because it was so hurtful, and now I only go on there when my respectful friends, all of whom are men, invite me to do missions with them because they believe in my abilities.
Don't get me wrong - this isn't about men in general, but about the situations I've experienced far too often. The guys I choose to play with have progressive attitudes toward women in gaming; however, I've actively selected those particular guys as friends, as well as people I truly like to game with. They invite me to everything and never degrade women or my performance.
There ARE plenty of guys like that in the gaming community, so again, please don't take this as a rant against guys in general.
I can't think of anyone who says this aside from Strawman versions of Second Wave Feminists.PirateRose said:
Even real Second Wave Feminists, when they talk about "the Patriarchy," just mean the massive history of male rule and ownership of women, not any sort of conscious evil conspiracy. It is always about society in general having the issue.
Anyway....
On the matter of the tone of the article, I think the issue with the tone (and there is one) has more to do with gushing than bad writing. This was clearly written "in the moment" shortly after the writer left the panel and was still feeling jazzed up about it. I think the weird (and inconsistent) tone is a reflection of the writer being in a moment of high emotion and not thinking all that clearly.
As for the weird paraphrases that sort of merge with the quotes... yeah, that was pretty off-putting. Again, likely caused by writing the article from memory just after the panel ended.
Tonight I got another lovely example to add to my collection.
I was playing Dungeon Defenders with my friends but the 4th person in the party was just some random kid who joined our party chat. He was horribly offensive and started to get nastier as my friends - all guys - chastised him for his behavior. Instead of retaliating against them, he went after me, calling me a ***** and a fat ass (which I kept laughing at because most everyone who meets me makes some comment about how skinny I am and that I need to eat). Never mind the fact that I didn't say a word to him regarding how he was acting.
One of my friends kicked him out of party chat after we finished up the final dungeon we were going to do with him. Well, the punk-ass kid kept threatening to quit in the middle of the run, saying he was going to go jerk off and eat toast (what...?).
Very shortly after he was kicked out by my friend, he sent me a voice message in which he sang this (direct quote):
Johnny jizzed in the bucket of chicken
bucket of chicken
jerking off with toast
Johnny jizzed in the bucket of chicken
go fuck yourself
He didn't send anything to my friends (again, who are all guys) despite the fact that it was THEM who kept chastising him and eventually kicked him out. The only thing I did was laugh at the nasty words he kept spewing at me (but didn't say such things to my friends).
See, this is what it's like being a girl gamer who enjoys multiplayer and co-op games. It happens to me at least once a week. Unfortunately, having a very thick skin is a must-have for us girls. For the most part, we don't have the luxury of being ourselves and simply enjoying a game.
I was playing Dungeon Defenders with my friends but the 4th person in the party was just some random kid who joined our party chat. He was horribly offensive and started to get nastier as my friends - all guys - chastised him for his behavior. Instead of retaliating against them, he went after me, calling me a ***** and a fat ass (which I kept laughing at because most everyone who meets me makes some comment about how skinny I am and that I need to eat). Never mind the fact that I didn't say a word to him regarding how he was acting.
One of my friends kicked him out of party chat after we finished up the final dungeon we were going to do with him. Well, the punk-ass kid kept threatening to quit in the middle of the run, saying he was going to go jerk off and eat toast (what...?).
Very shortly after he was kicked out by my friend, he sent me a voice message in which he sang this (direct quote):
Johnny jizzed in the bucket of chicken
bucket of chicken
jerking off with toast
Johnny jizzed in the bucket of chicken
go fuck yourself
He didn't send anything to my friends (again, who are all guys) despite the fact that it was THEM who kept chastising him and eventually kicked him out. The only thing I did was laugh at the nasty words he kept spewing at me (but didn't say such things to my friends).
See, this is what it's like being a girl gamer who enjoys multiplayer and co-op games. It happens to me at least once a week. Unfortunately, having a very thick skin is a must-have for us girls. For the most part, we don't have the luxury of being ourselves and simply enjoying a game.
Oh dear God, thanks for putting exactly what I was feeling into words. Every time I see one of these "Encourage women to get into gaming!" pieces, I always roll my eyes. It always sounds like a bunch of complaining about the industry being too hard to get into - but it's hard for everyone to get into it. It's not because you're a woman. You're just assuming it is because sexism been a thing before, so OF COURSE it's a thing here too!Smilomaniac said:
Or, you know, the game industry is a notoriously tough, cutthroat sort of business where only a few make enough to pay the bills, much less roll around in cash. If you really want respect, if you really want people to listen to you, make them. Be so damn good at your job that they haven't got a choice. But if you're too hard on yourself and your ideas, if you're too afraid to pitch your concept to Schaffer, that's not the industry's fault. That's not the workplace's fault. That's YOURS. Own up to that. Don't blame others because you're too damn insecure to just take charge of your life.
Not to mention these things often ignore the fact that there are inherent differences between men and women, psychologically speaking. Men gravitate towards systems and facts (Which this article even acknowledges as a big part of games) whilst women gravitate towards socialization and interaction - of which screwing around on a computer contains very little of. It's got nothing to do with sexism. It's got nothing to do with gender roles. Most women simply aren't interested. You can't change that. People have tried, and it always, always trends back to the status quo.
Wait, what? Your argument is seriously "Women don't go into game design because they have trouble getting into college period?" You... you know that more women pursue higher education than men, right? We don't need more resources encouraging us to go to college - we've already got plenty, and they're working. It's something like... fifty-three percent of all college students are women. Why would you give more resources to a group that demonstrably doesn't need any more of them?VVThoughtBox said:
You know that these guys are displeasing to everyone, right? If you were a dude you wouldnt want to be around them because even without any female around they still act with disguting attitudes about some other things.Ten Foot Bunny said:
And yeah, thats the key for online gaming, being a dude requires the same effort of finding some nice people to play withTen Foot Bunny said:
But how many of those women are going to college to study video game design? Also, out of the fifty three percent, how many of those women are able to finish college, graduate, and are able to find a job or internship in the industry after graduation? Just because 53% of women go to college, it doesn't automatically mean the we solved the complex problem that is gender inequality. There's still more work to be done. I also remember saying that working in the video games industry is still not seen as an attractive career choice yet. People still have low opinions about video games, but this attitude is slowly changing.Saetha said:
Uh... first of all, if women are dropping out of college, that's their own fault - can't blame society there. Secondly, as a woman IN college, I gotta say, ain't seen any sexism yet. Thirdly, woman account for sixty percent of college graduates - the gap widens, it doesn't reverse, as college goes on (Source: https://collegepuzzle.stanford.edu/?tag=women-exceed-men-in-college-graduation ) And the wage gap's a myth too, more-or-less (Source: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/01/no-women-don-t-make-less-money-than-men.html ) As a matter of fact, for some demographics it's reversed: women in their twenties earn MORE than men, and this doesn't change until their forties. (Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2237196/Women-win-gender-pay-war-20s-earning-men-age.html )VVThoughtBox said:
So... no, it hasn't gotten anything to do with women being unable to access education. They have even MORE access than men do. No, I imagine many women AREN'T going to college to study game design, but whether or not that's really society's fault or not is also debatable - it could be that men and women are simply interested in different things (There's actually a good documentary on this I could link, but it's nearly an hour long and almost entirely in Norwegian with English subtitles. Still, if you're interested, go to youtube and look up "Brainwash - The Gender Equality Paradox" - and do watch the whole thing before commenting. The number of "That documentary doesn't say what you think it says!" that I get from people who stop half-way through is terribly annoying.)
As for video game designer being respected as an actual medium - I don't... see why that would concern women more than men. And frankly... well, frankly, I don't think it well ever truly be a respected career. At least, not to the point of, say, an engineer or doctor or lawyer. For all it's logical, technological basis, video games are a form of art and entertainment. Those sorts of careers are always sort of frowned upon. The people who succeed in them are praised, of course, but there's always that sense of "What, you want to be an actor/artist/director? You realize you'll just end up living on the street, right? Like, NO ONE succeeds at those things!" So... it's own of those odd careers that a lot of people want to be, but no one wants to take a risk on. And I'm not sure why that would discourage women more than men either. Unless you're arguing that women are more risk-averse.
But the "Women Sprint Ahead of Men In College Completion" article in the College Puzzle points out that women from upper income families are graduating. Low income families are still having some trouble attaining a college education. So, if there was a study showing an increase in women graduating from college, how many women are coming from upper class families and how many are coming from lower class families? Let's break it down even further: Which group is seeing a sudden increase in women going to college and graduating? Is it European, American, Black, Latnio/a, Asian, or Middle Eastern?Saetha said:
https://collegepuzzle.stanford.edu/?p=2102
Does it matter if they're from upper or lower income families? (Well... yes, it does, in a larger sort of "Fix EVERYTHING that's wrong with society" sort of way, but within the context of the question "Why aren't there more women in the industry?" it's irrelevant.) Inequality among the genders may have risen, and yes that's a problem, but that doesn't really relate at all to why women aren't in gaming. Your claim is that they're aren't more women in gaming because they're aren't more women in college - this is provably untrue. Then your claim was there aren't more women in gaming because they're aren't more women graduating from college - this is also provably untrue. And now you're moving the goal posts to a completely unrelated question of "Why aren't there more minority women in gaming?"VVThoughtBox said:
So how does this relate at all? It doesn't really effect the fact that there's less women in the industry. How would having minority women in college change the fact that women in general simply aren't interested in the field? All it means is that, instead of having a bunch of white girls going to college to not major in game design, now you've got a bunch of black, Asian, and latina girls not majoring in game design too.
Like... I seriously have no idea what you're trying to argue here. How would this in anyway encourage more women to go into the game industry? The simple fact is that they're aren't more women in the industry because they don't want to BE in the industry. That's it. That's all. Case closed.
Agreed. It's really no different than homosexuality. Sexuality and sex itself are trendy attributes that enhance one's persona if they veer from the default straight male who is not unique in any way.rorychief said:
Yes there is a point to the remark: "celebrating", promoting and emphasizing minorities does nothing to change the culture in as much as it is a completely superficial response to a complex ethos. If you want society to progress, you can start by stopping what you're doing and understanding that you don't control change like a faucet mixing hot and cold pipes. The very idea is like yelling at a stoplight to go from red to green.