Being a woman in geek culture

[YourCaptor]

Confirmation bias much?

How do you know for a fact that you're playing with guys 90+% of the time without hearing or seeing them? Many female gamers actually go out of their way to hide the fact that they're female because it makes them a magnet for harassment.

And then there's the fact that online multiplayer games are only one part of the gaming industry as a whole. Lots of female gamers just avoid xbox live altogether.

I hear about 70% of the players, so it’s based on that. And PC, no xbox.

I did play some FPS's but I don't have time for clans and vent and making a shooter into my social life, Jesus. It was more that than any rude boys which turned me off the whole process - the kids were alright, actually.

So I do as most women over 40. I play flash time-wasters. It's a much quicker hit of the gamecrack. If you strung all the middle aged women playing flash time wasters ass to ass you'd go to the moon and back 74 times.

Naturally, these are the ne-plus-ultra of UNCOOL because of who plays them but guess what, they're still games. If definition of "gamer" means "only school-aged teenchild standing in line over zombies" you have failed demographic 101.

Fine, don't include farmville and mafia wars and shit like that, you've still lost about 1/3 of the people I was FPS-ing with who were 30+.

But would you describe them as geeks?



My observation are based on the games through which I get the most contact with other people. In L4D2 I troll everyone all the time, and in KSP I'm active on the forums.

 

[BiBunny]

But would you describe them as geeks?

What is the litmus test for a "geek"?

I did play some FPS's but I don't have time for clans and vent and making a shooter into my social life, Jesus. It was more that than any rude boys which turned me off the whole process - the kids were alright, actually.

So I do as most women over 40. I play flash time-wasters. It's a much quicker hit of the gamecrack. If you strung all the middle aged women playing flash time wasters ass to ass you'd go to the moon and back 74 times.

Naturally, these are the ne-plus-ultra of UNCOOL because of who plays them but guess what, they're still games. If definition of "gamer" means "only school-aged teenchild standing in line over zombies" you have failed demographic 101.

Fine, don't include farmville and mafia wars and shit like that, you've still lost about 1/3 of the people I was FPS-ing with who were 30+.

Guilty. I'm going to keep telling myself I'm not middle-aged, though.

 

[Netzach]

But would you describe them as geeks?

Good point! I think that those venn diagrams would actually overlap a lot. It's not all pancake-builders and facebook stuff out there, there's some nice design and some really out-there design. In a way it's impossible to know because so much of the single-player game experience appeals to anonymity and introversion.

Not that a lot of geeks are introverts or anything.

 

[Netzach]

What is the litmus test for a "geek"?

If the urge to cosplay as something, even for a millisecond, has ever welled within.

(Vorlon encounter suit)

 

[YourCaptor]

What is the litmus test for a "geek"?

Being rejected by girls?

lol

Or is that a nerd? Hmmmm...

 

[BiBunny]

If the urge to cosplay as something, even for a millisecond, has ever welled within.

(Vorlon encounter suit)

Well...shit.

Thank God the demand for fat Spider-Women is not what you'd call high. Keeps me from embarrassing the shit out of myself.

Being rejected by girls?

lol

Or is that a nerd? Hmmmm...

Yeah, there's not really an easy answer, I don't think.

 

[YoungToy]

I was a part of a gaming community or two, but the main one had a handful of females. Sure, every guy wanted to talk to them and hit on them, but nothing actually sexist. Some of them were really good people and some of them were, well for-lack-of-a-better-term, bitches. They all kicked ass in the game so they earned their respect that way, but thats whats so great about the gaming community.

Youre not judged by who you are, youre judged by what you do.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I was a part of a gaming community or two, but the main one had a handful of females. Sure, every guy wanted to talk to them and hit on them, but nothing actually sexist. Some of them were really good people and some of them were, well for-lack-of-a-better-term, bitches. They all kicked ass in the game so they earned their respect that way, but thats whats so great about the gaming community.

Youre not judged by who you are, youre judged by what you do.

Individual groups, sure. I recently was made welcome to a D&D group-- not only despite being female, but also being old enough to be everyone's mother. They are awesome people. I've never met a group that plays so incredibly cooperatively-- the fact that they are all of them queer might have something to do with that.

They are also not who a geek woman encounters online. Women sure as hell do get judged on what they do-- starting with "wear a pair of tits" and going on to "talking about women in geek culture" and oh HELL do women get judged, tried, and hung for that.

 

[YoungToy]

Individual groups, sure. I recently was made welcome to a D&D group-- not only despite being female, but also being old enough to be everyone's mother. They are awesome people. I've never met a group that plays so incredibly cooperatively-- the fact that they are all of them queer might have something to do with that.

They are also not who a geek woman encounters online. Women sure as hell do get judged on what they do-- starting with "wear a pair of tits" and going on to "talking about women in geek culture" and oh HELL do women get judged, tried, and hung for that.

If you call (basically) the entire online community for a game one individual group, then yeah I guess. Ive been a part of a few gaming communities, and the great thing about video games is that nobody cares. Nobody cares about your sex, sexuality, religion, race, etc. They only thing they care about is that you're good or not. All the people who do say anything to a woman (outside of joking as friends) are all 13 year old boys that don't know what a vagina is and are only mad because they got turned down by a kick ass woman.

I'm talking from my own experiences. Woman, although rare, are treated like everyone else. I've met every person on the spectrum from gaming, and nobody cares who you are. They care if you're good, or if you're a good person.

So no, from my experiences, they don't get judged by being a woman. Sure, considering most gamers are dudes, they're different, but nobody cares. Everyone brings something different to the table.

 

[Stella_Omega]

If you call (basically) the entire online community for a game one individual group, then yeah I guess. Ive been a part of a few gaming communities, and the great thing about video games is that nobody cares. Nobody cares about your sex, sexuality, religion, race, etc. They only thing they care about is that you're good or not. All the people who do say anything to a woman (outside of joking as friends) are all 13 year old boys that don't know what a vagina is and are only mad because they got turned down by a kick ass woman.

I'm talking from my own experiences. Woman, although rare, are treated like everyone else. I've met every person on the spectrum from gaming, and nobody cares who you are. They care if you're good, or if you're a good person.

So no, from my experiences, they don't get judged by being a woman. Sure, considering most gamers are dudes, they're different, but nobody cares. Everyone brings something different to the table.

I think you might want to go back towards the front of the thread and maybe click on some of the links. Share some other women's experiences. None of us are an island.

 

[KoPilot]

We were talking about L4D(2). Like it or not.

Did you see anyone here denying the existence of Candy Crush players?


Seriously, this kind of arguing - leading the current discussion into a completely irrelevant direction - annoys me.

We weren't. You were.

And the """"respectible"""" part of the gaming industry loves to pretend that F2P and browser/app games don't count re: demographics, marketing, and statistics in general.

I work in the fucking gaming industry. You seriously gonna mansplain me?

 

[KoPilot]

I hear about 70% of the players, so it’s based on that. And PC, no xbox.

If you actually go to a gaming convention that's not hostile all to hell, the ratio is pretty close to parity.

But would you describe them as geeks?

I dunno-- I wouldn't really call avid CoD players geeks as that's all any of them are really interested in. Talk to them about Miyamoto or the history of MMOs and they'll have dismissively called you a fag about 50,000 times already.

 

[KoPilot]

If you call (basically) the entire online community for a game one individual group, then yeah I guess. Ive been a part of a few gaming communities, and the great thing about video games is that nobody cares. Nobody cares about your sex, sexuality, religion, race, etc. They only thing they care about is that you're good or not. All the people who do say anything to a woman (outside of joking as friends) are all 13 year old boys that don't know what a vagina is and are only mad because they got turned down by a kick ass woman.

I'm talking from my own experiences. Woman, although rare, are treated like everyone else. I've met every person on the spectrum from gaming, and nobody cares who you are. They care if you're good, or if you're a good person.

So no, from my experiences, they don't get judged by being a woman. Sure, considering most gamers are dudes, they're different, but nobody cares. Everyone brings something different to the table.

Some. Some, some some. Being nondiscriminatory is not a universal thing by a long shot.

And then in the ones that aren't blatantly discriminatory, the hierarchy is still determined by skill-- a player's aggressiveness, their ability to crunch numbers, and ability to tolerate the parts of the culture that are hostile to them based on things they have no conscious control over.

Think about what all the popular synonyms for "weak" are. I bet you won't be able to think up a single one that isn't based on perceived femininity or womanhood.

That's hostility, whether or not you've able to pick up on it without being told.

 

[YoungToy]

Just sharing my experiences

 

[KoPilot]

Just sharing my experiences

We know things aren't bad across the board. That all men are evil, childish jerks. That all of geekdom isn't a stinking morass. We know that.

But people still have a really hard time accepting that there are a lot of jerks out there. That femmephobia and misogyny and misogynistic language are endemic and systemic. If that weren't the case, we wouldn't have had so many people come in here since the thread's inception going "I get what you're saying, BUT--"

No buts. There's a problem, period.

 

[YoungToy]

There will always be a heirarchy, in some way or another. Instead of determining it by who a person is, its determined by what they do. In a gaming community, the game is what determines it. I think thats a lot better. A community is about respect, and it needs to be earned.

Also cowardly is a word that is a synonym for weak.

I was asked about experiences, and Im sharing them. No matter where you go, there will always be scumbags, whether male or female. It just so happens in a geek community the majority of them are male so its basically guaranteed there will be a handful. Those are the "noobs", the true noobs.

From my personal exprience, geeks are a lot less judgemental than almost anyone else. We help each other out.

 

[KoPilot]

I think geek culture is exactly the same as any other community you find out in the world.

And the idea of geek exceptionalism is totally toxic and not at all conducive to acknowledging and addressing problems.

 

[KoPilot]

Case in point. Posts about a recent discussion with a certain TAS animator on a Kevin Smith podcast has been going around Tumblr lately, and what he says about the toy/cartoon industry is appalling, but... not at all surprising to any of us here who isn't in a fucking coma:

Want to listen to something that will piss you off?

First off, if you’re not a listener of Fatman on Batman you should be.

Now, download this episode. (Released this week; it was recorded in early November.)

Take it up to the 21:00 mark to hear Kevin Smith to gush on Beware the Batman for almost twenty minutes. If you want to skip that, it’s OK. Start at 39:00 and listen to Paul Dini kill his dreams at 39:30.

Of course, you already know that Beware the Batman was pulled from the schedule, so why should this enrage you all over again?

You must listen to the following ten-ish minutes.

Dini describes the thinking of Cartoon Network execs … and it goes beyond the $imple $elling of toy$. It almost sounds like misogyny.

Listen to it.

Jeez and crackers, this is disturbing news. He brings up what happened to Tower Prep (the only decent live action show they ever ran), GLTAS, Young Justice. And then he says:

"But then, there’s been this weird—there’s been a, a sudden trend in animation, with super-heroes. Like, ‘it’s too old. It’s too old for our audience, and it has to be younger. It has to be funnier.' And that's when I watch the first couple of episodes of Teen Titans Go!, it's like those are the wacky moments in the Teen Titans cartoon, without any of the more serious moments. 'Let’s just do them all fighting over pizza, or running around crazy and everything, ’cause our audience—the audience we wanna go after, is not the Young Justice audience any more. We wanna go after little kids, who are into—boys who are into goofy humor, goofy random humor, like on Adventure Time or Regular Show. We wanna do that goofy, that sense of humor, that’s where we’re going for.’”

Which, to me, shows that CN is missing the reasons why Adventure Time and Regular Show are so successful. Then, a bit later:

DINI: “They’re all for boys ’we do not want the girls’, I mean, I’ve heard executives say this, you know, not Ryan(?) but at other places, saying like, ‘We do not want girls watching this show.”

SMITH: “WHY? That’s 51% of the population.”

DINI: “They. Do. Not. Buy. Toys. The girls buy different toys. The girls may watch the show—”

SMITH: “So you can sell them T-shirts if they don’t—A: I disagree, I think girls buy toys as well, I mean not as many as f***ing boys do, but, B: sell them something else, man! Don’t be lazy and be like, ‘well I can’t sell a girl a toy.’ Sell ‘em a T-shirt, man, sell them f***ing umbrella with the f***ing character on it, something like that. But if it’s not a toy, there’s something else you could sell ‘em! Like, just because you can’t figure out your job, don’t kill chances of, like, something that’s gonna reach an audi—that’s just so self-defeating, when people go, like… these are the same fuckers who go, like, ‘Oh, girls don’t read comics, girls aren’t into comics.’ It’s all self-fulfilling prophecies. They just make it that way, by going like, ‘I can’t sell ‘em a toy, what’s the point?’

DINI: “That’s the thing, you know I hate being Mr. Sour Grapes here, but I’ll just lay it on the line: that’s the thing that got us cancelled on Tower Prep, honest-to-God was, like, ‘we need boys, but we need girls right there, right one step behind the boys’—this is the network talking—’one step behind the boys, not as smart as the boys, not as interesting as the boys, but right there.’ And then we began writing stories that got into the two girls’ back stories, and they were really interesting. And suddenly we had families and girls watching, and girls really became a big part of our audience, in sort of like they picked up that Harry Potter type of serialized way, which is what The Batman and [indistinct]’s really gonna kill. But, the Cartoon Network was saying, ‘F***, no, we want the boys’ action, it’s boys’ action, this goofy boy humor we’ve gotta get that in there. And we can’t—’ and I’d say, but look at the numbers, we’ve got parents watching, with the families, and then when you break it down—’Yeah, but the—so many—we’ve got too many girls. We need more boys.’”

SMITH: “That’s heart-breaking.”

DINI: “And then that’s why they cancelled us, and they put on a show called Level Up, which is, you know, goofy nerds fighting CG monsters. It’s like, ‘We don’t want the girls because the girls won’t buy toys.’ We had a whole… we had a whole, a merchandise line for Tower Prep that they s***canned before it ever got off the launching pad, because it’s like, ‘Boys, boys, boys. Boys buy the little spinny tops, they but the action figures, girls buy princesses, we’re not selling princesses.’”

Ugh

The aforementioned interview: Fatman on Batman 52: 'Beware the Batman' talk

 

[YourCaptor]

Gay D&D players, the geek culture rejection of females.

Maybe geeking out is not something you do when you can't get laid, maybe its something you do to avoid the other half...

 

[KoPilot]

...unless you're a woman. The not-men don't have any delusions about the demographics of geekdom.

And if you're a dude, when you find out that there are almost as many female geeks out there as male, you throw a tantrum and start pissing all over the place to try and mark your territory. Who cares if they were there since the beginning. You were told that it was bro-land, and you'll be damned if you don't get what you thought you were promised.,

 

[KoPilot]

This Week In Video Game Woman-Hating

 

[MeekMe]

It's seems that a lot of the assholes are video gamers. I'm really happy I never found video games all that fun to play. They bore me very quickly. I'll stick to comics and table top games.

 

[Keroin]

Feeling stabby...

Writer spills on why execs refuse to make superhero shows for girls

 

[KoPilot]

It's seems that a lot of the assholes are video gamers. I'm really happy I never found video games all that fun to play. They bore me very quickly. I'll stick to comics and table top games.

Oh don't worry, there are just as many dudebros in comics (and science, and computer engineering, and programming, and SF and...) it's just that it's easy to be into comics and not have to interact with anyone else about it.

 

[KoPilot]

Some commentary on misogyny in geekdom from a video game writer: Not Even Kidding About Any Of This