FEMALES AND GAMING - #1REASONWHY

I have to say that I'm genuinely shocked at the lack of sensitivity with this subject. I thought the RMN community would be different somehow.

author=Sailerius
No, the problem is that, for some reason, girls just don't like programming.

This is a preconception, this is part of the issue at hand. Many times women aren't even given a chance to try out programming, so they won't even know it they like it.

author=Caz
I sort of disliked a lot of female main characters because they seemed presumptuous and threw themselves into the role a bit too hard, like they were trying so bad to be this revolutionary anti-gender-stereotype farce that everyone is so obsessed with. In my opinion, there is no sexism anymore.

The reason a lot of these female characters were like this is beacuse they were created by men, with a male demographic in mind.

author=Caz
I'm sorry if this seems slightly insensitive, but I think equality has already been achieved in the most important areas of society (such as the workplace).

Women are still paid less for their work, is that workplace equality?

author=harmonic
I've found that when discussing sexism in games, it has little to do with the games themselves. (...) Articles like this focus on the wrong issue. Games don't sell less because there's a female protagonist, there are other factors.

There is a relation between sexism and games. Sex sells, everyone knows that. They undress videogame characters as much as they can (specially the female characters) to appeal to the sexual nature of the audience.
However, by doing this, they contribute to sexism by making the characters look "cheap" or "slutty", they make these characters dress in a way that you wouldn't feel confortable having your sister or mother dress like. They remove respect form these characters, and in turn the audience does the same thing with real people.

author=harmonic
See, if we're going to be truly non-bigoted, statements like this shouldn't be uttered. Sometimes men can and do understand a woman's mind, and sometimes we fail, probably just as often as vice versa.

Yes, men and women are both human, both have a brain, both think. But they are not the same, they don't like the same things, they don't think the same things, their bodies are different, men and women are different and have different experiences. A man can't write as well about women as he can about men and vice-versa.
Creating a character and giving it a vagina doesn't make a female character.

author=alterego
Or how about if we think of these only as characters and therefore they don't justify, negate nor discredit anything or anyone? ...Too crazy?

It's called visual training. People are easily manipulated into thinking that what they see portrayed in videogames is normal behavior. Recently, women are usually portrayed as ladies of negotiable affection in videogames (according to nowdays standards), then you get a lot of guys sending messages to girls in xbox live and whatnot asking for sexual favours.
It's related.

author=alterego
You may be right but it still acts as a reminder of a perspective that is often overlooked, and I think that's healthy in a way. The subject of "misandry" is not brought up too often on its own and even when it does is often dismissed as just more "misogyny" anyway... If you want to tackle both issues you can't keep them apart completely.

There is also misandry, but it's not as common as misogyny in videogames. There aren't even enough women in videogames to be able to cause significative misandry. Not that I agree with misandry, any kind of dicrimination is wrong, but pointing fingers at other issues won't get us nowhere, if we were discussing misandry then someone would point out misogyny.

author=Irili
I'm not saying you should HAVE to keep your gender to yourself, but don't ask, don't tell, seems like a decent policy to me.

That's hardly a solution. No one should have to hide their gender or what they are to be able to play a game online, or simply playing a game, since this happens even outside of the onlime gaming communities. That's running away from the issue.

author=LockeZ
...stuff...

*sigh* LockeZ, I've read a lot of your comments in the forums and I usually like them, specially in game design discussion, they're usually pretty insightful and smart. But these comments here are only detracting from the issue, you're not helping at all. It's not even funny. What your doing is part of the issue, your dismissing the problem.

...

I'm sorry if I come across as angry, but I am. Most of these comments SHOW that there's an issue in gaming, and that most people are so wrapped up in it that they can't see it!

I don't see any easy solutions, this is not a problem exclusive to gaming, it starts with how people are educated at home, school and then it get's to games. There's and influence from films and books and everything else in society, it happens more easily in gaming because it's more difficult to prevent it here, or to control users. Ironic that one of the good things (lack of control) is also a bad thing.

It IS an issue.

In my experience, death threats are levied by those unable to fulfill them hiding behind computer screens and shouldn't be taken seriously. And if they worry you that bad then you don't have to accept them, but they can be avoided very easily by not going to places where it happens. So you get made fun of for being a girl on some FPS - don't talk on voice chat, or even better you could make a private chat or something for talking to people you want to actually speak with. Other than voice chat, there is no place where you will be forced to tell everyone your gender or ANYTHING about your private life on the internet.

In no way is this me justifying sexism or any other kind of discrimination, nor am I saying that you should be expected to have to shy away from the fact you're a girl; it's just a way to deal with the communities of the internet. Communities full of douchebags. They will pick holes in anything just to seem better in front of their peers and it sucks, but that's just how people are.

Back to the game industry itself, I don't feel any girls are being particularly forced out but I also don't feel like a special place should be made for them. That's just patronising to suddenly realise that there are no girls and have to make little exceptions just for them. Then they will feel pressured and torn to live up to expectation or.. simply just awkward. Imagine if you showed up to a dinner and people had forgotten about you, so they had to get you out a special cushioned seat to squish in next to someone on. Wouldn't you feel like the attention of the room was diverted to you in a bad way? Women will enter the industry at their own pace. They don't need to be pushed into it simply because people think it's sexist not to have quite so many females as there are males at current.

@Soli - this topic was bound to bring about some anger due to the potential offensiveness of opinions, and I'm sorry if I've said anything to enrage you. This is partly what I actually think, but I also like to play devil's advocate in these threads because it gives people another perspective. I hope.

author=Sailerius
Unfortunately necessarily disclaimer: I strongly support equality for all persons, but I have no patience for people who blindly point to every problem and say that the cause is discrimination, which prevents analysis of the real cause. When you do that, you are helping to ensure nothing is ever done about the problem. Yes, discrimination exists, and yes, it's a problem, but it's a word that's carelessly thrown around nowadays when it's not necessarily the cause of all problems.

This. So much this. I really love the idea of equality, but throwing the reason of "discrimination" at EVERYTHING gets a little tedious after a while.

author=Sailerius
Unfortunately necessarily disclaimer: I strongly support equality for all persons, but I have no patience for people who blindly point to every problem and say that the cause is discrimination, which prevents analysis of the real cause. When you do that, you are helping to ensure nothing is ever done about the problem. Yes, discrimination exists, and yes, it's a problem, but it's a word that's carelessly thrown around nowadays when it's not necessarily the cause of all problems.

I have never agreed with anyone as much as I agree with this. Bravo.

Sai: So effectively, you're suggesting that the way men and women are raised with different values is the root cause? A learned tendency towards aggression vs. submission?

That's still the result of gender discrimination, though. Just by parents and teachers and entertainment and society, instead of employers. Some level of differing hormones at work too, meaning this trend is actually a permanent direct result of human biology, but it could certainly be drastically reduced in a society with no such thing as gender roles (which will happen in the year 5190 AD).

Not that either tendency is necessarily better than the other. Aggression is better for the child but submission is better for the rest of society around them. Ideally I should be aggressive and everyone else in the world should be submissive, amiright?

author=iddalai
This is a preconception, this is part of the issue at hand. Many times women aren't even given a chance to try out programming, so they won't even know it they like it.

How to Program 101:
1. Open Notepad (or plain text editor of your choice).
2. Obtain reference material (lots of free stuff on the internet).
3. ????
4. PROFIT!

If there's something barring women from doing the above (I know I did the above, much of my programming knowledge has been self-taught), please do enlighten me.

author=iddalai
The reason a lot of these female characters were like this is beacuse they were created by men, with a male demographic in mind.

I think the problem is more with subpar writing than men writing about female characters. While there's a case to be made that men won't completely understand women and vice versa, literature in general has proven it's very possible for one gender to write about the other in a meaningful way. To just dismiss everything as "men just suck at writing about girls" is nothing short of retarded.

author=iddalai
Women are still paid less for their work, is that workplace equality?

Nice emotional appeal, but what are the specific factors behind it? What jobs are the women working? Are the jobs (including work hours) the same as those of men? How are their performance with regards to their jobs on average? How does the landscape look on the men's side?

I won't argue that discrimination against women in the workplace doesn't exist, I know they do exist, but simply crying out that women are being treated unfairly isn't going to make your case suddenly a legitimate point of argument and debate.

author=iddalai
There is a relation between sexism and games. Sex sells, everyone knows that. They undress videogame characters as much as they can (specially the female characters) to appeal to the sexual nature of the audience.
However, by doing this, they contribute to sexism by making the characters look "cheap" or "slutty", they make these characters dress in a way that you wouldn't feel confortable having your sister or mother dress like. They remove respect form these characters, and in turn the audience does the same thing with real people.

This is a problem with the audience rather than the creators. When (some of) the audience loses the ability to differentiate real-world from fiction, we should be fixing that problem rather than suddenly saying that sexism is destroying the world.

For the record, I'm not saying everyone can't differentiate real-world from fiction. Those of us that lead healthy lives enjoy our entertainment while interacting with the real world in a mature and sensible way. However, there certainly are people that probably shouldn't partake in fiction for the sake of everyone else.

author=iddalai
Yes, men and women are both human, both have a brain, both think. But they are not the same, they don't like the same things, they don't think the same things, their bodies are different, men and women are different and have different experiences. A man can't write as well about women as he can about men and vice-versa.
Creating a character and giving it a vagina doesn't make a female character.

Indeed! There's far more to a person (read: a character) than simply giving it a gender and calling it a day. As I stated above though, poor writing has to do with poor writing skill itself rather than what gender the writer is.

Honestly, stating that someone of one gender can't write well about the other gender simply because of their gender is flat out discrimination itself and an insult to writers everywhere.

author=iddalai
That's hardly a solution. No one should have to hide their gender or what they are to be able to play a game online, or simply playing a game, since this happens even outside of the onlime gaming communities. That's running away from the issue.

Completely agreed.

The problem isn't that women are not capable of programming; they are. The problem is that despite their ability, they are not accepted, treated fairly, or presented the same opportunities. They are often not treated as equals, even if they earn that through personal skill and merit. Thusly, they don't have the same chance that men do.

Source? Not that I'm doubting you, but as a programmer myself, this isn't something that I've seen happen. Software engineering is a field where respect and recognition is highly based upon the merits of one's work and their ability to work on a team. As programmers, we want the best teammates we can find, regardless of their race or gender. There is definitely a much smaller number of women in the industry, and this is a well-documented problem (see my earlier post), but I don't think there's a systematic mistreatment of women who are programmers.

author=Sailerius
Software engineering is a field where respect and recognition is highly based upon the merits of one's work and their ability to work on a team. As programmers, we want the best teammates we can find, regardless of their race or gender. There is definitely a much smaller number of women in the industry, and this is a well-documented problem (see my earlier post), but I don't think there's a systematic mistreatment of women who are programmers.

Again I must echo Sai. My company's only staff issue is a critical shortage of engineers. We need technical skill, and we pay them OODLES of money to come work for us, regardless of the configuration of their genitalia. We just hired on a girl from India as an *entry level* engineer, making twice what I do as a producer. We just want people with skill, we don't care who. And every other engineer-starved company in Seattle is in the same boat.

Iddilai: By that same token, we also fire engineers who can't hack it. Yes, we've fired female engineers and male engineers alike. And to claim that that had anything to do with the configuration of genitalia is beyond absurd. We expect someone making 6 figures to have those rare and valuable skills we need.

So I’ve been told ‘boo hoo suck it up’, been called a liar, worthless, stupid, and that I enjoy being attacked because it makes me ‘feel good’. If iddalai’s getting ripped apart like this, there’s nothing worthwhile I can say to help.

Good job for forcing a female developer out of the community in a topic about tolerance.

@Acra: Well if no one took the other side from you, the thread would last one post.

You start a debate, and then when someone takes the other side of the debate, that's enough to "force you out of the community"? The hell? That doesn't even make sense.

The whole point of this thread is to debate what parts of the feminist agenda as it relates to game development are and are not true, are and are not applicable, and are more or less important than others. I mean in case you didn't notice, every single point that's been brought up has been shot down by someone else, which makes this thread absolutely perfect as a debate thread IMO. Also I count at least six different "sides" to the argument so far.

When I partially disagreed with you earlier, I really was just trying to prompt you to defend your beliefs. Were you planning to actually do so at any point, or just continue to add nothing to the thread except whining? (I don't think the claims you're making are inherently whining. I do think that claiming anything and then refusing to debate it is inherently whining.)