Gaming Fat, Ugly or Slutty?

We explore the level of abuse that female gamers have to tolerate in online games.

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2011/06/20/fat-ugly-or-slutty/1

 

After a few minutes browsing the FUoS site I am so happy I have never played a online game on Xbox at least on Steam games people have to add you to send you messages out side of the game.

It's all obviously ridiculous immature nonsense and having being around it for many years I can find it amusing but then as a hetro, white, adult male there's very little they can offer me other than noob or for some reason to call me a "Russian Hacker".

I know from experience if you ask a woman to "make me a sandwich" there's only one response to expect, a glare that somehow shouts "make it yourself you lazy.....".

 

to be fair, people only act like assholes because of the anonymity factor.

If i was a female who played games i simply would not speak at all unless it was with a group of friends. At any rate, this nonsense mainly happens on consoles, especially on Xbox live.

 

How is that either fair or an acceptable response?

 

It's not a justification but it's certainly part of the problem.

 

+1

 

I agree wholeheartedly about this statement. I used to play play online with a mic, but now my time online isn't much because even I'm getting annoyed with the abuse and random arguments based on gender, race, the way you speak, and I'm saying that as a guy, assuming that the online misogyny is the majority of the abuse out there.

It makes the MALE demographic look bad, and it seems to be a very vocal minority of gamers (13-15 year old US boys) just want to be immature, yet I've been to LAN parties where the MAJORITY of people are girl, who have been fairly pleasant to talk to. It's gotten to the point where I've just turned the mic off anyway unless I know people in the game.

And I thought online gaming was social.

 

I find it "fair" because it really isn't something new or worth being shocked about. It's actually quite common to hear these things.

When people have anonymity they will use what they know about the budding victim to the full extent of hurting the victims' feelings. This happens simply because it's easier to generalise the victim into a stereotype that plagues his or her sex, race, age etc.

For example:

Black person: fried chicken jokes
Women: kitchen jokes
Asian: small penis jokes

Get my drift? People say these things because it's easy to do.

FYI, i don't find it acceptable but you would do yourself a favour by hiding details about your gender/race in a screen name.

 

"Social" is just corporate talk for DLC, Micropayments and points for cash.

 

When I play on-line I never use a mic or have any voice communications enabled whatsoever. I just can't stand the chatter. Only exception is when I'm playing in a mix or CW with a known group of people, which really doesn't happen much these days.

Unsurprisingly because of my reluctance to use a mic I've been mistaken for a female on several occasions. Alas, I'm an older white bloke (i.e. male), albeit a fat and ugly one...

 

I'm so glad that none of the TF2 servers I frequent have any of these issues. We male players are usually a little surprised when a female player shows up, and a little more than just taken aback when they are actually good. IT's just a bit odd because there are so few women IRL who talk about gaming. I don't care what the stats say, I'm always (pleasantly, I must say) surprised when I meet a female who games or encounter one online. Just how it is.

I once traded dominations (sniper vs sniper) for a good 2 hours with a female sniper who turned out to be living a floor above me in my Uni res-hall! We're now really good friends and when my system isn't being a dick, we frag together in CS:S and TF2.

I love the idea of women gamers. Something about breaking stereotypes and mixing up the scene.

 

And just because it's hard doesn't mean others shouldn't oppose behaviour which, by your argument, you find intolerable but seem content to shrug away.

 

Its sad but true.

I stopped playing WoW because of all the sh*t talk all the time and the only game i play online now is L4D2 as the groups are smaller and its easier to sort out the trash.
Female gamer friend of mine has to life with it all the time and got used to it. She is neather fat, ugly or slutty and luckily has a thick skin so she can handle it, but some of the msg she got in game over the time where really hardcore.

As I sad its the sad reality

 

bit-tech, why are you doing articles on this, and giving this content more veiws, instead of articles about hardware??? i am baffled.

 

could you rephrase that? i'm having trouble understanding what you mean. Maybe it's me and i should sleep. will respond when i wake up.

 

Despite being a male gamer, I've still had my fair share of abuse. The truth is, you have to pick your games. Gears of War, Mech Warrior (on xbox) Halo and CoD have, in my experience by far the worst communities, full of idiots playing music through the mic, abusive brats and people that feel they can be ridiculously rude because of the anonymity of online gaming. In fact, I refuse to play GoW online because of how ridiculous the flaming is.

You have to pick your games. Ghost Recon, for example, has, by and large, a very friendly community, and I've had many many games with very friendly people, I find the PC gaming community in general to be a far friendlier place.

I suppose its like any form of socialising, there are places you just don't go because the crowd of people that go there are idiots, no matter how good the venue is.

I am fully behind naming and shaming and laughing at these idiots though!

 

'So we should just let that crap happen because it's 'easy to do', even though you think it's wrong.'

is that rephrased enough?

 

I would love the game time with girls. Alas, my GF doesn't seem to be interested in gaming. Got her interested in Wii gaming tho. Casual gamer you might say. But haven't seen her frag anytime. Maybe I should get her a decent rig to game on?

 

This problem rings across the internet entirely, unfortunately. And it's not just related to misogyny. These days every Jebediah, Bubba, and Jason can pull up a chair, spit their vitriol from the comfort of their own home, and feel smug about it afterwords when their real life friends congratulate their ignorance.

Point in case.

It's through the billions of shining examples like these that we realize that anonymity is not the catalyst, and that breeding is not the cause. We've just given idiots a megaphone with which to shout at the world. Now what can we do about it?

 

I think what he's getting at is we can find it to be as awful as we want and oppose it for all we are worth but we can't stop it. What can we really do about it? We could say to the guy doing it "Hey that's not cool, pack it in" but all that will do is encourage them.

I think spectre has done what a lot of us do, just admit defeat. We can't win with those kinds of people so unless you are a server admin (good luck xbox users) you can literally do nothing but mute them and ignore the chat window. You could report them to Steam or EA or whom ever it is that runs the games online system but no one will stop it because if they did then surely the worst culprits will have been banned by now.

The best solution is to play with people you know or on well moderated servers if possible and never engage them in exchanges 'let them tire themselves out' was the way my ex used to deal with them.