Females in the gaming industry tackle sexism

as we all know how i post sometimes ill just resort to -

Shazzccchkl ( something like that ) is the name of a female Counterstrike player .. came from 1.6 , CSS and now CS:GO. I am 100% confident that on this forum less than 5 guys could give her a go, ( no pun ) Im a pretty descent cs:go player and ill put myself in the top 10 % of the cs:GO players in the country and she will walk over me like i was not even there.

:D

I know about 12 girls that plays Counterstrike.. Why can they still play after 10 years of the same game ?

SImple .. as soon as a guy chirps them they say " kindly fuck off " and MOVE ON. They dont go crying about how the world hates them ;)
 
Cranky said:
as we all know how i post sometimes ill just resort to -

Shazzccchkl ( something like that ) is the name of a female Counterstrike player .. came from 1.6 , CSS and now CS:GO. I am 100% confident that on this forum less than 5 guys could give her a go, ( no pun ) Im a pretty descent cs:go player and ill put myself in the top 10 % of the cs:GO players in the country and she will walk over me like i was not even there.

:D

I know about 12 girls that plays Counterstrike.. Why can they still play after 10 years of the same game ?

SImple .. as soon as a guy chirps them they say " kindly fuck off " and MOVE ON. They dont go crying about how the world hates them ;)
Click to expand...

I think that rings true for most elitists as well, if you can play well enough they tell you to F off. So what? Boo-Hoo, less QQ is all I would say, and keep playing.
 
Interesting note for the last three posters; sexism in the gaming industry goes deeper than just getting angry because someone in a game is being rude to you.
 
Look im fat?

Should i get upset with ever single comment made about fat ingame? IF the way you feel about sexism is the only way to look at things i should RAGE every time i see some 1 fat .. or a fat joke is made ? At lans or online i get CONSTANTLY TROLLED about being fat. What do i do? Cry? Rage? No i make a better fat joke? We all laugh and i move on? Saying my old English teacher used to say that kinda fits in here as you can say the same about the internet.

Africa is a tough country baby. Fit in or fuck off?

As it has always been. Avoid shit that pisses you off? I dont attend tupper ware parties as id be bored out of my Fkn mind. But my Gf likes it? IF i go to one should i be upset that it was set up with a female attendance in mind? Nope.

Every single thing on earth is what you make of it . IF you want to make a big deal about some girls in skimpy clothes then that is your choice..

Now let me get right to the point and this is something that ive been trying to not do for some time.


For every 10 okes that buys a game a girl will by 1. taht is 10 % of sales. Of that 10% of sales more than 50% will go to girls that bought it for their guy,fiance,brother. So that means in order to listen to the DEMANDS of the feminists you need to gross more sales than the minor amount you are currently doing? The world is about numbers and the ones for the anti sexism people just simply dont add up ?

Most of these games that contain nudity is bought by horny guys ? This will NEVER change, And no company can afford cutting loose its cash cow. I dont mind some skin every now and then. I do believe some games take it too far. But every time an article likes this pops up its all up in arms azimuth and co vs the guys on the forum. We turn into guys and Girls instead of being a united group on GAMERS.

Im pretty hooked up in most online games. If you want to play join on me. I didnt get my nickname by being nice to every one and if some unk pops up and steps out of line well rage him together? if you mingle in the correct circles online you should not have these problems :D
 
Cranky, great job on missing the entire point of the discussion and the #1reasonwhy movement. No, really, great job. You not only missed the point, but you're blaming females for being discriminated against.

Also, please ensure you quote factual statistics, not statistics you pulled out of your arse. In Europe alone females are estimated to make up almost 50% of the gaming demographic. In America it's about 42%.
 
To be completely honest, I think the issue runs a little deeper then but manifests itself as sexism.

The internet is a medium where stupidity, racism, sexism and the most incredible 'anger' in the world is not only miraculously drawn out of people, it's expected. If I mess up in a game and someone says 'lol np' I'm genuinely surprised and concerned.

Sexism is more broad than that, and I think players who are usually pretty complacent know that the second a woman enters the scene he has to start acting like a douche. I don't understand it.

I think it's the product of 4chan to be completely honest. Even though 4chan is relatively new, they started the whole rule of 'lol no women on itnernets' and all that shit, and maybe they drew from old school Ebaumsworld. I'm guessing here.. Older websites are pretty good when it comes to feminism -- SomethingAwful and Cracked have a way of wording misogyny so beautifully that you'd feel utterly incapable and retarded if you had an ounce of it in you.

It's hard to say why this shit abounds. Maybe the gamer stereotype is correct--people make fun of things they don't understand, so gamers have absolutely no idea wtf is happening when they hear of this strange 'female' type of thing and so they freak out because it's all they can do.

When I played World of Warcraft the girls in our guild would never talk on Teamspeak because there'd always be at least one guy who would say some shit like "Oh yeah baby, keep talking" or something, or one guy who would say "Damnit woman! More DPS!"

It's just accepted on internet standards.

Douchebags. Douchebags everywhere.
 
Shamrock said:
<snip>
Click to expand...

But that's the thing, if you read the article you'll see that this isn't limited to internet. This article in specific talks about the difficulties of being a female game developer. This casual sexism manifests itself in anything from games played on the internet, to the gaming expos, to the offices of the game developers where they're told to code those jiggly boobs in the next DoA game.

We're not talking sexism in online games here. It goes far past that. We're talking sexism in the gaming industry. Sexism which is perpetuated by an attitude of "gaming is a boys club, deal with it."
 
Graal said:
Cranky, great job on missing the entire point of the discussion and the #1reasonwhy movement. No, really, great job. You not only missed the point, but you're blaming females for being discriminated against.

Also, please ensure you quote factual statistics, not statistics you pulled out of your arse. In Europe alone females are estimated to make up almost 50% of the gaming demographic. In America it's about 42%.
Click to expand...

My statistics are from a study on 2 big retails stores in SA.

So my facts are based on local numbers. and not international and should've checked it out. But point still stands more than half of those females bought it for a guy so you are down to a 70% mumber base.

I wasn't saying its the females fault for getting discriminated against im saying its YOUR Fault for getting worked up about it?

It happens every day.. You can sit and sulk or try something else. Lets take a more relevant approach that touches as both as an example. Good old BEE, its next to impposible for a white guy to get a jobh.. they are literally the last on the tree to be picked. Yet the groth of weatlh for age group 20-35 according to sensus was more than any other race in the country . Why ? The whites did not apply to jobs .. But rather started their own business and made due with that and stayed way from the retail sector they knew they couldn't go into. So The point im making is its there. The discrimination on race level color level even xeno attacks on foreigners, The world is full of it, and it it not going to change any time soon. The only thing that can change is how it affects you.

Let me also add some color to why i drop my own opinions and the generalization is WRONG but hey cant help it,

I came out of stones centurion 4 years back only to see a movement out of the corner of my eye, I went close to see what was going on , As i came around the car a guy was sitting on his gf`s back with her face down holding her by the hair and slamming her face into the ground, I kicked him off helped her up and warned him to stop his bs, He did the usual routine of how he didnt know what happened. etc etc wont happen again etc etc. So i walked off and circled back only to fine him hitting her again. I stepped in ( im about 1,95 and a 120 Kgs ) and i beat the shit ouf of this oke. Broken jaw was considered a minor injury. I drove her to the hospital and went home. The next day cops picked me up for mugging a couple and stealing their wallets. That girl i tried to protect ws the main witness on how i jumped them . Hit her and her bf with a pipe and took their money . So as far as how girls go my opinion has gone from .. Shame poor girls to MAN THE F UP and take control of your own situation .
 
The biggest issue is the social indoctrination we're all subjected to from the early stages of life (in this world you'll deal with this in one form or another). Things like "X is for girls", "Y is for boys" (excuse the biology reference) and the ilk aren't picked up out of thin air, these things are taught (directly or indirectly). So, I think the biggest hurdle for the fight against sexism (or any other discrimination for that matter) in gaming, is the social brainwashing around us, labels such as girl gamer or female devs shouldn't even be necessary.

The hard truth is that changing is going to be a long process since these things are taught at a very young age and deviation usually results in harsh ridicule (sad but true). So what needs to happen, is that the current gaming generation (everyone involved, not just gamers) needs to realize that in context of gaming we are not men or women, but people/humans and any differences we have (skill, talent, level of passion, knowledge, genre tastes, opinions, etc) don't result from our gender, but from the fact that we are individuals and we aren't defined by any designated social group we may be assigned to. Once we grasp this ideology, it can hopefully be passed to future generations, thereby systemically removing this issue.

Another thing we need to be conscious of, this needs to extend beyond the gaming industry, because even though a lot of gamers grew up with gaming, gaming is introduced to new gamers every day who may come from other areas of interest which are likely dealing with similar sexism issues (among other forms of discrimination) and if those areas don't eradicate sexism, it'll be a case of moving a step forward and then that same step backwards.

I'd also like to address the "gaming is dominated by males" claim. This is probably true, but some gamers misunderstand the context, the lack of females (as opposed to the number of males) is not necessarily a direct result of less females having interest in gaming, it's more a result of the social indoctrination I mentioned. IMHO Had this indoctrination not been present, the gaming population might be more evened out. So this claim should never be used as an excuse for sexism.

Note: I don't know if any of this makes sense, but that's just my 2 cents.
 
To be honest the way I see it, this issue will never go away simply through words. Like many other professions and activities before, the only way to combat this type of behaviour is to get more women into the industry. Look at acting, soccer, athletics, those were all male only activities until women forced their way in and carved out their own piece of the pie.

The same thing needs to happen now, for women to gain more acceptance in the gaming community they need to become more apart of the community. There are probably fewer than 10% female developers, a figure probably also true for 'core' female gamers. Game journalism fairs a bit better I suspect with more women, probably around 30-40%.

Now don't get me wrong, I think everyone should be treated with respect and dignity and I speak up when I see this isn't happen. Unfortunately the way things work is that no-one will is going to 'let' ladies into the boys club, they have to force their way in.

*In that regard and as an aside, I think women who keep quiet in games or pretend they are men are actually doing themselves and other women a disservice. That being said though, it's easy for me to say that since I'm not a position where I face constant harassment.
 
Why can't we just all respect one another as individuals, regardless of race, sex etc. Women aren't objects or toys. Regardless of whether they play games or not. Some guys just don't have the decency or respect to treat the fellow gamers with courtesy. Problem is too many people make assumptions without actually gathering the facts or necessary information beforehand. Instead of walking up to the woman that is standing up to the expo and saying "I want to talk to someone ‘in marketing who knows the game”, not a “promo girl’.” They should have perhaps asked "I have some questions about this game, can you help me? or refer me to someone who can help me?" Some people just lack common decency and manners...

For far too long woman have been seen as the weaker sex, which is by far wrong. It's time to move on from this old world mentality and instead of treating them as footstools and sex objects, start treating them as equals.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Lyt
Cranky, no offence, but you seem to be entirely ignorant as to what the issue is, how it needs to be addressed and an even worse understanding of how the world works. You trivialize rather serious issues simply because you do not seem to understand them. You're going to either have to continue living in your cosy little bubble, or step out of it and realise that the world is bigger than you and your personal experiences.

I'm a young homosexual male. I get discriminated against on a regular basis. Just this past weekend I was speaking to someone in a bar, who upon hearing I'm gay threatened me with physical violence if I didn't leave. Should I simply shut the fuck up when it comes to homophobia and gay rights activism, and instead 'MAN THE F UP and take control of your own situation?' Fuck no. I WILL speak up against homophobia, the same way I will speak up about sexual discrimination and the same way I will make my voice heard concerning racial discrimination. I'm not going to sit back and take the blame for discrimination by saying people shouldn't be getting so worked up about it. I'm not going sit back on my fat arse and simply accept that "that's just the way it is, deal with it."

Maybe it's easy for people whose worst experience with discrimination is being called fat to say 'deal with it,' but that's not how the world works. Perhaps if more people knew what it was like to be discriminated against on all levels of society they would actually sit up and take notice, instead of just telling people to 'deal with it' or 'accept that that's the way the world works and you can't do a thing about it.'
 
MOnk said:
To be honest the way I see it, this issue will never go away simply through words. Like many other professions and activities before, the only way to combat this type of behaviour is to get more women into the industry. Look at acting, soccer, athletics, those were all male only activities until women forced their way in and carved out their own piece of the pie.
Click to expand...

Actually, words are working wonders at the moment. The issue of sexism has been brought to light a lot in the past year, and the gaming industry is starting to take note. Developers such as Gearbox and Bungie taking note of the issue and taking a stance on it, Eurogamer banning boothbabes; those are just three examples of people in the gaming industry taking note of the issue. To me that sounds like talking is accomplishing quite a bit here.
 
I didn't mean we shouldn't talk about it, just that can't be the only thing. We are at the beginning of the process, the end goal would be to have women become an equal part of the industry, as both creator and consumer.
 
MOnk said:
To be honest the way I see it, this issue will never go away simply through words. Like many other professions and activities before, the only way to combat this type of behaviour is to get more women into the industry. Look at acting, soccer, athletics, those were all male only activities until women forced their way in and carved out their own piece of the pie.

The same thing needs to happen now, for women to gain more acceptance in the gaming community they need to become more apart of the community. There are probably fewer than 10% female developers, a figure probably also true for 'core' female gamers. Game journalism fairs a bit better I suspect with more women, probably around 30-40%.

Now don't get me wrong, I think everyone should be treated with respect and dignity and I speak up when I see this isn't happen. Unfortunately the way things work is that no-one will is going to 'let' ladies into the boys club, they have to force their way in.

*In that regard and as an aside, I think women who keep quiet in games or pretend they are men are actually doing themselves and other women a disservice. That being said though, it's easy for me to say that since I'm not a position where I face constant harassment.
Click to expand...

This +1. One thing to note though, if the root of sexism isn't culled, it certainly makes it harder for women to bulldoze into gaming.

“When I win in multiplayer I’m a fat whore. When I lose I’m a typical representative for the entire female gaming population.”

“Because if I succeed, I’m exceptional. And if I fail, I’m proof that women shouldn’t be in the industry.”

These quotes probably capture best what most women have to deal with in the gaming industry. If Graal is correct in regards to Europe's gaming population, and women are still met with that much ridicule, then I think it has to go further than women just being apart of the industry, because even in other areas such as business, science, where the ratio is more even, sexism still exists, although it maybe less prevalent. This tells me that even if the ratio was 50 50, sexism would still be an issue.
 
MOnk said:
I didn't mean we shouldn't talk about it, just that can't be the only thing. We are at the beginning of the process, the end goal would be to have women become an equal part of the industry, as both creator and consumer.
Click to expand...

Indeed, but you have to look at it another way as well. If the industry took note of and actively tried to make itself a more female-friendly arena, maybe more females would enter the industry as well. ;)
 
Graal said:
Indeed, but you have to look at it another way as well. If the industry took note of and actively tried to make itself a more female-friendly arena, maybe more females would enter the industry as well. ;)
Click to expand...

Yeah, the way the industry is at the moment doesn't give the current females within it a sense of being welcome, so to an outsider who may be intrigued, it'll seem like a hostile place... not that it necessarily isn't:rolleyes:.
 
Sad thing is no matter what they do they can't seem to get the respect that is deserved.Gosh, we playing games, it's meant to be entertaining. Somewhere where we can all get together, have some fun and laugh about it. Sad thing is too many people get caught up in it and take it far too seriously. My wife's mate used to play online COD with us. And while she wasn't the best player, she had fun and we encouraged her, the thing is, no-one judged her if she had a bad game, we did it cause we were all friends and we just enjoyed chatting and playing. Afterwards we all had a good laugh about it. And lets face it, how many guys haven't had howlers? and if a guy makes a mistake in a game that costs his team, do the rest of his team mates rage? no?? it happens. Why should it be any different if a woman is playing games?
 
Graal said:
Forgive me, Prophet, if I assumed that, as in all previous articles of the same nature, you show an unwillingness to acknowledge or talk about these issues.

As with every social issue that has become ingrained in a certain culture, action starts with words. What use is it to boicott products if you don't tell the creators why you're doing so? Should I stop buying videogames with sexist undertones and simply hope the developer will be able to guess why I refuse to buy their product?

In many instances, people in the gaming industry are not even aware that there is an issue with sexism. It is pretty important that people talk about it so the issues can heard. Shutting up about it accomplishes absolutely nothing.
Click to expand...

By default you've made persons, thoughts and minds to be immutable. Now since declared pointless to change self, inform us while we look at the hinges, what developer or publisher have you contacted with your grievances.
 
I'm sorry, Prophet, but before I reply to that, please write the bolded part;

By default you've made persons, thoughts and minds to be immutable. Now since declared pointless to change self, inform us while we look at the hinges, what developer or publisher have you contacted with your grievances.
Click to expand...

in english. Normally your posts are at least decipherable, but I can't make heads or tails of the bolded part.

Edit: To respond to your second part; do you think it is unnecessary to discuss this with other gamers? Do you think the issue is limited to the people developing the games and not the people playing them?
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top