Girls and Gaming: Is It A Big Deal?

It started here, moved here, from here. This was posted in the comments, as was this, and sparked entry comments here and here.

So I'm compiling my comments from these various places so they're all right here out in the open. Why should you care? Well maybe you shouldn't honestly. But as a girl and a gamer I feel I'm quite qualified on the matter.

Posted to Mithrilina's entry:

I've been on both sides of the issue, and to me it tends to boil down to the age of the people you play with. Younger males often do give off the "OMGWTFBBQ a girl" reaction, and pre-BC I was the only female in a hardcore raiding guild so I've been the butt of jokes (and consequently grown a VERY thick skin about all this).

However I've also been in guilds (and am currently) with an older crowd including many women and many married men with families (who, as a general rule, tend to know how to be nice to women). And being female is just a non-issue, so much so that nobody really notices or probably even cares.

Then again I'm of the school where I don't announce my gender or make a big deal of it because it's an online game, how does it matter one way or another?

Posted to Brajana's entry:

Eh, my subtitle is “A Girl in a WoW-blog World”, quite honestly there was no forethought into, “well I should put girl so people know.” It just sounded good to me. I suppose I could just have easily said “A Person in a WoW-blog World” or “A Druid in a WoW-blog World” or whatever. Then again my blog isn’t actually *about* anything besides general day-to-day things, sometimes I mention my boyfriend if it’s applicable, etc etc.

I’m quite used to being called male, in fact my real life name is gender neutral and I’m quite often Mr. Awlbiste (more so than Ms. actually) on my mail.

So I see where you’re coming from but at least for myself my blog subtitle just came from no serious though about advertising my gender. It just seemed to flow well.

And my response to Bear is what made me decide I should have just written a blog entry about this whole issue on my own anyway. But I've already said it all in my comments at various places. So here's my comment I posted to Bear:

This is an issue I’m conflicted about. I don’t care whether someone calls me “he” or “she”, I truly 100% don’t even care. I probably won’t even correct them (and generally don’t). I’ve been playing online games and participating in online communities for the majority of my life (which granted hasn’t been *that* long but still) and it’s just not something that has ever bothered me.

I’ve never hid my gender purposefully, but I’ve never gone out and made a big flippin’ deal about it either. Guys game, girls game, so what? I just don’t believe it needs to be an issue whatsoever. And before the comments of, “well thanks to other people you don’t have to.” I’d like to mention I was the only female in a hardcore raiding guild for 2 years pre-BC so I know what it’s like to catch flack for being female.

Then again, as I mentioned on Brajana’s post my own blog has the word girl in the subtitle. And I see nothing wrong with just casually mentioning “I’m a female who plays WoW.” Yes, I do in fact play with my boyfriend, but I was playing WoW before I met him anyways.

But I most certainly *do* see something wrong with people who use their gender to gain tangible benefits, be it gold or in-game items or blog comments. Most decent bloggers do not do this because it’s frankly stupid and eventually the rest of us notice you’re just throwing your gender out there to get things and don’t actually have anything worthwhile to offer.

Anyway those are my thoughts. I should probably have just made this a blog entry… maybe I will.

So there you have it. I read many blogs written by women, I've read those who advertise, those who don't, those who won't speak on vent, and those who shout it loud and proud. Who I absolutely will never read are those who seem to think that just because they are women they are special and unique and don't actually need to offer anything to anyone because just the fact of being a girl gamer is good enough. None of the women you'll see linked to or discussed here are those kinds of gamers.