Warning: This post contains vulgarities. This is normal of most of my posts involving gaming because that's where I tend to let loose with them, but I've attempted to curb them here to make it at least semi-family friendly.
Oookay, here we go. I'll try to depict this from the men's side of things just as a play on Devil's Advocacy because in all honesty I find this more of a grey issue and typically not all that big an issue, but, hey, here we go, time to dive head first and light the dynamite laid here tonight.
HeySeuss said
-Twitter pic-
This isn't a really big deal, honestly. Guys do this to other guys as well. Gamers in general do this to other gamers. It's nostalgia-based bashing. ex: "Oh you love the new X-Com? Well I bet you haven't played the original which is waaayyy better and waaayyy harder." This statement isn't necessarily true, it's just pride-based bashing, dick waving competitions, elitism, the norm between one human being and another in an inherently competitive environment.
HeySeuss said
I was witness to a discussion between a friend and another party about roleplaying games and it struck me that geeks can be pretty sexist;
Please let me interject with the following:
Everyone can be pretty bigoted, and most
everyone at some point in their lives is. Geeks are a culture, they're an identifier of certain behavioural patterns and hobbies. They're not, however, liable to affect a person's own sense of bigotry towards others, as that tends to be affected by other things, like their parents or other authority figures growing up, news outlets and what they choose to digest, etc.
Anyway, just figured I'd note that being a gamer or not is totally irrelevant of whether someone is bigoted or not, and tends to jump the shark into generalizations territory.
HeySeuss said
the conversation was between someone who had played D&D a lot longer and someone who hadn't, but the latter party seemed to have trouble taking the former party seriously because they were a girl. It became, almost, a series of cliches like, "Oh! I'm shocked a girl likes that sort of thing" and other comments in that vein that question their authenticity.
There's something wrong with noting that it's unusual for a person of the female gender to partake in a hobby traditionally dominated by the male gender? That's not so much a comment questioning authenticity as it is a comment of pure surprise, and really, not that unsurprising given the circumstances of gaming culture and it's traditionally male-dominated, male-oriented outlook.
Now, this compatriot of yours might have gone on to slate other comments that are intentionally derogatory or otherwise due to her gender, but that specific excerpt isn't one of those things. At least, not to me.
HeySeuss said
It was like he couldn't accept that she was playing D&D longer, more often and knew way more about it than he did. It became an e-peen contest where the guy just couldn't accept that her geek e-peen was definitely way bigger.
This is, again, very normal between prideful gamers, male or female is irrelevant. Login to League of Legends sometime and watch the debates about champion balance. It gets pretty insanely over the top about why +10 damage on X is bad or why Y AP ratio isn't high enough to do Z, genders virtually never come up in that.
A prideful person who cannot take someone else knowing more than they do will use any tool at their disposal to try and drag the other person down. Including discriminatory remarks, ranging from homophobic slurs to gender curses. This is prolific across all of society and won't change so long as there are immature people in the world who partake in competitive things, or whom have egos.
HeySeuss said
I was a bit flabbergasted by witnessing the entire discussion, and it's sort of been sitting there in the back of my head for a while. So of course, I googled 'fake geek' and and found a huge trove of and some articles in surprising places like . Almost all of it was targeted at women.
This is a bit of a grey issue. It has a lot to do with one side not understanding the point of the other side, but it tends to break down into three things.
#1: Male-dominated culture has long since evaporated save for a few "strongholds" of boys only clubs, like fighting and gaming and race cars and so on. To some, these things are being "infiltrated" and corrupted by women, giving them no outlet to wield their traditionally male-oriented, males-only views. This, in my opinion, is sad, and sexist, and is a perfect example of escapism gone horrible wrong, but it is a thing, and it's worth noting.
#2: Because there are female gamers out there who do actually use their gender as an excuse for
fucking everything. Again in League of Legends, a recent example was a top lane that claimed to be a girl gamer in the vein of Team Siren, who fed the enemy four kills in eight minutes (an achievement in that game if there ever was one for performing badly) and it was asked that she play more carefully. She then stated that she was being harassed in all chat and screamed her head off about how she was being discriminated against for being a woman. Even though nobody knew she was a woman on the other team because she had been screaming in team chat the whole time, not all chat.
Basically: Using their gender as a scapegoat, or to whore attention, as opposed to simply going "yes I have a wonderful subset of biological organs that differ from yours, let us kicketh some ass" and leaving it at that.
#3: Because reverse sexism. Specifically in examples of sexy girl gamers, some tend to kneejerk react badly towards that in proclaiming that it objectifies women, even if the women in question are handsomely paid and/or enjoy wearing skimpy costumes to things like Comicon or Animethon. "Booth babes not apply" is a great example from CNN actually. The whole "oh it's evil evil" because sexy women dressing in sexy costumes is inherently
evil. Think about that for a minute. There's sexism, and then there's the kneejerk anti-sexism taken too far that decries women from wearing
what they might actually want to wear.
tl;dr: You have sexists who don't want girls in a boys-only club, you have girl gamers who do actually use their gender as a defense mechanism for everything and to whore attention, and you have anti-sexists who see attractive women in gamer-paraphernalia as being objectively sexist and thus it shouldn't be a thing.
It's hilarious then that the majority of gamer culture really doesn't care so long as you can play the game. It shows in that most games don't ask for your gender. They just ask for a username, a password, give you a weapon, and tell you to go smash shit in the name of Demacia/Noxus/Irelia/Earth/Aliens/Zombies/etc.
HeySeuss said
So I'm coffeed up and finally ready to ask the question: How do you separate the people with legit interests from the people you consider 'fakers' and how do you feel about sexism within communities like this one and similar, that cater to geek interests, and what has your personal experience of some of this been?
Hell of a lot of questions so I'll try to summarize.
#1: Ask
any questions about gaming. That usually does it. Not that fakers bother me, more positive attention and open acceptance of gaming is a good thing, traditionalists be damned.
#2: The sexism is usually not that bad. The few cases it happens is usually more in jest and poor taste in humour, or in cases where the person seriously invited it upon themselves. There are, however, some cases where it goes way the hell too far and even I feel uncomfortable. Like how some gamers reacted towards the lead female writer for DA 2/ME 3. Yes, her writing was terrible. No, sending death threats about how you're going to kidnap her children to stop her stupidity from spreading in the gene pool was not anywhere near fucking remotely acceptable as a response. What the hell. Same goes with Anita Sarkeesian: I do not in any way agree with her points, I think it's just the usual stupidity dribbled from the mouth of someone who has no clue how the hell stories work, tropes function, and human beings behave, but I still wouldn't issue her a death threat, and I wouldn't try to get her censored either. She's allowed to be a driveling idiot: I don't have to listen to it if I don't want to, but hey, some people and their idiotic crusades to purge anything they don't like, eh?
#3: My personal experience has gone both ways. Being irritated by women who use their gender to defend poor behaviour or make a game no longer fun by trying to whore attention, and seeing some people be sexist, bigoted assholes... But to be honest? Not much worse than what I see in the real world around me. It just seems the gamer community tends to be more insulated to this sort of shit so when it happens, it explodes, versus in the real world where we're so inundated with this stuff that it turns more into a "oh it must be Tuesday" type of event as opposed to "oh my god not this shit again" type of event.
Frankly, there's more that could be done to curb sexism in gaming, but it's not an imminent threat nor is it causing women any serious harm or danger aside from the mentally deranged who would actually follow through with death threats. It shouldn't be tolerated when it happens, but at the same time, this sort of thing doesn't heal or get better over night. It'll take more time. As it stands though we're better than we've ever been in the fact that we even have a notable female demographic that is actually recognized for once.
HeySeuss said
How much of this 'fake geek' ranting is legitimate and how much of it is sexism?
Eh'... 50/50? It does exist, it is a thing, but some of it is just poorly disguised sexism. I tend to view it more as a case by case basis thing rather than broad brush stroking it. Also, as above, there are multiple kinds of it floating around. Some of it hilariously well intentioned, but ultimately destructive (ex: anti-sexism that inherently turns into sexism).
HeySeuss said
And, not that I need to say this, feel free to interject anything else you feel about the topic (while staying Fonz cool. ) Oh, and let's try to keep it Fonz cool. If you don't hit that 'post' button immediately upon finishing writing, it really is okay. You can take a minute and go, "Yeah, I could phrase that better." Also, try to stick to attacking the views and not the person.
That's fine. Honestly I think gaming is one of the greatest equalizers we've ever invented. So long as you stay anonymous, your gender, your race, your cultural background or political affiliations don't matter inside, say, Counter Strike. You could be running back to back with someone whom is your complete opposite in every way, shape, and form, and who in real life you would argue with non-stop on everything they believe or everything you believe, but in the game? You both have guns. You both have the same objective. You're both faceless heroes or villains attempting to stop the bomb from being planted, or attempting to slip the bomb past those clever counter terrorists.
It only becomes a problem when we specifically bring these identifiers out into the limelight: Like proclaiming your grand socialism socialist love of socialism, or proclaiming how republican you are and how everyone should be republican, or wielding your gender/race as part of your identity instead of just being a character trait...
There needs to be balance, but, overall?... Anyone can grab a controller, log into a game, and blow away virtual opponents (AI or human) with allies. Anyone can load Skyrim and be the Dovakiin, anyone can load up Counter Strike and try desperately to outwit the other team with their own team, anyone can play League of Legends and try to destroy the enemy's nexus before they can destroy yours... And your own background is totally irrelevant in this unless you bring it up.
-That- is the magic of gaming's great equalizer. -That- is one of the core reasons I love video games and happily identify myself as a gamer, and welcome anyone who wants to join the club.
Sexism will never be purely nullified, but it can still be reduced. Same goes for homophobia, racism, etc, and in my honest opinion as these things dwindle in real life and slowly infiltrate people's minds, it will reflect in gaming as well. Just like it did in the film industry: Still not perfect, but better than it was before. By miles and leagues.