The Female Gamer - Are you guys not over this yet?

I have my own experiences and thoughts on this as well.

I made a female toon as an alt back in WoW 7 or 8 years ago when it was really popular. I had heard female gamers mention being harassed but I chalked it up to mere attention whoring. I tend to try a different gender character in most of my games that have both options, usually there is no difference but sometimes there is and there's no real reason not to.

Well I was shocked. The constant tells and some of the comments, honestly I guess some of those comments made me feel violated, and as a guy knowing I can just log off and I'd go back to normal it was really an eye opener. I haven't had that same issue in SWTOR and do think the majority of the population is older and things have changed. If you were back there in the WoW days you'd know what true harassment can be.

On the vent issue, honestly, I never want voice chat in these games because I really don't want to talk to any of you people. I played a lot of sports and even served in the military, with the wrong group of people around you any competition can be a mess. With a bunch of low achiever MMO players and the bottom rung of society it's even worse. I am only willing to do voice chat with people I know already in person, because their maturity is higher and they're similar to me in terms of being considerate to other people. Even in the military, there were high achievers, but the younger guys could be really annoying, but the thing was since you were in person you could tell them to stop and they would. That won't happen in just voice chat when there is no face to face component.

If you want to make new friends I don't think an MMO is the way to do it, there are a lot of activities you can do in person that will put you in contact with lots of other people. Sports but also many volunteer activities, hobbies or events.

There is a stigma and stereotype for MMO players for a reason. Yes it doesn't apply to all, but it applies to so many that you do have to take into consideration that you're likely to run into those types. But honestly even outside of MMOs, a lot of people these days are rude and inconsiderate. I work at a pretty big company, I am on good terms with over a hundred people but I actively dislike many of them and there are only maybe 5 that I really enjoy conversing with and working with. Age is not the sole factor, and there are many annoying older people, but in general I've found the manners and upbringing I've had are more often reflected in the older generations than they are in the younger. And it's almost always by previous income levels (since currently we're all at about the same). I hate to say it but there is a certain refinement found among people that have had extremely high incomes at some point. These people are extremely unlikely to ever touch an MMO.

I've been playing MMOs since I started FFXI over 10 years ago. I was young when I started playing and have always created male characters. I felt like it helped to avoid the whole getting treated differently for being a girl, and all the rest of that.

When I started SWTOR I followed the same thing, old habits die hard I guess, and I created a male Trooper. However, once I joined my guild and started using voice chat with them, it was obvious I was female. Everyone in my guild has been cool and we have a couple of other girls in the guild as well.

We run a teamspeak server and recently put our photos as avatars for fun.

However, recently, we had a situation where we had a pug DPS join our OPs group because we were missing a dps. We invited him into TS and the second he noticed that I was a girl, I started getting tells from him almost right away. I have no idea how young/old he was, but I'm 26 and am not in the mood to have guys flirting with me over an MMO.

I also haven't seen anything like this in a while, nor heard of it, and figured it was a dying thing with mmos where guys have finally realised that "yeah, girls play too." But apparently not.

Edit:

Let me add by saying a few things:
1) No. This does not shock me. I was just hoping that the MMO community has a whole has grown away from the flirt with females in a video game mentality. But I realize after posting this that expecting a community which will always have younger people in it, makes that impossible, which makes this whole thread pointless.

2) I wasn't complaining. I wasn't attention whoring. I was just merely bringing it up as a topic of discussion. I had no intention to insulting anyone either. If I have, then I apologize.

3) I graduated from college where in my major (programming) the male to female ratio was 25:1. So yes, I am used to being 'outnumbered', around some socially awkward guys, and also being treated as one of the guys sometimes. I'm also used to guys flirting with me, even when I have no interest in men.

I find it funny how some of you are saying that we "let it slip" that we are female. If I am using voice chat with my guild, and with our pvp nights on my server, the second I open my mouth it's obvious that I am not a man. Nor do I want to referenced as such. There's no "letting it slip". It just is.

I'm not surprised/shocked/whatever word you'd like to use about this happening. I've seen it before. I've seen the "how are you playing xbox in the kitchen" comments before too, which make me laugh if I'm being honest. But I am surrounded by male gamers in real life. I work with them. None of them treat the women they work with that much differently. If anything, you become "one of the guys" as opposed to being a female that you can try to impress/flirt with/talk to/etc.

Therefore, by working with a group of fantastic gamers in real life, I found it rather strange that this behavior was actually still around in the MMO community. I thought it had grown past that. (Don't get me wrong, I know some couples have met in MMOs and gotten married /dated and I'm not trying to put a label or stereotype on men/women who want to flirt in a video game. For me, it's just not the place. If you must flirt, don't be creepy about it.)

I just posted the topic, with this particular example, to talk about it. Nothing more. I didn't mean to offend anyone or upset anyone.

Freud would say that deep down you like it.

We're not asking you to let it slip because you're female. We're asking you to let it slip because it's a non-issue.

I've already given you a very good example of how I let a female officer off with her comment on whether I already received my free tionese set, when I was already way ahead in columi. If it was you, I'm sure you would create a new thread on whether or not female gamers have actually progressed or whether they are taken seriously.

But I could let it slip, because it really is a non-issue. Whatever problems you are facing, pretty sure male gamers also have experienced it. Verbal abuse, harassment, insults, we also face it, but for some reason if females experience it, it is breaking news and must appear on news outlets.

In other words, lighten up. If someone does the horrible thing of flirting with you, just politely tell him that you're not interested. Trust me, if NO ONE flirted with you ever, you'd be equally upset.