Men Playing as Women 359
A reader writes, "According to this report written by an on-site psychologist, 20% of males surveyed play female characters in computer and console games for "gender exploration" purposes. There are some pretty amazing stats cited there- check it out- Pretty hip site. "
Yeah, I do (Score:1)
Yeah, gender exploration. I'd like to explore those nice...
Anyways, thats part of the reason I like Quake better than Unreal.
Well... (Score:2)
What about on Slashdot? (Score:2)
Uhmm... (Score:1)
do women play as men? (Score:4)
Do women play as men?
Well... (Score:1)
For me, it wasn't really something psychological...
Re:Uhmm... (Score:1)
Re:do women play as men? (Score:2)
Probably quite a bit.
The author forgot to look at the flipside - when immature losers get upset at you for fragging them while in a female skin, the cries of "Bitch", "Slut", and "Whore" are just funny (I've actually never experienced this once, and I've worn a female skin since Q2 started).
However, I don't think there are alot of women who would enjoy being called whores and sluts because they're better at a game than some random loser.
Re:Bullshit! (Score:3)
Same for the quicker part--they all have the same speed.
Interesting (Score:3)
As for the issue of gender exploration, can't do to much of that in quake. I mean how much exploration can you do when its run,run,run frag,frag,frag?
I would be surprised if the number of men playing women isn't pretty high.
Now it still creeps me out when someone plays an opposite gender character in pen and pencil games. Mostly because it gives a little too much insight on how a particular male thinks women should/do act. shiver.
It's not like we had a choice in Tomb Raider. (Score:4)
Seriously...
I think "tactical crossdressing" is an appropriate description. In some games, the female models are indeed harder to hit, especially with sniping weapons. But nobody outruns blast damage, so always pack a rocket launcher and a couple of grenades.
definitely fun... (Score:1)
Re:Ya gotta problem wid dat? (Score:1)
And it sounds better to say you went around and FRAGGED anything that moves when you are a female character.
omnisexuality? (Score:2)
Lora (Score:1)
Re:Well... (Score:3)
All of them! :)
not valid survey, but interesting discussion (Score:5)
Being a Woman Rocks (Score:1)
At least for gaming. In Quake 2 I always enjoyed being the crackwhore. There's just something appealing about being a sexy bitch who runs around and kicks everyone elses ass.
YEAH BABY! I'M A SEXY BITCH!
Re:What about on Slashdot? (Score:5)
seriously though, I use this nick all over the place. Even used it for the name of my record label. And still no one knows what it means
"Gender Exploration?" That's like, totally gay! (Score:5)
Stupid fags.
cutiechick@hotmail.com
Just out of curiosity.... (Score:3)
In Quake III, I usually play the female skin. Not because I want to explore my feminine side, but because she seems to move quickly, and more gracefully, plus she's not this big grunt that you can see/hit easily.
Fifteen subjects, or 23%, reported that they play female characters because they are "more aesthetically pleasing" than male characters.
That goes for real life too. The female form is a much more pleasing shape to look at than the male form. (Don't think I'm biased because I'm male, ladies. Anyone who's ever studied art knows this.)
Respondents commented that if they have to see a character running round a game for hours on end, they prefer to be looking at a sexy female rather than a hairy male.
Duh...
Yeah, I'll agree with most aspects of the article. I do catch myself occasionally wondering what it would be like to be a female in life situations. Every guy does this. If you say you don't, you're a liar. Once you accept you are male early in life, it's natural to wonder what it would be like to be female. I also say that anyone who says "Oh God, you're a guy and you're playing a FEMALE?" is pretty insecure about themselves.
Some guys want to explore feminity, that's fine with me. I'll do the same. (Although I think I need to cut down on those weekend trysts with Barbie Dream Designer.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
I'll admit it... (Score:2)
At first I felt somehow dishonest by playing a female character... like I was lying to someone. After a while I got over it. After all, it is "just for fun". (Besides, sometimes I think about half of the females in the game are men in RL anyway.)
Female characters rule! (Score:3)
1.) Female characters don't get whomped right away. - People tend to be nice to them.
2.) They have more style. I don't know why, but rarely is a female warrior disgusting and brutish. They're mean, nasty, tough, but stylish.
3.) It balances the game a bit more. I'm sorry, but, well, there are just too many mail characters.
4.) It helps stop dorks from hitting on people in games. When they realise that they've tried to hit on a guy, they feel dumb and wonder a little before they try again.
Oh well. Those are my reasons. What reasons do the rest of you have?
Re:Bullshit! (Score:1)
Re:do women play as men? (Score:1)
Count me in. (Score:2)
In some games... one on one fighters (my favourite of which is still the Soul Blade/Soul Caliber setup), most people I know play all the characters and just pick the one they're best at. If the coders have done their job properly, that's as likely to be a female as anything else (male, green electrical mutant, whatever).
In games like Quake and Unreal, I just don't see it. Alright, someone suggested that female characters are quicker, more agile, or have a thinner profile, but is that really true? I'll buy a thinner profile, maybe, but quicker? More agile? Isn't all this stuff running through the same code? Hmmmm...
In the end, tho, it is fascinating. Virtual worlds; the internet, video games, RPGs or whatever, are among the easiest ways to see what it's like being someone completely different than who you are. That's why I played RPGs... to go to a mythical place where I could imagine magical beasts, mythical places, and being someone else.
Can't wait to see the second part of the article.
Competetive advantage (Score:3)
The discussion with my wife... (Score:2)
Why I do it. (Score:5)
Absolutely (Score:5)
Anyway, I knew more than one real life women who had alternate male characters on the MUD simply because they were sick of getting hit on. On the internet, no one knows you're a dog. So that 14 year old lesbian school girl is probably some twice divorced 35 year old guy named earl. The real question is, "Who's playing the 35 year old guy named earl and what's her phone number?"
-Ted
Other Players Give you Goodies (16%) (Score:2)
Pretty low, I know, but if you weren't a sneaky sonofabitch people would find a way to unfairly pk you at an early level anyway. You had to take every advantage you could just to stay alive.
Re:do women play as men? (Score:3)
Kathyrn Wright (Score:2)
Re:Female characters rule! (Score:2)
God, you are so right. Especially in games like Postal.
Anyway, I definitely agree with your second point about women in games being stylish. They usually are sexy, and dress nice, and are very smart. These all make attractive traits for females. That's probably what lures males to 'be' them.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
Tactical Cross Dressing! (Score:2)
Smaller characters (Score:2)
________________________________
And this is surprising, is it? (Score:2)
... and in related news (Score:3)
"IRC Users Victimized"
2/23/2000 (AP)
A report released by the FBI NIPC today indicates that 93% of the attractive women logging on to Internet Relay Chat (IRC) servers are actually men who fit the "lonely homosexual man" criminal profile.
An international man hunt has been launched in an attempt to locate a criminal using the alias "lolita69" in #netsex on EFNET.
"lolita69" is the suspected mastermind behind a recent campaign of distributed deception that has caused approximately 1.2 billion dollars in damage to major IRC servers throughout the United States.
Men play women on irc? (Score:2)
--
Re:Well... (Score:2)
First off, to be clear Im not trying to troll, most people think that same thing. In real life, and even in most video games, the female character is faster but less powerful, where the male is slower but more powerful.
Just wanted to let you know that in Quake2 that isn't true. Every player is exactly the same. While a smaller model *is* harder to see, everyone runs at the same speed, is equally "agile", and even has the same "bounding box". The bounding box being an invisible cube around each player used to determine whether the player has been hit.
The viewable model is entirely independent of the bounding box. You could make a midget model, but someone could still shoot two feet over your head and hit you, because the bounding box is still there.
Re:Other Players Give you Goodies (16%) (Score:2)
Very true. I learned quickly that very few females actually play MUDs. True, because of the social aspects, there have always been a minority of real females, but 90% of the "females" are actually guys trolling for equipment.
This one MUD that I played had a powerful clan for just females. They were allied with another powerful clan, this one just for men. The two clan leaders, after a long period of being adventuring companions, were united in marriage, sealing forever the bond between the two clans.
Then the leader of the female-only clan admitted that he was male. The fallout was hilarious. I almost died laughing after reading all the public messages on the MUD's mail system. The leader of the male-only clan took it like he discovered his newly-wed wife was actually a transvestite. He must have taken 10 showers that first day. Hahaha. "I can't believe I... Oh my God... I did it with a... you bastard! You led me on!!"
Diablo (Score:2)
When playing a FPS, I usually choose the one who looks the *most* like me.
I don't think that there's anything "odd" or different about it, you just use the characters and models that you dig.
However, it did freak me out when I was playing as a Rogue on Battle.Net and some guy kept calling me "Baby", "Honey", and "Sweet Cheeks".
OK, I made that last one up, but you get the point.
LK
Re:Well... (Score:2)
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine [nmsu.edu].
Does this count? (Score:5)
For some more than others.... (Score:2)
This certainly is NOT to say that every male who plays a female character is someone with some sort of gender identity crisis (I would guess that 90% of them are not, and simply do it because female characters get better treatment, etc), but for those of us who are grappling with those issues, this sort of thing can be an outlet for feelings we can't deal with at the moment.
I am posting this anonymously because I can't really talk about this openly in my current situation, so I hope people understand.
An Observation (Score:2)
Usually, when I met someone who was "cross-dressing", I found that I was rather suspicious of them in general. When the nickname was ambiguous, I tended to correctly label the gender subconsciously. And I was always right.
The fact is that, despite what many people claim, there are some serious psychological and behavioural differences between men and women. And, if you pay attention, you can almost always spot the fakes.
--
Gender equinamity? (Score:2)
In Everquest, if you're a female character, the players are usually chivalrous to a fault, and even the lowliest newbies can get twinked by complete strangers, simply because of their feminine avatar.
I don't think it has a whole lot to do with gender experimentation - although I'm certainly not discounting the article - but, in general, the programmers of these games are male, and maybe it's an odd sort of respect - coding chivalry? - to make their female characters the most fun to play (in my book, at least).
I remember (vaguely) a quote from the lead programmer of Tomb Raider when it was released. The interviewer asked him why they chose the woman, and he quite frankly replied that due to how the camera was situated, he'd rather spend 40 hours staring at a female bum than a bloke's.
Tribes (Score:2)
I have yet to see somebody do any "gender exploration" in Quake3.. that usually fares worse than doing so in real life - you usually don't explode into giblets for cross-dressing. Try IRC if you're into that kind of thing...
Re:What about on Slashdot? (Score:2)
Here's another one: How many people try to hide their gender completely? On many graphical games this cannot be done, but a gender-neutral name can be choosen, and many MUDs have a neutral option for gender.
Umm... Hello? Statistics? (Score:2)
Hardly worth of anything more than a glance. Why the hell is this on Slashdot? Let's get a bit more statistical data before we make it news, guys...
"Woo Hoo! We got another one, Bob! The percentage of gender-crossing male video-game players just jumped 50 points!"
Jeez!
----
Lyell E. Haynes
Those arn't females, those are men (Score:3)
Sure, the body shape is female, but that doens't make them female. Gender is more then just body shape. It is no coicidence that men are stronger then women. Oh sure, a really in shape girl can out run me, or lift more then me, but if I as a normal male started exercising that much I would be able to out do the girls in any strenth contest. It is all about testostorne and a few other hormons.
No look closely at the so called girl players. They are men in strenght every aspect. Many guys in high school play sports (okay, not /.) and are in peak shape about the age of most game charicters. Most girls, even if in the same sport are not as strong. Oh they might be more agile (I don't have knowlede here, but I don't think aglilness is gender related - can anyone clarify?) but they do not have the strength to do the things that men can do. Very few people can do what Lora is doing in tomb raider, but men will have a much easier time devolping that strenght.
So my point is these are not girls they are playing, they are men with the overt features of women.
Now in D&D it is possibal to play the opposite gender, but video games don't provide that. Even in D&D type games, can you really say that you are doing a good job? I tried it once, and I won't again - girls think differently, it isn't something I can put my finger one, but they do. Now maybe with some study I could duplicate that ability, but not now.
Note, when I say that girls are different from men I'm trying not to put judgements on it. Yes men are stronger, but that doesn't mean better. And calling women weaker should not be used to imply they are not strong enough since for most tasks they are plenty strong. And thinking different is something that I can't put my finger on and even then you have to realise that I don't think like most men either.
When games get female roles that are female and male roles that are male, without reverting to sterotypes then we can compare.
See a lot of discussion in rec.arts.interactive-fiction (or whatever the group is) on the subject of gender. It turns out to be hard to do gender correctly.
P.S. All generalzations are false. Be careful when/if composing a rebuttal that your not pointing out and exception. Anyone can find an exception.
Do women play as men? - Absolutely (Score:2)
In that time
she declared war on Argentina
decimated a very strong Miner's union
killed off all industry outside a 50 mile radius of London
Scared the living daylights out of the rest of Europe
Made millions of children have nightmares
Privatised everything that moved
In short, she was one of the most successful Prime Ministers in the history of the UK, measued on a scale of 'Michael Foot' to 'Genghis Khan'.
I hope that this thing doesn't catch on. Women play too rough to play as men.
Scientific...NOT! (Score:2)
Re:Yeah, I do (Score:3)
I know this is a bit offtopic but.... (Score:2)
Re:"Gender Exploration?" That's like, totally gay! (Score:5)
Re:Well... (Score:2)
Re:do women play as men? (Score:4)
The atmosphere has become a little less testosterone laden, but it used to be "inconceivable" that a female would be online unless it had something to do with her boyfriend. I had at least one online friend who wouldn't believe I was female until he met me.
Why do you ask? (Score:2)
Why do you ask? I mean, does it matter whether you're the only person who gives a damn?
By asking the question, you demonstrate an interest in a question that is similar to the question she asks.
SMAC (Score:2)
Rev. Neh
MUSHing (Score:2)
Women as Men online (Score:3)
While a number of people have raised the point of the woman playing a man to avoid sexual passes and so on, there has always been a tactical advantage as a hacker to pretending female gender. In the eighties most of my friends had gotten free accounts on systems with special features by finding a girl to talk on the phone and 'Prove' they were female, at any number of systems.
The fact is that having females on a BBS was a huge draw, and sysops were VERY horny boys most of the time.
Exploiting this issue has always been one of the humorous side-effects of a desperation for female attention even in a virtual world.
In recent play on Everquest I found that as a female I was FAR more likely to be simply GIVEN stuff because I was in a female character. I actually stopped playing female characters because I felt that it was in some ways a cheat. The females are projected on the screen as scantily clothed buxom lasses, who despite the fact that they might be 50th level warriors, might not have had the wearwithal to buy pants.
In Clan Lords (another multiplayer game) I found that by creating a female character I was absolutely treated better than the males. In a game where I was represented by a 32 by 32 icon of an elf in a dress, guys would go out of their way to help me.
As a former administrator on a mush for 6 years, I have seen a number of players be given advantages based on their gender.
In truth, as a 14 year old boy, I used to log into DDials as Generic Girl and log the disturbing modemsex so that I could show it to the other members of the systems I was on.
And as to getting away with pretending female gender, I found that it was easy. Just act like a person and don't make a big fuss over your gender. Most people don't actually pay much attention to their gender until it is brought into question.
As I like to say, "Actually I am a superintelligent blue hamster developed at MIT."
My name is scumdamn and I've played as a woman. (Score:5)
With Quake II, the female model was fine, but she just couldn't match up to Chun Li. I thought the magic was gone. A Chun Li model came out, but by then I was playing Half-Life with that boring Gordon Freeman.
That brings me to the crux of the problem. Now that Quake 3 is out, there's a model named Mynx who looks good, isn't too weak, doesn't have annoying pain sounds, and doesn't have any weaknesses. The problem is that if I were to play as her my son would rag on me and make fun of me. What should I do? I'm all confused.
Just sign me
Mixed up in Mississippi
Re:What about on Slashdot? (Score:2)
never said you didn't know who I was
Re:do women play as men? (Score:3)
I don't see why it's much different than cries of "asshole", "dickhead", and various "insult" implications of homosexuality levied at any other player. If you're playing with immature losers, they're going to act immature. If you can't deal with it, go play elsewhere where there's a more acceptable environment. I and most other friends I know are perfectly capable of dealing with silly insults, and I really fail to see why anything less would be expected of women than men in this regard. If I were a woman, I'd be more insulted by the implication that I couldn't handle that kind of crap than the crap itself.
--
Kevin Doherty
kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
Men who don't try to tell the difference (Score:2)
The cues are subtle enough that you would actually have to practice at it to get any good. It's not anything so simple as "all the sex-crazed ones are really men." An awful lot of real sex-crazed women are on the net too. Nevertheless, the cues (such as the linguistic style and conversational themes they use) do exist, and they're the sort of thing you would notice in real life if you were paying attention, like, "didn't that hottie have an Adam's apple?" for the electronic world.
Yet nobody seems to notice. Maybe everyone is too polite to mention the obvious, but I tend to think that's not the case because so many men are getting genuinely fooled. I see it happen all the time, when Lilah logs into the mud and all of a sudden every male character in town is handing her virtual flowers, and you're going, "Didn't that chiq have an Adam's apple?"
The insidious answer: Men don't care about the object of their fantasies as long as it's not possible to dispel the myth.
Re:"Gender Exploration?" That's like, totally gay! (Score:2)
Re:Why I do it. (Score:3)
I think a friend of mine hit the nail right on the head. He said,
"If I'm going to be staring at this EverQuest character for six to eight hours a day for months at a time, I want this character to be a cute chick." Nuff said.
Male/Female Wonderings (Score:2)
Just don't forget, it goes the other way too. What woman has not wondered at some point how it could be different to be a man? (Especially in the online world, in which truly knowledgeable females are few and far between.)
Re:do women play as men? (Score:3)
same situation when I played Magic (remember, those cards that you (yes, you) used to play with all the time with every other geek in sight), especially at math tournaments. I was REALLY stared at. classic comment: "are you REALLY a girl?" (this is only funny if you've seen me, I guess. let's just say that I've never had anyone mistake me for a guy yet, and that it doesn't have to do with my long hair)
however, most people were very friendly, and only a few were patronizing. I find that I prefered it before, in some ways. back then, it would be inconcievable to make offers of cybersex, etc... (well, at least I never saw any!)
Lea
Computer-based RPGs (Score:4)
<Dungeon Master> You encounter a script kiddie!
<Haxxor> Heh, I'm compiling "trinoo"
<Wumpus> I'll use my P3 +5 on him
/Wumpus rolls dice
<Wumpus> shit! I missed
<Dungeon Master> Ok
<HaXXoR> I'm casting "trinoo" on his P3
/HaXXoR rolls dice
<HaxxoR> Hah! a 20
<DM> Sorry, Wumpus your Pentium is DoS-ed for the rest of the battle...
<Wumpus> I draw my dual 486s.
/Wumpus rolls dice
<Wumpus> Hah! a hit with cpu0, but cpu1 misses. Take 33mHz!
<HaXXoR> Ok, that's it. I'm compiling "kill"
<Wumpus> I'm stepping back and pinging him with my +3 TCP stack.
/wumpus rolls dice
<Wumpus> bitch! take 16 pings!
<HaXXoR> That's ok, I'm gonna kill(1) you this round.
<HaXXoR> BTW, I hardly felt that, I'm wearing +8.2 send mail
<Haxxor> I'm going to kill -9 Wumpus
<DM> "kill" has no effect.
<HaXXoR> WHAT?!??
<Wumpus> That's right, I'm running as root, fool.
Re:do women play as men? (Score:2)
Advantages of female characters (part 60000000) (Score:2)
In a FPS like Quake 3, I find it really doesn't matter what model you use. Sure, Slash has some very funky movements that will throw you off the first few times you try to rail her, but the model doesn't modify the fact that that you can be gibbed by a few rockets. So, there is no advantage in Quake 3, as far as I can discern. So there is no real reason to play with a female model.
In a fighting game, such as Street Fighter or what have you, there are sometimes advantages to being female characters. It depends on the game or characters. I feel that in Street Fighter Alpha 1, Chun-Li was the most powerful character. In Street Fighter Alpha 3, she is not. Sometimes certain characters are more in synch with your playing style, and sometimes those characters are female. If the character has the set of moves that are to your liking in a particular game, who cares what gender the character is? Of course, most people do just fine with Ken, Ryu, Akuma, ......
In an online role playing environment, there is a true advantage to being female. As others have said, people give female characters things, even when it is blatantly obvious that the character is played by a guy. Even though there is no possible way to "score" online. I've even seen this phenomenon in traditional RPGs, where a female PC played by a male player (who'se sitting right in front of the others) is given stuff by the guy PCs. I guess if the guys can't score, they might figure they can at least get their PCs to score. X_X
I'm not sure if what they say about a psychological advantage is true, that guy players will go easier in a head to head competition. I don't seem to have any problem shooting down female models in Quake 3 at the same rate I shoot down male models. I know that the player on the other end is more likely a guy, and even if they are infact female, there is nothing saying a female can't be a good Quake player.
But I don't really think people actually do "gender exploration," or at least most people. I think they do it for other reasons (perhaps to check out Lara's "polygon count" or something).
Re:Count me in. (Score:2)
In Q3, yes. I'd believe that the target area is the same, but the female characters weigh less, which means they can jump higher, have better mobility in flight, and fly farther when rocket jumping at an inopportune time (f.e. continuing to fly sideways across The Longest Yard until hitting the edge of the level and falling straight down)
You Got a PROBLEM With That? (Score:2)
Interesting... (Score:2)
I'm currently running eight characters in an online RPG, six male and two female. Why do I do it? I'm a writer, and I've been working on stories of various types for a long time, all of which include at least a few women. I play female characters from time to time to see if I can do it convincingly; it's an exercise to improve the way I write female characters in my stories. I also use all of my characters to establish each others' pasts; the eight I currently run are tied together in a rather complex web which I somehow manage to keep straight. This, too, is a writing exercise. It lets me work on establishing the way characters interact in a manner that's realistic, not contrived.
By the way, I do know for a fact that there are women who play men, also, and not always just for role-playing. On another messageboard I frequent, someone once posted for a year and a half before finally letting everyone know she was female (I didn't mind, she pissed off more than a few people with that because they hadn't figured it out).
One last thing: unless you're actually doing it as a writing exercise, I don't recommend playing all of your characters simultaneously. I've never had more than three of mine in the same room together; above that it becomes headache-inducing just keeping everything straight.
Valkyries in Nethack (Score:2)
Nothing really new (Score:2)
In Unreal, I play a female skin, but my name is my USENET handle "ReggieFromRiverdale," which is definitely a guy. Besides, you don't see yourself in FPS, so what's the big deal?
Anyone play "Mutant Chronicles: Siege Of the Citadel?" I always play Bauhaus team because you get one male character with the Big Guns Big Death, and a female (coincidentally named Valkyrie ??!) character with a sword/gun combo. It's pretty cool.
Pope
Hmm (Score:2)
Re:Men play women on irc? (Score:2)
As a lab assistant back in high school, I feel qualified to answer this question.
Not many, but the ones that do you CANNOT tear away from the keyboard. It's just like tearing them away from a steamy romance novel, except that they can pick a romance novel back up, they don't want to walk away from a Sexy French Man(tm)[1].
[1] Apologies to those who've never heard that radio spot. :)
Re:"Gender Exploration?" That's like, tota (Score:2)
Two things: First, it's a joke you idiot. He's making fun of people who talk like that.
Second, from his webpage:
Another fact about me you may find interesting is that I'm bisexual. Some people may hate me for this, but it's not something I'm able to change so get used to it (note: for those too soft-hearted for the above link, try this one instead). Some people have told me that I must be either gay or straight because bisexual people don't exist.
Needless to say these people are not exactly doing much to further my estimation of them. That's really all I can tell you about that subject...if you want to see gay/lesbian/bi resources on the web I'm sure there are only 2 billion pages about it, so use a freaking search engine.
--
grappler
My tiny life (Score:2)
Re:Men play women on irc? (Score:2)
--
Re:Those arn't females, those are men (Score:4)
I think game designers deal with gender issues in one of four ways:
Keith Russell
OS != Religion
Re:Just out of curiosity.... (Score:2)
Actually that's more of a cultural idea. We hold the female form very highly, as our advertising demonstrates. The ancient Greeks, however, held the male form to be the ideal. Your judgement of what is aesthetically pleasing has been influenced by your culture and its values.
I'm not trying to argue the point with you, but its always a good thing for people to realize that many things we consider "natural" are simply outgrowths of the culture to which we belong and only seem natural because we find it difficult to imagine an alternative. Doug
Re:Guile kicked Chun's ass (Score:3)
Re:My name is scumdamn and I've played as a woman. (Score:2)
Re:Absolutely (Score:2)
*g* very interesting (Score:4)
For me it's a bit like the way Lewis Carroll made the protagonist of his Wonderland books a female- there's a certain type of geekiness that just can't relate to trucks and boasting and fragging people in Quake and all that stuff, and this can easily be seen as a more female perspective. Perhaps it is. Perhaps it'd be equally helpful to just interact with really intense geeks who cared only about nifty algorithms and programming APIs (not so much CPUs- cpu dicksize wars is, well, rather male ;) )
I did, however, spend an adolescence feeling very frustrated and outclassed and afraid to talk to girls, and never understood why none of them made the effort to reach out to me- and this is why I _know_ the genderbending thing can be educational, I've learned from it. I know some people get flustered from being hit on when they pose as females, but since I was trying to work out a comfortable persona to _stick_ with, I had to find answers to that problem- and I ended up being just like the girls who'd intimidated me so much when I was a teenager. There was no way around it- to cope at all with a flirting sort of situation I needed to deal with more confident people who were able to say what they thought, just the kind of person I wasn't. That kind of insight is something I never had as I was growing up.
I certainly agree that many males passing as females do a questionable job of it- certain attitudes and especially descriptions (!) just scream, "horny teenage boy living out fantasies!"- but it's not a rule that such genderbending is always spottable. I know that I've occasionally startled IRL women who'd assumed, after getting to know me, that I _was_ one of them. The trick is that you can't really cover up your true self, it will always show through one way or another- and hell, I've never understood Guy Stuff or felt like I belonged to Maleness anyhow. When my true self shows through, people take it to be a female self. This doesn't trouble me, because it doesn't really matter much in the long run- not like I have an active sex life so it's rather a moot point most of the time.
Oddly enough, I am not wildly effeminate. I have to shave or I get 5-o-clock shadow, my voice is pretty deep, I have no complaints on a certain very private level *g* so I have to wonder- is my basic confidence in my physical maleness strong enough to totally permit my embracing of a _personality_ oriented femaleness? In other words, if I was hung like a chihuahua, would I be driving a pickup truck, lifting weights and fragging people in Quake with massive displays of virtual testosterone? *g* this notion amuses me greatly.
Well, _that_ was bizarre to talk about on Slashdot. Back to the normal posts for a while. Yeah, gimme that crakhor quake model! She's a real hottie plus I think the bounding box is smaller so you can beat the other guys and frag their asses! (huhuhuhuh, he said 'box') ;)
Re:"Gender Exploration?" That's like, totally gay! (Score:2)
Nice imitation, but I wonder how much of it is cliché and how much is true.
I'm gay but I've never played female characters in computer games. Never dreamed of doing so, in fact.
By the way, there's no such thing as hyperbolic topology, only hyperbolic geometry. But I suppose you knew that.
Re:"Gender Exploration?" That's like, totally gay! (Score:2)
Hornyfem, the friendly ircii scriptbot.. [frenzy.com]
hitting on who you think is a sex-starved woman only to discover "she" is actually a man laughing at you.. is bad. hitting on who you think is a sex-starved woman only to discover "she" is actually an inanimate object.. is maybe even worse.
Sort of like Slashdot readers playing women (Score:2)
Re:Interesting (Score:2)
I play with people who are all fairly cool in the gender-relations department, so it's not a big deal when me or one of the men play a female, or when one of the women play a male. I've played with other people who were stunned when I told them I was bringing a female character in the group. They expected a male character in drag basically, and I pulled out Marie-Yvette Plage, who is a distinctly feminine psychopath.
She was my favorite character to run when I was playing vampire. The back story went something like. Black service-man in WWI stays in France with a woman he met there during the war. He marries her and has Marie-Yvette Plage. She fell in love with an American and moved back to the states (bad idea). They move to Chicago, have boatloads of racial prejudice dumped on them. (short version) bad things happen. With her family dead and herself not much better off, she is approached by a vampire (duh) and accepts. She is a Malkavian with a revenge/mean streak a mile wide. Mmmm, she was fun to play.
Males Posting As Women On /. ? (Score:2)
However, the thought occurs to me that converse might often be true. What I notice is that everytime some gender oriented article is posted here, some "female" posters make comments like "HEY I'M FEMALE, THIS IS WHAT I THINK" and of course get moderated up fast. Not trolling here, but I noticed that an incredibly easy way to get karma points is to write a short "I'm a grrl geek" spiel and make a few obvious observations. I'm not saying that females don't post anything insightful... it's just that a lot of comments can get moderated up easily merely because the poster says (s)he is female. I'm pretty sure a lot of males have caught on to it and some of the "I'm a girl!" posts are really guys trying to whore karma.
Yeah, so I'm pessimistic, it's not an unreasonable claim though.
I prefer Gender Neutral (Score:2)
Ignoring games for a moment, my name is "Chris" and on the phone my voice comes over as female. I am not female. Every so often I get called "Ms" on the phone - this mistake is often accompanied by a particularly condecending tone if the person at the other end is male. I rarely correct the mistake, but the one time I did the change in attitude was so pronounced that I appologised to any women within earshot after I hung up. (On behalf of all men, I'd like to appologise for the Pigs among us)
Back to games, I now just like to screw with people and generally cause chaos whenever I can - but in an intellectual, constructive manner, not a script kiddie way. As such, my favourite gaming character is "Chaos" from Battle Arena Toshinden II. Particularly, my favourite way to select Chaos is to use the random character function and then attempt to pick Chaos by reflex.
Glarphnargle (Score:2)
Re:do women play as men? (Score:2)
We say we don't like people - in varying strengths
Maybe LAN culture's just different as you can actually see the people you're playing against.
Greg
Re:Those arn't females, those are men (Score:2)
When you realise that anyone can find an exception to what you're saying, it should occur to you that maybe that's because there are rather a lot of exceptions?
Of course there are many of them. Doesn't change the fact that when comparing normal men with normal women doing the same amount of exercise the man will be stronger. Since in the real world none of the other variables are constant there will be exceptions.
As an example, I know a girl who can sing lower then me. She has an adnormally low voice, and I'm a normal tenor. Stating that exception does not make false any claim that men have lower voices then women. Thats the point I was trying to get across: an exception doesn't invalidate the rules.
You forgot the most heinous crime... (Score:2)
"stand down Margret stand down please, stand down Margret..."
The female experience is full of mystery (Score:2)
1. In the average deparment store, womens' clothing takes up an entire floor, where mens' clothing is maybe 1/8 of that.
2. Anything a guy wears a woman can wear, but there's a long list of things that are only for women: dresses, skirts, hose, lots of types of shoes, formal wear other than tuxedos, much greater variety of colors and materials, etc.
3. If a female college student suddely took her shirt off in the middle of campus, there would be catcalls and hollering and lots of attention. But if a guy took off his pants then there would be screaming and the police would be called.
4. There are entire stores in every shopping mall devoted to selling things that make women look hot and turn guys on (e.g. Victoria's Secret).
5. A girl who wears a miniskirt or tight top *knows* she's going to be getting stares and be the subject of fantasy. Guys never experience this.
Weird? Yeah. But no wonder guys wonder.