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Note, I originally posted this in my blogspot blog at http://graviteh.blogspot.com/2010/11/genders-in-esports.html
With the recent ESL Female Starcraft 2 cup, a conversation was sparked in my head regarding the gender segregation in e-sports. Old Counter-Strike competitions even had female-only tournaments, and main tournaments rarely had any girls enter. Why is that? From what I have seen, girls perform on par with their male counterparts (no sex jokes) and there should be no reason that girls are locked out.
Gaming competitions should be color blind. I am not saying that competitions should be forced to be half female and half male, I am saying that competitions should not be labeled as gender-specific, and that more girls ought to play for a spot in mainstream competitions. I can speculate on why girls don't do mainstream game events.
The community regarding e-sports can be particularly immature and insulting at times. This holds most true for console games like Halo and Super Smash Bros. The mentality of male gamers in large packs forcibly drive out girls with the tangible barrier of testosterone and misogyny. This creates a demand for girl-only competitions.
Hopefully, the e-sport world grows up and the new generation doesn't fall in the trap of being disrespectful. Gamers are gamers, we click and tap and think alike. Some have fancy fingernails and some have bitten them down to stubs. I hope that more mixed gender competitinos arise, and I invite more girls to do what they can to give us a show.
 
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why is this any different than something like CSL? private tournaments with friends? It's all about people reaching out to similar people and forming communities, which should never be discouraged. I don't see why a female community is any different than any other community that wants to make friends.
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On November 11 2010 08:43 Exclamator wrote:
From what I have seen, girls perform on par with their male counterparts (no sex jokes) and there should be no reason that girls are locked out.
Can we do blind jokes? Because I have only seen rare occasions where this is true.
There currently are no sex restrictions for tournaments, if they want to enter they can enter. Since the pool of chicks playing games is much smaller than the guys, we see less of them.
The whole reason for the female only tournies, is an attempt to create more interests among them. So that in the future they will have enough skill and confidence to compete in the main events.
As far as community goes, I agree. There is also a stigma surrounding games and computers in general as being a guy thing
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Pokebunny pretty much hit the nail on the head with his reply.
It's like saying TSL was racist for excluding only koreans, yeah, in a way it 100% is, but it's just a tournament for the foreign community to bond together and get a passion for the game themselves, exact same logic can be applied to the girl leagues.
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College sailing has 2 different divisions Women and Co-ed. I'm pretty sure starcraft is the same...it's like saying
"women we'll let you play with the men, but since there are fewer of you and you're usually not as good we'll let you have your own competitions."
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"and I invite more girls to do what they can to give us a show."
lol
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I wish people didn't harp on about this so much. Every other sport has girls-only, guys-only, and co-ed teams and leagues. This is not new. I know, people may say, "Sports are separated because girls can't play as well as boys can, but in E-Sports it's different. Girls can be just as good. It's not a physical sport." So what? You think that the genders should all play together? Fine. When you design your tournament, let everybody in. But don't huff and puff when somebody else makes a tournament for girls only, or Americans only, or college students only, or brown-haired midgets only. Someone else's tournament is none of your business.
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Girls aren't treated well on the internet or in gaming communities. The pervasive, sexually aggressive attitudes are simply not a fun environment to be in.
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Physiologically, at the untrained state, men have better hand-eye coordination than women.At the trained state both are absolutely equal.
And seriously this is getting irritating. The only real reason women have separate leagues in non-physical sports is to encourage their larger participation in them.
Why do you think chess or darts have a womens competition separately? For this very reason. While its obvious they have no REAL disadvantage in the above pursuits, they still want a chance to win a competition. And obviously with less competition they have a higher chance of winning.
It should be obvious that only when there is a good chance at being a "success" at something will the pursuit of it expand atleast in pure numbers, if not in actual skill.
This being said a lot of women in the fields I have mentioned above find it below their dignity to take part in gender-based event (esp. in Chess.). However they usually tend to be the women who find no thrill in competing in an event which takes away a significant portion of the competition.
Taken as a whole, womens leagues in any enterprise which is under-represented by them, at the highest level is ALWAYS something to be supported whole-heartedly and should not be blindly and imo, stupidly labelled as "sexism".
Thank you.
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The E-sports community is growing and often does whatever it can to ensure that it will keep growing. Even if it means being sexist at times. Most competitions don't give a rat's ass about what gender you are, they just care if you can deliver the goods. They make girl-only leagues in hopes of drawing in an audience that isn't often picked up by e-sports. Most leagues don't need to even make girl-only tourney, the fact is that very few women can actually get very far into tourneys. The only international-type tourney that I think is a bit sexist is maybe counterstrike, as some guys just don't feel comfortable with a girl on their team.
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From what I have seen, girls perform on par with their male counterparts (no sex jokes) and there should be no reason that girls are locked out.
need specific examples of this because I can think of none
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My wife asked me why there aren't as many females in WoW and I didn't know what to say. She mostly enjoys playing with females and enjoys a little competition, but not the the extreme that guys take it seriously. Girls need a community around them just like guys do, but unfortunately girls don't have that community in gaming for the most part. If there was already a culture of female gaming in games like sc2, then i'm sure we would see a ton of girl pros, but until that happens, the best that can happen is offer friendly competitions like sc2 goes female in order to encourage the community.
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Why is that? From what I have seen, girls perform on par with their male counterparts (no sex jokes) and there should be no reason that girls are locked out.
See the thing is they don't. That's just the truth. Shoving all attempts at political correctness aside, they don't. You can attribute that to whatever you like, most probably the fact that gaming isn't really considered a "girl" thing just as fashion designing isn't really a "guy" thing, but in the end it's just obvious that girls aren't as good as video gaming. This is making no reference to their intelligence or their potential for playing video games or anything. It's just that through a combination of several factors, most prominent of which is the social stigma thing, girls don't play as many video games and don't have as much of an interest in the,.
Look at Sc1...there used to be a girl's league that TossGirl roflstomped into oblivion. When she entered the male leagues, she was just another extremely obscure progamer that wasn't good enough to make it into SLs or play televised games for her team. Hence people don't like watching girl gaming leagues, because any time a player wins theres this nagging feeling that you could be watching the guy's league instead where the level of play is way higher
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It's kinda like watching two grade 3s on the playground fight over who is the strongest when you know that in the soccer field is the entire grade 8 which could pick throw them with 1 hand...
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On November 11 2010 09:41 SubtleArt wrote:Show nested quote +Why is that? From what I have seen, girls perform on par with their male counterparts (no sex jokes) and there should be no reason that girls are locked out.
See the thing is they don't. That's just the truth. Shoving all attempts at political correctness aside, they don't. You can attribute that to whatever you like, most probably the fact that gaming isn't really considered a "girl" thing just as fashion designing isn't really a "guy" thing, but in the end it's just obvious that girls aren't as good as video gaming. This is making no reference to their intelligence or their potential for playing video games or anything. It's just that through a combination of several factors, most prominent of which is the social stigma thing, girls don't play as many video games and don't have as much of an interest in the,. Look at Sc1...there used to be a girl's league that TossGirl roflstomped into oblivion. When she entered the male leagues, she was just another extremely obscure progamer that wasn't good enough to make it into SLs or play televised games for her team. Hence people don't like watching girl gaming leagues, because any time a player wins theres this nagging feeling that you could be watching the guy's league instead where the level of play is way higher
no, they do perform on par. It's just that comparing the number of girls to the number of guys trying to get good at starcraft you will find that girls are pretty well represented in the top level, that is not really at all.
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I don't think girl-only competitions are driven by misogyny at all, it's just a competitions between a social group (same goes for Canadian/Netherlands/etc. tourneys, local tourneys etc.) I also don't think women who want to sign up for tournaments decide not to do so in fear of this perceived misogyny you speak of, I think they'd just sign up. And they are definitely not "locked out" as you put it, no one actively campaigns to keep women out of tournaments.
Of course, I have no actual evidence to back up that last part about whether women shy away from tournaments because they fear the men hating them, but I do think it's highly unlikely.
no, they do perform on par. It's just that comparing the number of girls to the number of guys trying to get good at starcraft you will find that girls are pretty well represented in the top level, that is not really at all.
Could you clarify this? I'm not sure what that means since there are 0 girls in GSL all 2 seasons and 1 girl in SPL, OSL, and MSL (counting offlines) combined.
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Girl-only tournaments are a joke because any self-respecting female gamer enters the open entry tournaments. The ones that do enter the female-only tournaments are there solely to attention whore. Shout outs to team PMS~
User was warned for this post
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A lot of tournaments exist because a group of people don't have the means to participate in the top-tier tournaments either skillwise, timewise, or financially. These tournaments are mostly for fun and not for occupation like the top tournaments such as GSL. The top tournaments certainly do not discriminate (to my knowledge).
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Korea (South)11602 Posts
they have had female starleagues in korea, which TossGirl won back in the early 2000's. I def. support this as it brings more people into communities.
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I didn't expect my silly blog post to get a lot of replies. 
Hi everyone. Let me mention first that I haven't followed the SC scene close enough to pick out the lint from it's belly button, but just the pro e-sport scene overall. These are observations I kept in my head.
As for the misogyny I mentioned, it's only apparent in 12 year olds (mental age, of course).
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EPT
