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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)11570 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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Just chiming in to say that I think it's hilarious that people are using phrases like "non-physical sport".
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On November 11 2010 10:06 TieN.nS) wrote:
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~
And yet everyone knows and cares about names like ToSsGirL and Pikachu, and Clan PMS totally reeks of "look at me, I'm a girl, holding an Xbox controller."
Not seeing your point.
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I signed up for and am strongly supporting the ESL Female SC2 Cup because I think there are a lot of girls out there who are hesitant about competing in online tournaments and a female-only cup might be a good way to draw them out. This is actually the first real tournament I've ever competed in - I've never felt confident enough to compete in a tournament before, mostly because I really really sucked at SC but also because I didn't want to draw a ton of attention for being a girl (as in "the only girl") and I didn't want to get bm'd. I think a lot of girls might see this tournament and realize that competing in online tournaments isn't just about cutthroat competition for lots of prize money where people just say "gl hf" and "gg" - it can also be a social event where people just play for fun and to meet others they might be friends with.
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If it wasn't for female communities and exclusive leagues, there would be less incentive for partaking in the activity (in this case SC2). I'm all for female leagues, as it brings female gamers into a competitive light and we are more likely to see them then compete in mainstream leagues.
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On November 11 2010 10:23 .Aar wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2010 10:06 TieN.nS) wrote:
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~ And yet everyone knows and cares about names like ToSsGirL and Pikachu, and Clan PMS totally reeks of "look at me, I'm a girl, holding an Xbox controller." Not seeing your point.
You actually misread my post. Obviously PMS is a prime example of typical "girl gamers."
There's no physiological reason that women shouldn't be able to compete on the same level as men in video games. Female-only tournaments are just there as a sideshow attraction for men to gawk at pretty girls, and honestly should be insulting to female gamers that actually have a passion for the game.
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Braavos36373 Posts
On November 11 2010 10:56 TieN.nS) wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2010 10:23 .Aar wrote:On November 11 2010 10:06 TieN.nS) wrote:
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~ And yet everyone knows and cares about names like ToSsGirL and Pikachu, and Clan PMS totally reeks of "look at me, I'm a girl, holding an Xbox controller." Not seeing your point. You actually misread my post. Obviously PMS is a prime example of typical "girl gamers." There's no physiological reason that women shouldn't be able to compete on the same level as men in video games. Female-only tournaments are just there as a sideshow attraction for men to gawk at pretty girls, and honestly should be insulting to female gamers that actually have a passion for the game.
You're not understanding the fundamental reason girl-only leagues exist: to encourage girls to play and to provide a place where they can play with other girls. It's not about whether they can compete with guys, or whether they should.
Yeah, in a perfect world girls would enter open tournaments. But for some reason (many of which you can guess), they don't. Are you calling anyone that enters a nation war tournament, or CSL tournament, or any other tournament based on any arbitrary classification an "attention whore?" Obviously not, so why would you consider a girl division any different?
I'm all for the ESL Female tournaments, I think they're a good way to encourage more female participation in SC2 and RTS games. There's really no downside at all.
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Girls in esports is like female gladiators (not to be confused with the show 'Gladiators').
It's really hot in fantasy, but in real life it's like any other games.
I like people complaining about female only tournaments, trying to imply it's 'sexist'. Do not worry about non-korean tournaments. You know because that's 'racist'.
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I was watching the ESL replays of Pikachu vs who ever and...wow...i felt like I was watching some gold players. It was clear that pikachu was far ahead of the skill of her opponent but even then she wasn't anything special =\. Not trying to be sexist or offensive to her or the league but it seems on average the skill level is lower. Not saying they can't train and move up the ranks as quick or even as well as a man, just for what ever reason there are far fewer women who will put in the time to become "godlike".
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United States261 Posts
On November 11 2010 10:26 Peanutsc wrote:
I signed up for and am strongly supporting the ESL Female SC2 Cup because I think there are a lot of girls out there who are hesitant about competing in online tournaments and a female-only cup might be a good way to draw them out. This is actually the first real tournament I've ever competed in - I've never felt confident enough to compete in a tournament before, mostly because I really really sucked at SC but also because I didn't want to draw a ton of attention for being a girl (as in "the only girl") and I didn't want to get bm'd. I think a lot of girls might see this tournament and realize that competing in online tournaments isn't just about cutthroat competition for lots of prize money where people just say "gl hf" and "gg" - it can also be a social event where people just play for fun and to meet others they might be friends with.
This is also my reason for joining the cup too. I have done ESL cups in the past and I haven't really ran into any trouble with other players. I just thought what the hell and decided to join up (and then it turns out I misread the day and its during the time of a test :/).
I think it's funny that people are getting bent out of shape about a cup that is not even giving away prize money. I mean if the female cup was giving away more money then say Go4SC2 Cup then I would see where people would get upset but come on...
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It's a difficult topic.
I don't think there is any reason why girls and boys shouldn't all compete together. It doesn't really help us to only be playing other girls if that means we are training and competing against players of lesser ability, after all. To improve, you want to be playing against the best opponents you can find.
Part of me thinks, this "sheltered workshop" approach with special girls-only leagues and competitions is either patronising (in presuming women are (and will always be) incapable of competing against the men), or the cheapest smarmiest kind of marketing exploitation (whatever her merits as a player you can't say her team didn't use tossgirl's image to market themselves). (Though to be fair they do that more than a little with the boys too these days.)
On the other hand though, a lot of the Starcraft community does seem very boys locker-room a lot of the time, and to be frank it can be kind of intimidating, basically you don't want to treated any differently and that means not talking about being a girl, but then that means that the "boys only" ambiance never changes.
So I don't know.
However, if people decide to set up tournaments for women to get them started well I'm certainly going to support that.
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On November 11 2010 09:51 nttea wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2010 09:41 SubtleArt wrote: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.
No they don't. The best girl progamer is worse than the best guy progamer, and an average girl progamer is worse than an average guy progamer
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On November 11 2010 15:02 SubtleArt wrote:
No they don't. The best girl progamer is worse than the best guy progamer, and an average girl progamer is worse than an average guy progamer
This is true, but it is contingently true, not necessarily true. Which is to say, it is perfectly possible to conceive of a world in which women, as a class, compete in BW/SC2 at the same level as men, as a class, ie. gender does not correlate with performance. At present, this is not the case. Things such as women-only tournaments may, arguably, enable such a situation to come about in the future - for the reasons canvassed by various posters above.
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Based on the experience of joining an open tournament (Zrealm plat and below) with vent required. it was pretty damn fun playing with the guys. everyone was pretty nice. no one acted like idiots (i wouldnt have mind if they did). at most they just tried to guess my nationality based on my voice.
if any girl wants to join esports competitively, they need to have a mindset that guys will be guys and not expect all of them to be gentlemen. the fact is that sc2 is a male dominate esport and will be for a very long time. theres absolutely no reason to be putoff by "immaturity", just need to crush some epeens. CRRUUUSSHHHH!!!!!!!
its awesome how theyre trying to get female gamers in with the female tournys. i already had the mindset of joining any tournament i can for practice and experience. even though the first tournament i joined was plat and below with no prize, it was nerve wrecking at the start due to the unfamiliarity. i will probably join the female tournys and see how that is.
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i know some counter stike people who were upset by a female only league. They were complaining that female only teams were just a publicity stunt.
Personally I welcome female only leagues because they get more people intested in the game especially if a top player just so happens to be a famous taiwanese pop singer.
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Zurich15317 Posts
On a somewhat related topis, is there research / data on why women aren't as successful as men in competitive chess? As gamers we could probable learn from the reasons if there are any identified there.
Similarly, can something be said about women in high stakes poker?
Chess, gaming, poker should all be professions where intuitively you wouldn't say women are at a natural disadvantage.
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I see nothing wrong with female only tournaments, its the same reason we have gold and lower or platinum and lower tournaments that exclude the highest diamond players. It's just to take a rank fo a different sample size for once.
For Counterstrike they had female only teams/tournaments but that was mostly as a "sideshow" of sorts to draw in more viewers/spectators, but for online tournaments i see nothign wrong with it.
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Canada8029 Posts
On November 11 2010 17:32 zatic wrote:
On a somewhat related topis, is there research / data on why women aren't as successful as men in competitive chess? As gamers we could probable learn from the reasons if there are any identified there.
Similarly, can something be said about women in high stakes poker?
Chess, gaming, poker should all be professions where intuitively you wouldn't say women are at a natural disadvantage.
Overall, I suspect the popularity of said activities among women might have a lot to do with it. Just speaking from a purely statistical perspective, the more people you have in your talent pool, the more likely it is that one of them will be really, really good. For instance, take BW progaming. In theory, Koreans shouldn't have an inherent advantage over foreigners. However, they have a lot more people interested in competing on a competitive level, and as a result, all the best players are Korean. Speaking from my own experiences, I've been to a couple chess clubs in my lifetime. Usually, the ratio of women to men is maybe about 1:7 at best.
In short, it could very well be that there's a fantastic female chess or starcraft player out there, but if they never pick up the game, their talent would never be discovered.
Edit: Here's one study
http://scienceblogs.com/purepedantry/2007/01/participation_explains_differe.php
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Zurich15317 Posts
What about competitive Scrabble? the player pool is predominately female on the amateur level, yet the competitive scene is overwhelmingly male.
How does participation explain that there are no exceptionally well doing females in intellectual sports? I agree that you would expect the top level to come largely from the male player pool, yet it shouldn't explain why there is hardly any outliers to the assumption (or is there?).
To draw an analogy, in Golf Martin Kaymer comes from Germany, a country with next to zero public interest in the sport and a very thin player base yet he is #3 on the world rank now. Why are such exceptions not happening with females in competitive intellectual sports.
Participation obviously is a large factor but can not explain the phenomenon alone. There must be more to it. Does anybody have more data on this? I am genuinely interested.
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JIJIyO
Canada1957 Posts
Dunno what you're talking about when you mention Smash Bros. From what I see the melee community is really accepting regardless of gender, race or whatever. Unless you're talking about Brawl, but that game's garbage anyways, like this other game that is a successor to a better game heh.
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EPT
