Iron Lady Leetgion Tournament + Mouse Giveaways!

This is stupid, why do people keep bringing up this idea that men might be inherently better at starcraft than women? Its absolutely ridiculous. What kind of biological reason could there POSSIBLY be for that? The *ONLY* think I can think of is

1 - Women are less competitive. This isn't a valid argument. At all. This is a social construct. There are many competitive women. Even overcompetitive women. Women are not inherently submissive, and saying competitiveness is a male dominated trait is borderline sexism. It implies that because society has promoted and still to some extent promotes competition for men, women are not allowed to be or expected not to be competitive themselves. Thats stupid.

2 - The opposite side of the argument. Women could be expected to be BETTER at starcraft due to greater multitasking capability. This is more contentious, but to my mind, it doesn't make sense. Now, bear in mind, I am a bronze player. I have absolutely no idea of how someones brain works when they're throwing out 600+APM micro. But as far as I see it, the two prime limitations of a starcraft player are tactical thinking/decision making under pressure, and the ability to hit the right keys in the right order really damned fast, practised movements, almost unconscious. And since our peripherals are serial input devices, we don't have the capability to input more than one command at once. Its all about how fast we can give commands one at a time.

And the UI of the game doesn't provide us with the opportunity to actually give multiple commands at once. What we percieve as multitasking in games, is actually the rapid initiation of multiple individual things one after the other. The speed with which a player can switch between individual tasks allows them to initiate actions so quickly that they can return to inputting the next action before the first one has finished.

Now to my mind, that isn't multitasking. Thats one task. Men can do it. Women can do it. There's no reason to assume either side has any innate advantage here. If someone can provide me with an example of true multitasking (Thinking of multiple things at the same time) in starcraft, I'll take their comments on board.

So to my mind, there should BE no debate on transgender, or even gender, period, in starcraft. At least not for any "potential skill" based reason.





Now, a second point, seperate to the first. There may be some merit in discussing the exposure of female players to the scene and in the scene. There are two sides to this. One says that women should be judged on the same stages as men. I agree with this on the INTENDED principle of fair competition. (Whatever the actual view of the principle might turn out to be for the individual, it comes back to this eventually.) There's no reason to provide greater opportunity to one group, when choosing between two groups of equal size.

The other says that because there are so many fewer women who play starcraft in general, at professional or casual levels, the continued growth of eSports depends on, (or at least, would greatly benefit from) its wider acceptance as a reasonable and respectable hobby, without the geek stigma it arguably suffers from currently. And that means women only leagues and promotion of female starcraft players, is essential in order to attract new players, bridge the gender divide, and foster the happiness of those female players who are setting examples and saying "Hey, there's no reason I can't do this, so I'm going to do it". Honestly, right now, for whatever damage people think it might do to the idea of "fair and broad unisex competition", I think this is the side of the argument where there is more merit. It DOES NOT have the potential to damage the prospects of male starcraft players. If a woman enters GSL, MLG, or Dreamhack, they win if and only if they have the most skill.

But if a woman enters a female only league, she simply has an opportunity to be encouraged, to find some pride in her chosen hobby/profession, and raise their own profile. And thats a good thing, because it raises the profile of starcraft, in many peoples eyes it improves the IMAGE of starcraft, and it has the potential to bring in new talent that otherwise wouldn't FIND an outlet.


Scarlett deserves every opportunity she can find. So does Flo. So does Eve. So do all female players and it will only benefit us (The starcraft community, I am male) in the long run. So do all male players for that matter, but they're not our focus.

If at some point we reach a stage where a large portion of all starcraft players are female, (again, both casually and professionally), then the viability of female only leagues might be somewhat worth questioning. At that point we (probably) won't have a gender-specific image problem as a community. We might at that point be justified in advocating a unisex tournament landscape, providing everyone with the same opportunities across the board.

But we're a long way away from that, and right now, offering more opportunities for women, and promoting the idea they get involved and join in, is a much greater benefit to eSports and Starcraft than NOT providing those extra opportunities.


Please note that above I have intentionally NOT mentioned skill at any point. There is a reason for this. I think that even now, with the minority status of women in eSports and starcraft, its nothing less than insulting to imply that there is an inherent skill gap that exists because of someones gender. There is nothing stopping a female player from breaking out right this second and crushing everyone, MKP, MMA, DRG, MVP, Naniwa, everyone.

Is that exceedingly unlikely? Yes. But no more so than it is for anyone else currently unknown. And it has nothing to do with our hypothetical person being a man or a woman. The statement "female players are currently not as good as male players" is ridiculously overextensive. Without knowledge of every female player, and their total skill, there is no way to prove it is true, and it only takes one amazing female player crushing a tournament to prove it false.

Stop trying to imply that female players are inherently different from male players in any meaningful way regarding skill. Its belittling and stupid, and the more people do it, the less welcome women who MAY HAVE the potential to be top players, will feel within the starcraft community.