Discussing the lack of top female starcraft gamers - Page 24

On November 19 2010 23:35 Roffles wrote:
They're just not that good. TossGirl destroyed the Female league, but couldn't hang with B teamers after the Female league was abolished.

There's really no sense of sexism that goes around, it's just plain and simple that they're just not as good. If along came a female gamer that was insanely good, then they'd be more than welcomed into the community.

On December 07 2010 00:30 Koneko wrote:
I'm not sure if anyone mentioned this before, but becoming a "top level" pro gamer clearly requires an incredible amount of hard work and practice. I think most females would be discouraged by friends and family if they were spending upwards of six hours a day playing the same online game, whereas with guys there is not nearly so much social stigma. I can hardly imagine the reaction of a girl's mom if she was told by her daughter that she wanted to pursue pro gaming as a career.

Add this to the fact that most females prefer not to play PvP games in the first place, and there's your answer. For sure there are a lot of female gamers out there, and female Starcraft gamers too, but the odds against them are too high! Hopefully in the future we will see more female players overcoming these odds.

On December 06 2010 18:37 TIgerjaw wrote:
Hey everyone,

As a female gamer, I wanted to add my few cents to the thread.

Yes, there is no denying that there are biological differences between genders; however, I don't think that has much in the way of influencing competitive natures, aside from testosterone levels. Gender expectations play a much larger role.

The biggest reason for girls not getting into games is societal pressure. I feel constantly pressured to not mention my gaming habits to friends, for fear that I'll be looked down upon. Yes, I have a few friends that are girls that play videogames, like most people, but we are few and far between.

First of all, playing competitive video games is considered masculine. If you play those types of video games, your femininity gets questioned, without a doubt.

This is because women care about how they are perceived by men a lot. We have been conditioned to accept that even though we have the freedom to do whatever a man can do, we have to accept that we are the "weaker" sex, and that its just not "right" if we're dominating males in any sort of competitive hobby or game. Traditionally, if we beat a guy at a game, we understand that we're seen as less sexually desirable, and that is a huge no-no in the world of women. We know that being attractive is what matters to most men, so normally, women do less than okay to impress you. We don't intentionally lose at Super Smash Bros to give you an ego boost, we do it so we are still seen as desirable to you.

The nail that sticks out gets hammered down. I love gaming, and I am extremely competitive. Probably even more so than my fiancee. It really does start to hurt when all you ever hear playing online against other people is harassment. Sexual harassment is a huge issue on the internet, particularly in video games, where you can say whatever you want without consequence, under the guise of anonymity. I can't tell you how many "go make a sandwhich", "A/S/L??", "lesbian?", "are you hot??" messages I've gotten when I play competitive games like LoL, HoN and the like. Even logging into vent to play those games, about 90% of the time I get "OMG A GIRL!" Women aren't judged by their ability to succeed, but by how sexually attractive they are. This is both environmental, and biological for obvious evolutionary reasons. That doesn't mean I am okay with being judged like a piece of meat, however.

Yes, there are many of female WoW players, but mostly because its become more socially acceptable in recent years, and most girls play with their boyfriends/husbands, as I do. And the gender atmosphere in video games is always progressing, but I have no false hopes about people eventually being nice to girls online. The internet is made of douchebags.

Finally, I think someone made a point about how women "don't like competition" in an earlier post, and this is the biggest BS that we have ever given men to swallow. Here's a cute little Cracked article excerpt [yes, I know, its Cracked, but they have legit sources posted.] Particularly this passage is what I wanted to bring up "When we grow up, women are more likely to be penalized for displaying too much aggression, while men are rewarded for the exact same behavior. When actually ...

Women might be the more aggressive of the genders.

Researchers found that when you deindividuate a person--or place the person in a situation where he or she doesn't have an individual identity--aggressive attitudes are amplified. This makes sense. It's probably why Marines are required to wear the same uniform, and hipsters are such pussies. Well, they tested this in the lab by having men and women play an interactive video game that required killing other players by dropping bombs on them.

They found that under normal circumstances, men dropped far more bombs than women. But in the deindividuated groups, women out-attacked the men every time, with an average of about five more bombs dropped per session. Putting people, particularly women, in a situation where they are anonymous and don't have to conform to societal expectations is very powerful psychologically. And by very powerful, we mean it turns them into an unfeeling murder machines."

Sillyness aside, I love PvPing in WoW, nothing brings me greater joy than corpse camping an opposing faction for way too long. I must be an unfeeling murder machine!

On December 06 2010 23:59 Jibba wrote:
It's called learned helplessness. It's the primary reason boys hit the extremes on math scores while girls stay in the middle. When boys succeed, they usually believe it's because they're naturally talented at math, and when they do poorly, it's because they didn't try hard. When girls succeed, it's because they believe they worked hard to earn it, and when they do poorly, it's because they simply "can't do math." It's a type of arrogance that the elites of any field usually possess that protects them during failure.

http://www.gladwell.com/1997/1997_05_19_a_sports.htm

It was obviously a sexist and offensive post

Prove Asians are smarter.

Because before 1960, the education system in every E. Asian and SE. Asian country was terrible, and they couldn't manufacture things or conduct scientific research to save their lives.

So please, explain how the evolutionary superior brain of an Asian somehow lapsed for the thousands of years that the Japanese lived in the stone age.

On December 06 2010 18:49 Jibba wrote:
He made an evolutionary psychology argument, and there were civilizations where women did hunting.

I also fail to see why discussing another animal is irrelevant when the nature of his point is that males are naturally more talented because their predecessors hunt.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070413212142.htm

Women may recover from strokes more easily because they use their entire brain to do those tasks.

Testosterone is associated with awareness of status which, in most animals, may be gained through aggression; however, in humans, it is usually gained through non-aggressive behavior.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091208132241.htm

As opposed to biology, and especially evolutionary explanations for the way things are in 2010?

On December 07 2010 01:33 Mente wrote:



Scroll back to a few posts cause there are biological factors that are associated with competition (see women being the choosier sex).


Also mentioned most things you said already :-\

Edit: I also learned fairly recently that in regards to 'courtship displays' and 'talents' (in this case a talent being starcraft 2 playing ability) can all be synonimized together as being a man's attempt to have creativity and finesse in order to impress women. As I said before women are the choosier sex so they have less need to perform at the highest level. You can see the trend that men are more likely to be the ones to perform musically, artistically, literarilly and in our case starcraft skillz.

On December 06 2010 18:37 TIgerjaw wrote:
The nail that sticks out gets hammered down. I love gaming, and I am extremely competitive. Probably even more so than my fiancee. It really does start to hurt when all you ever hear playing online against other people is harassment. Sexual harassment is a huge issue on the internet, particularly in video games, where you can say whatever you want without consequence, under the guise of anonymity. I can't tell you how many "go make a sandwhich", "A/S/L??", "lesbian?", "are you hot??" messages I've gotten when I play competitive games like LoL, HoN and the like. Even logging into vent to play those games, about 90% of the time I get "OMG A GIRL!" Women aren't judged by their ability to succeed, but by how sexually attractive they are. This is both environmental, and biological for obvious evolutionary reasons. That doesn't mean I am okay with being judged like a piece of meat, however.

Yes, there are many of female WoW players, but mostly because its become more socially acceptable in recent years, and most girls play with their boyfriends/husbands, as I do. And the gender atmosphere in video games is always progressing, but I have no false hopes about people eventually being nice to girls online. The internet is made of douchebags.

On December 07 2010 01:59 fush wrote:


those encompass a huge spectrum of things. what does the word "talent" entail in this research? by associating sc2 to "talents" in a piece of research that probably had nothing to do with sc2, you're implying that i can simply take this research and associate it with anything that i perceive to be a talent?

frankly the competition debate is bs. there haven't been conclusive studies done showing males are more competitive than females. the papers you refer to a few pages back were published in some random economics journal in a restricted sample of non-naive children, which isn't exactly convincing. in fact, i've seen research that has shown the opposite (not that i necessarily subscribe to methods they used - as i've yet to read the paper at work, but i'm just saying, it's not a settled topic - and the anecdotal "evidence" to say men are more competitive than women as the reason why we aren't seeing female progamers are absurd.

+ Show Spoiler +

On December 06 2010 18:37 TIgerjaw wrote:
The biggest reason for girls not getting into games is societal pressure. I feel constantly pressured to not mention my gaming habits to friends, for fear that I'll be looked down upon. Yes, I have a few friends that are girls that play videogames, like most people, but we are few and far between.

First of all, playing competitive video games is considered masculine. If you play those types of video games, your femininity gets questioned, without a doubt.

This is because women care about how they are perceived by men a lot. We have been conditioned to accept that even though we have the freedom to do whatever a man can do, we have to accept that we are the "weaker" sex, and that its just not "right" if we're dominating males in any sort of competitive hobby or game. Traditionally, if we beat a guy at a game, we understand that we're seen as less sexually desirable, and that is a huge no-no in the world of women. We know that being attractive is what matters to most men, so normally, women do less than okay to impress you. We don't intentionally lose at Super Smash Bros to give you an ego boost, we do it so we are still seen as desirable to you.

On December 07 2010 02:14 LittleeD wrote:
Im absolutely baffled by the amount of Sexism going in this thread.
Think it might be time to close it now ...

On December 07 2010 03:33 RoboBob wrote:
But again, I am baffled that you believe gaming will make you less attractive. To non-gamer guys, perhaps, as gamer girls suffer many of the stereotypes gamers guy do. However to most gamer guys the "gorgeous gamer girl" is the holy grail of sexual success.

On December 07 2010 04:07 Defacer wrote:


I think this thread is dumb overall to be honest. The sexism is depressing, and even the people trying to intellectualize the lack of female SC2 players are strawman arguments.

Believe it or not, it's not just women that find SC2 frustrating, anti-social, over-difficult and boring. A LOT OF PEOPLE DO. And some of the sexist comments on this thread are indicative of how far removed the average SC2 nerd-alpha-male is from the understanding the thoughts and opinions of the majority of society.

On December 07 2010 05:17 eggs wrote:


statements like this are what's ruining the thread. you don't even understand what the question is. it's not about the majority of society; it's not even about the majority of the SC2 player base. it's about the absolute minority, the top 0.1% of the people who play the game. it doesn't matter what the average IQ of someone in China vs the average IQ of someone in Africa is, when the top SC2 progamers aren't your average Chinese or African. it doesn't matter what the average person finds anti-social/over-difficult/boring about SC2 when we're discussing SC2 pros.