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On November 20 2010 02:58 SovSov wrote:
To deny the biological difference is extremely ignorant. Look anywhere in nature, look at early humans, are you going to tell me male lions fight while female lions stay home to care for cubs is a result of the complex and oppressive Lion Society? Go look up what "testosterone" is, and how men have it while women lack it, and what it does.
I am well aware what testostrone does to a persons body. Thus, I also know that no matter how much testostorone you pump into your body, it's not going to make you macro any better. If that were the case, all sc2 pros would be hopped up on steroids, and sc2 gamers would all look physically more like incontrol, rather than idra :p
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I'm sure social norms and testosterone-driven competitiveness are big factors, but...
On November 20 2010 02:22 donut boi wrote:
girls dont play video games... why the hell would u want there to be more pro girl gamers anyways? seems like a strange wish tbh... and i dont know where u found that "40% of gamers are girls" statistic but theres no way that is true.
...really I think most of it is shit like this that they have to wade through to even post on forums.
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On November 20 2010 01:12 InvalidID wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2010 01:09 out4blood wrote:
We don't see a lot of pro females because we don't see a lot of female gamers. With a much smaller sample, large deviations from the mean (i.e. pro skill) are less likely to show up. But even if there were equal numbers of female gamers, would top females be able to compete with top males? Male and female physical capabilities are different. Why should we assume that their mental capabilities are not different as well? We don't assume that their mental capabilities are different because there is no evidence of it. Women currently outperform men in the US at most levels of education. There are less women in science and engineering, but the women do not under-perform compared to their male peers when external factors are accounted for.
There's TONS of evidence. Now you're just talking out of pure ignorance.
Let's consider testable IQ score - which arguably has nothing to do with Starcraft skill - women tend to have both a higher mean and a much lower standard deviation. Men as a group have a lower mean and a higher standard deviation. What you see is the average woman is smarter than the average man, but men are more likely to be geniuses (or morons) than women. So if you are just looking for the smartest people in the world - as measured by testable IQ score - statistically speaking, they are more likely to be male. Is that sexist or just nature?
Science has not determined what natural mental talents give someone the potential to be a top-tier starcraft player, but there is plenty of evidence that gender may have a possible impact. But to say there is "no evidence" that there are differences between male and female brains is just plain ignorant.
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Oh hey its the weekly, "why are there so little girls in video games" thread.
We should make a thread every week asking why so little guys have tea parties.
It just doesn't hold their interest. Why it doesn't can be a multitude of reasons based on the smallest personal difference. It's the same reason many who are classified as jocks and old people don't play games. They didn't grow up around them, and they generally enjoy other things.
On November 20 2010 03:12 out4blood wrote:
Science has not determined what natural mental talents give someone the potential to be a top-tier starcraft player, but there is plenty of evidence that gender may have a possible impact. But to say there is "no evidence" that there are differences between male and female brains is just plain ignorant.
Theres also a lot of evidence that shows that talent plays a minor role if any in becoming top-tier at anything.
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On November 20 2010 02:29 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On November 19 2010 23:25 MementoMori wrote:
To start off and to hopefully ward off any hate, I'm not saying that I don't want, or that there shouldn't be top female gamers. The point of this thread is to discuss why there aren't more. I think there is a simple reason for this: males and females of the species homo sapiens are DIFFERENT in their basic desires and aptitudes. This has nothing to do with society and education and it is generally ignored by people who like to think of both genders as "equal". Sadly this equality is generally interpreted in a way to have females behave like males so they get "more power". Only a part of the female population does this however (still too many IMO). So the relatively low number of girls playing games like Starcraft is totally natural. It is natural. Deal with it and please dont try to make girls behave like boys and turn them into "males type 2".
So true. It's tough to fight a millions of years of evolution. Men and women evolved with different roles to fulfill: men hunt, women gather (in a nutshell). Up until the 1960's each gender has pretty much done things close to how nature intended them to do things. Then came Women's Lib and the slogan "whatever men can do, women can do better".
edit: mistakenly used sexual revolution instead of women's lib. oops
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You guys talking about nature/nurture are really getting into a tangential debate. Women, as a group, are just less competitive period. That's the reason why there aren't more top female gamers, chess masters, race car drivers, etc (basically anything that doesn't require being physically gifted).
The few women that do make it don't prove anything about the rest. It's called anecdotal evidence. Sure, a woman COULD do it, but that's not the question. The lack of female gamers, as a whole, is because they lack competitiveness in games involving direct confrontation. Whether the few that do well possess an extra chromosome or were raised as tomboys seems superfluous to the argument.
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On November 20 2010 02:58 SovSov wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2010 02:54 RoboBob wrote:
All the biological-talk makes me sigh. Unlike traditional sports, extra muscle mass isn't going to give males a tangible advantage. Most of the hardcore gamer girls I know are just as agressive as males too. For example, in mmos they're just as likily to roll dps as, say, a healer, in spite of the stereotype.
It has taken a long time for society to get to the point where it's socially acceptable for women to be good with computers. And it's only within the past 5-10 years that it's reached a point where it's become acceptable that women can play some games. I don't think it's much of a shock that women tend to gravitate towards stuff like MMOs over RTS, because MMO is more socially acceptable. Being a gamer girl MMO pushes modern limits already; gamer girl RTS can't even fall back on the "I'm only using this as a glorified chat channel" excuse.
I'm certain with time though that things will improve. 10 years ago I would not have expected nearly as many women to play MMOs as seeiously as they do today. With time we will start seeing them in the competitive mmo scene, as well as other more male-stereotyped genres like shooter and rts. To deny the biological difference is extremely ignorant. Look anywhere in nature, look at early humans, are you going to tell me male lions fight while female lions stay home to care for cubs is a result of the complex and oppressive Lion Society? Go look up what "testosterone" is, and how men have it while women lack it, and what it does.
Ok, I agree that ignoring biology is the ignorant, especially when people go physically men and women are different, but to say that it is so also mentally is taboo. Why should we be the same ? Why physical differences are ok, but psychological, no way...
But picking lions as an example, is not really a good idea. First because different species are different species, why should lion's behaviour have any similarity to ours, it might, but just saying lions do it is not enough. Second lions are especially bad examples as female lions actually hunt, whereas male lion often lets them do the hunting.
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well being a girl isn't really difficult my bnet name screams female inside , and if i people say something genderish, its dude etc. Didn't had a pic request till now. But yeah this is a common question.
Playing sc mostly for fun, and find competition just annoying. (well not entirely true anymore, since if you play ro even when you are a girl you get competetiv xD (you'll only understand if you know ro :3 ))
But i just love siege tanks and other mech thingies <3. Banshee is one of my new favs. Don't have a lot of training time though. + sc2 is getting boring because terrans have to play bio so often xD. (or the games are really fast done if you play banshees ...) Hope some pro gamers will find out how to use mech only soon ^^. (loved when flash (don't hit me if i am wrong xD) showed mech play vs zerg *-* )
So playing sc mostly because i love the design/setting of the game ^^. Maybe if my pc wouldn't have a performance problem i would try tourneys x3.
And i think its mostly the lack of training that there aren't so much pro girls, due to girls being more socialized and not having so much free time that way. + alot girls playing games aren't into competition that much. So even if they are damn good, they won't play solo tourneys.
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On November 20 2010 03:09 RoboBob wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2010 02:58 SovSov wrote:
To deny the biological difference is extremely ignorant. Look anywhere in nature, look at early humans, are you going to tell me male lions fight while female lions stay home to care for cubs is a result of the complex and oppressive Lion Society? Go look up what "testosterone" is, and how men have it while women lack it, and what it does. I am well aware what testostrone does to a persons body. Thus, I also know that no matter how much testostorone you pump into your body, it's not going to make you macro any better. If that were the case, all sc2 pros would be hopped up on steroids, and sc2 gamers would all look physically more like incontrol, rather than idra :p
I think the argument is not that testosterone will make you play better, but that it will actually make you play and make you play more, thus much bigger pool of male gamers and more male pros. I am not sure it is testosterone specifically, this would be too specific, since we know so little about this whole phenomena.
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They are too busy playing Barbie Horse Adventures.
But in all seriousness, e-sports are just like real sports in this sense. Sure women do fine in their own leagues, but when put up against men who are top level in their leagues, they just can't compete.
And I'm not being sexist, its just the way we are made genetically. Men are more aggressive, competitive, and are in general better suited for conflict. (Biologically, and yes there are exceptions)
The chemicals in our body make us this way and we accept it. Men are more likely to sit at their computer training for SC for 14 hours a day than women. They can throw away social lives for goals (Sports related) more easily. A joke my sports performance teacher once told us is that Men's hormones make us Bigger, faster and stronger. While a women's makes them bleed out of their vagina every month haha. It just biologically, we have different tasks we were made to do.
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We give girls dolls and boys video games as kids. When you give girls games also they will be gamers.
Overtime its shifting to be much more equal; due to gamers having kids too.
Things like 'The Frag Girls' harm the majority of womens impression of other female gamers.
Proper professional female gamers will attract more female interest; as token tourneys or team/players make women not respect those women and in turn the genre as a whole.
Its a game of skill and skill attracts more; just like money.
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It's not that women are worse than men at SC2. I think it's just that women aren't as interested in SC2 as much as men. War movies are predominantly watched by men, just like war games are predominantly played by men.
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I've been trying to get my girlfriend into starcraft for years. She just refuses to play it. She's a really talented gamer, too. She's great at dota (well maybe not "great" but she's certainly decent), and she kicks ass at rhythm games like guitar hero and easy console games like mario kart.
But she doesn't want to play starcraft because it scares her. She thinks it's too hard, and that she'll never be able to beat me, so why even play?
It sucks, but that's just how it goes. She's just not as competitive as I, and certainly not as competitive as most starcraft gamers.
Maybe someday I'll convince her to give it a shot 
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Dear Shiver,
Since I know you are reading this please come back to SCII and start destroying everyone again, so this stupid shit can stop.
Thanks!
iCCup.Diamond
In all fairness I just think it's because SCII has not caught on yet really with the female community. Give it time, it will come....
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On November 20 2010 03:50 Meta wrote:I've been trying to get my girlfriend into starcraft for years. She just refuses to play it. She's a really talented gamer, too. She's great at dota (well maybe not "great" but she's certainly decent), and she kicks ass at rhythm games like guitar hero and easy console games like mario kart. But she doesn't want to play starcraft because it scares her. She thinks it's too hard, and that she'll never be able to beat me, so why even play? It sucks, but that's just how it goes. She's just not as competitive as I, and certainly not as competitive as most starcraft gamers. Maybe someday I'll convince her to give it a shot
Play 2v2s with her.
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On November 20 2010 02:23 mcc wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2010 01:27 fush wrote:On November 20 2010 01:20 mcc wrote:On November 20 2010 01:14 hmunkey wrote:
It's more socially unacceptable for women to play video games than for men. the same applies to children -- girls don't grow up wanting to play games like boys do.
That's it. It has nothing to do with competitiveness or anything else. And you have anything to prove that other than I said so. There is a lot of research, mechanisms to explain why it is a biological thing, is there anything that really points to it being because it is socially unacceptable ? In many countries in a lot of social groups it is not unacceptable any more, yet girls still do not play games competitively as much as boys. Problem is the rate of emancipation highly exceeds the rate of increase in women's competitiveness. There's research on there being more innate competitiveness in males than females? Please give your sources on these research and mechanisms. I CAN tell you that you're probably 99% wrong regarding biological coding for competition behaviour, but maybe I've missed something  Ok, I will split my answer. 1) The original poster said it has nothing about competitiveness, to that the answer is men in big majority of societies are more competitive than women. Research for that exists and is pretty conclusive. 2) I made stronger(in mathematical sense of stronger) statement, which said that this competetiveness difference is biological in nature. That statement is not so conclusive, but there are a lot of indirect indices. As far as I know there has been no direct research that points one way or another. The indirect indices are : There is biological component to competetiveness in general, because males raised in equal environments differ in it, so considering all the other biological differences between males and females and considering evolutionary mechanisms for human species it not big stretch to assume that there is in fact some innate difference between men and women.
What I asked for was sources for your statement that men are more competitive than women. You say the research exists and is conclusive. I asked, where?
On November 20 2010 03:25 Zyphen wrote:
You guys talking about nature/nurture are really getting into a tangential debate. Women, as a group, are just less competitive period. That's the reason why there aren't more top female gamers, chess masters, race car drivers, etc (basically anything that doesn't require being physically gifted).
The few women that do make it don't prove anything about the rest. It's called anecdotal evidence. Sure, a woman COULD do it, but that's not the question. The lack of female gamers, as a whole, is because they lack competitiveness in games involving direct confrontation. Whether the few that do well possess an extra chromosome or were raised as tomboys seems superfluous to the argument.
Women as a group are less competitive... interesting conclusion based on what? Your examples are all full of crap because they're all fields that have been typically male dominated and not encouraged for women to do in society. I'm not denying there's differences biologically between genders... it's what I study for a living.
But the wannabe scientists here saying how females "don't have" testosterone (which they do) probably don't even know its effects in cognition, because guess what... no one does. So how about a suggestion, before you pull out some hair-brained idea of how you think females are less innately "competitive" or whatever, get a clue.
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Men and women have different interests, simple as.
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ideally, this is not a discussion worth having when it comes to competitive sc2. playing sc2 is about having honed a certain array of skills better than others. who gives a shit about anything else?
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On November 19 2010 23:40 vicariouscheese wrote:Show nested quote +On November 19 2010 23:30 Achilles wrote: (I mean, womens and mens curling is separate. what's with that?!) because the swedish womens curling team is too amazing to watch to be ruined by men playing alongside.
And yet the norwegian men completely destroyed them with their pants of awesomeness at the olympics, even the danish women couldn't keep up with them, eventhough they had cute skirts. :p (it feels so nerdy to remember that stuff xD)
I think the main reason is, that girls are so focused on social skills and most of them detest competition, unless they get jealous, in which case girls get absolutely scary and have no problem to completely destroy the life of another girl that hits on their man.. ^^;
I guess it's because they want to be friends with everybody, want to be liked by everyone and think that if they beat someone in a game it could have consequences for their relationship. It's pretty ease to get a girl into a cute co-op game, but if you try the same with a arena fps they absolutely dislike it and don't want to touch it at all.
Another reason is, that a game like SC2 requires you to learn a $§&%load of theory to win at least sometimes.. Real sports are usually a physical challenge, working out is always good and they're easy to learn, but hard to master.
But investing that much time into a RTS just to play it, get into diamond or even become a pro is such a huge investment&risk, that doesn't really pay off. A girl can achieve way more if she focuses on her job, a real sport (which earns huge respect worldwide) or just their social network. Even WoW is more interesting, because you have a character you care about, lore, exploration and friends..while SC2 is just build more and more generic units to go and §$%$ing kill him and then do it again and again on even more generic maps without any meaning other than for points on the ladder.
You have to consider that most of them absolutely want to have kids pretty soon and want to raise them. Which means their career usually takes a huge dip, because they had to leave for 1-3 years or could only work part-time.
That's why they have to work harder and be more resposible to get into a position where they have a man, enough money and a safe future to ensure they will be able to raise a kid.
Men don't really care about that stuff, they can afford to 'waste' years to something like that even if it doesn't achieves something great. The only thing we need is B³ (beer, bacon, boobs) and we're happy.^^ We get more attractive with time and can still 'score', even if most relationships are short term. There just isn't as much pressure to create a huge social network and get married with children. While a girl dreams her whole life about that stuff and her window to get kids rapidly closes with time and it gets less and less responsible to get kids the older you get. If you get them with 45 you'll be over 60 when they're 18 and it will be so hard to even understand what's important to them, because there is this big ass generation gap.
That doesn't mean a women is in any way bad at gaming, it's just not a priority for most of them, because usually get most of their happiness from social stuff and building a family.
On a side note, there are probably way more girl gamers than we know of, but most of them don't get (or don't want to get) into the pro scene and that's why they disguise themselves as guys, because they don't want to get hit on all day long, when they just want to play a game for fun.
Now that I think of it..there were a lot of girls in my wow raiding guild and they were kickass. They were way better than most of the guys and it always was a lot of fun to bitch with them, because they actually knew what they were doing and were pissed of by those scrubs, who were to stupid to see that giant blue voidzone under their feet, as well.^^
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not enough of them want it I guess.
there is nothing stopping women from practicing 8 hours a day. there is nothing stopping men either.
the only thing I could think of as being an issue is trying to go to a team house but that's not something foreigners do very often anyway.
women have a lot of real issues with trying to succeed in life but IMO they dont exist in "pro gaming" to nearly the same extent. pro gaming isnt a salaried job for the most part anyway; just be better than everyone else and win. there is no selection committee that thinks that women are bad at starcraft or anything like that.
if there was a woman as good at SC2 as nestea, foxer or genius they would have no problem finding a team.
btw, if there was a woman who was as good as Tom Brady at playing american football quarterback she'd be signing a 30 million dollar deal with the Dallas Cowboys tomorrow.
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EPT
