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On November 20 2010 04:56 ganjazerg wrote:
i know that this is gonna come over as incredibly sexist and offensive,
but i do believe (and i'm fully aware that this makes me a bad person) that
womens ability to abstract and think strategically is in average inferior to that of men. im pretty sure
the worlds best female chess player, is no where near the 100th best male chess player. similar in starcraft.
:c
unleash the hate
that's pretty much a fact and personally i find people who claim that stance to be sexist, sexist themselves.
Sexes are just different, and there is nothing wrong with that. They have different roles in society and instead of trying to ignorantly blur the lines why not appreciate the differences.
On November 20 2010 04:57 JoeSchmoe wrote:
Then there is the lot who try to attribute gaming success in males to their intellectual superiority and reaction times. These are the people who are just patting themselves on the back. You do not need to be a genius or even remotely smart to do well in SC2.
Patting yourself on the back would be saying that women are smarter and stronger and i still kick their ass in sports.
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On November 20 2010 05:16 EnderPR wrote:
The answer is FAR simpler than most make it.
You might think of the skill of SC players to follow a Gaussian Curve with the pros being at the top end. If we assume that the Gaussian probability plot looks about the same for female and male (basically, a determined female has the same chance of succeeding as a similar male), then the only variable in changing the number of high level players is the number of players to begin with
As is generally accepted, there are less female gamers so there for there are less female progamers. It is the same deal with why big school sports teams generally are much better than small school teams. Big schools have a larger pool from which to select its best players.
So the question is, how can we get more females interested in SC?
You would think so, but WoW doesn't have the problem of severe under-representation in the female player base. Yet, in competitive WoW 3v3 tournaments, there are little to no female participants.
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Women favor immediate attention over recognized skill/achievements.
Easier for a girl to put on a skirt and go parade around than try to be recognized for an actual trait of talent.
There is also the biological approach in that women function primarily on emotions and feelings whereas men function on reason and logic; RTS falls under logic and strategy, thus indicating why men are better at them.
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On November 20 2010 04:21 Peanutsc wrote:Here are my thoughts, as a gamer, female, member of the StarCraft community, gaming industry professional, and as someone who has studied cognitive neuroscience and evolution of human behavior in college: Observation: Generally speaking, I think men and women have different goals when they play games - they are satisfied by different outcomes, respectively. Men are focused on winning, while women are focused on increasing general happiness and enriching social bonds. Both tendencies obviously have great value in the maintenance of modern human civilization. Causes: Biology and environment/society interact to make men feel more personally validated by some objective or subjective measure of dominance ("I scored x points" or "I'm better than you in x") than by social approval. If a typical guy had a choice between winning a basketball match against his sibling/friend/co-worker and losing on purpose so that the other party wouldn't lose face and/or get his/her feelings hurt, I think most Western men would take the former. On the other hand, biology and environment/society interact to make women feel more personally validated by behaving in ways that support social stability and overall well being than by achieving dominance. Given the same hypothetical situation, your average woman would probably opt for losing on purpose or would say "it would depend on who I was playing against." Women are generally taught (and are generally biologically predisposed) to consider their role in the context of a group (couple, family, clique, etc.) and as dependent on or interdependent with the social whims of others. Women are - by and large - not islands. Women judge themselves by how they are perceived by others - it's a relational standard for self-approval or disapproval. Effects: As a result, there is a huge disparity in female player preference/participation between games where you are rewarded for thinking contextually and enriching the relationships between different parties (The Sims) and games where you are, in essence, rewarded for making someone else feel bad (PvP-heavy games). Women who truly enjoy PvP-heavy games like StarCraft (multiplayer) are in the minority. It means we actually enjoy actions which have the side effect of making other people feel bad about themselves (via losing) and therefore decreasing greater social happiness, which is a big no-no. I believe that this tendency is correlated to other behavioral leanings, as well: refusing to agree just for the sake of agreeing, for example, or feeling bad when you just sit there and nod instead of saying what you really think. Part of the reason I wrote up my socially awkward experience was to gather more data about this hypothesis from other females who frequent this site (and presumably have an interest in playing StarCraft), and so far I think I'm on the right track. My prediction is that other women will never participate in the StarCraft scene in anything like the way they participate in WoW, Farmville, etc. unless they can see competitive StarCraft as a way to create and enrich social bonds and increase general happiness. This is why I support the SC2 Female Cups and why I don't think they should ever have a cash prize - it should appeal to women who want to bridge the gap between losing for the sake of saving someone else's face and cutting someone else down in the quest for personal dominance. In the Female Cup, you can win against someone else but still be friends with them (or even make a new friend)! Completely the best of both worlds. Recommendation: If there are people who sincerely want to see more women in StarCraft (including pro gamers), there are a few things you can keep in mind. Not all of them are feasible - I certainly can't see TL turning into a community where people prioritize social harmony over the pursuit of personal dominance, nor would I want it to be that way. My more practical (and somewhat self-interested) recommendation would be this: value and respect the females that are already here for their contributions to the community. Whether that contribution is amazing art, or high level zerg play, or blog posts, or running an entire league, or just being interesting people to talk to - if women sense that this is a community where it is possible to be openly female and be appreciated as a human being and for what they can contribute, they will come. I would not be here if I didn't know about lilsusie and mnm. Just food for thought.
Thank you for sharing.
(yes, I'm essentially bumping this post)
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On November 20 2010 04:36 Zyphen wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2010 03:59 fush wrote:On November 20 2010 02:23 mcc wrote: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. Lol. Some reading comprehension please? My entire post was about how I don't CARE whether it's nature or nurture that's the culprit for any behavorial differences. The facts are that they exist. And you're asking me for proof? Really? It's already accepted fact that women are under-represented in starcraft 2 and just about every other competitive event listed in this thread. I think your position is the one that's more indefensible. The burden should lie with you. How about this. Find me a single instance of a direct competitive game/sport where women are equally represented at the top tier as men (i.e. they don't form their own separate league, actually play with and BEAT the boys, you look at a tournament bracket - half are women, half the time they even win it, etc.). It'll take me longer to list all the things men dominate than for you to squeeze out that one exception (which, honestly, I'm dying to know).
Lol. Some reading comprehension please? My entire post was about how you simply stated that women were less competitive, not about whether other biological differences exist. If you bothered to read on, it also mentioned that WHILE these biological differences exist, they haven’t been shown to have anything to do with better performance in a game like SC2. Why don’t you look in gender differences in attention, visual/spatial cognition, motor control and see if you can come up with an answer to that. But I can save you some time now and tell you that there is no evidence that would point one way or another.
Asking for proof was to the poster I quoted above, he has given me a draft of a paper and I’ll read it when I’m off work.
As for your obsession in male superiority over women in competitive sport – which in our society seems to be inherently correlated with physical ability, then of course males outperform females. Why don’t you look less in sport and more in a wider scope of activities? Can you honestly tell me that males are outperforming females in academia?
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On November 20 2010 05:04 LolnoobInsanity wrote:
You say that there's no inherent disadvantage "like chess" yet there are male and female chess leagues, and the top male chess player is always better than the top female chess player.
Throwing around those features of the chess world as "proof" of inherent disadvantage is faulty reasoning.
This is because of differences in participation. Let's say the ratio of serious male chess players to serious female chess players is about 10:1. As for how you define a "serious chess player," let's say, very roughly, it is someone who spends most, or a significant amount, of their free time practicing or studying chess, with the goal of competing in tournaments.
If both male and female populations of serious chess players have a standard distribution of skill, they can have the same average skill level--i.e. suggesting no inherent disadvantage--and you'll still see WAY more men at the top level.
To even compete with nationally-known players, you probably have to be in the top 0.1%, and just statistically speaking, if there are ten times as many men than women in the category of "serious chess players," then this difference will be EVEN MORE pronounced in the top 0.1%.
TL;DR
Based on their relative levels of participation in chess/SC2, we would expect to see about as many top female players as we currently do, if we assume identical inherent ability/potential.
A lack of top female SC2 or chess players would only argue in favor of some gap in innate ability if the levels of participation were close to even, and they're not at all.
*Why* participation levels differ is a separate issue; I think Peanut addressed this question very well in her post.
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On November 20 2010 05:20 Zyphen wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2010 05:16 EnderPR wrote:
The answer is FAR simpler than most make it.
You might think of the skill of SC players to follow a Gaussian Curve with the pros being at the top end. If we assume that the Gaussian probability plot looks about the same for female and male (basically, a determined female has the same chance of succeeding as a similar male), then the only variable in changing the number of high level players is the number of players to begin with
As is generally accepted, there are less female gamers so there for there are less female progamers. It is the same deal with why big school sports teams generally are much better than small school teams. Big schools have a larger pool from which to select its best players.
So the question is, how can we get more females interested in SC? You would think so, but WoW doesn't have the problem of severe under-representation in the female player base. Yet, in competitive WoW 3v3 tournaments, there are little to no female participants.
Perhaps it would do good to put further constraints on that population. Perhaps, this is true of the population of males and females who are interested in becoming competitive (more than just casual gaming). So MAYBE there are female gamers we don't know of, dun dun dun!
No, but seriously, I think that it is the case that the population of females that wish to become competitive is simply smaller than that of males.
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Like the 9 pages of people saying the same thing. Its a video game you should chance the topic title to Lack of PRO Female Video gamers. i would dare say less than 5% of the female population plays any type of video game on a daily basis (Farmville doesnt count!). Now for pro femals would be less than 1%
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On November 20 2010 05:20 Zyphen wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2010 05:16 EnderPR wrote:
The answer is FAR simpler than most make it.
You might think of the skill of SC players to follow a Gaussian Curve with the pros being at the top end. If we assume that the Gaussian probability plot looks about the same for female and male (basically, a determined female has the same chance of succeeding as a similar male), then the only variable in changing the number of high level players is the number of players to begin with
As is generally accepted, there are less female gamers so there for there are less female progamers. It is the same deal with why big school sports teams generally are much better than small school teams. Big schools have a larger pool from which to select its best players.
So the question is, how can we get more females interested in SC? You would think so, but WoW doesn't have the problem of severe under-representation in the female player base. Yet, in competitive WoW 3v3 tournaments, there are little to no female participants.
That doesn't say anything about skill, it just means that female players aren't playing PvP, they're playing PvE. So, in the pool of players that we're considering, they are severely underrepresented.
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There are some interesting arguments but they all seem the same, even Peanut's is a lot like what is being argued by the guys so it seems people generally agree.
But I think, and some people have mentioned this point in passing, that it is 100% cultural. Girls are not brought up thinking they should like violent video games, or fast-paced strategy games. I'm going to make an absurd analogy and I'm not saying they're related in any way other than they both are cultural phenomena, but in a lot of ancient societies homosexuality was practiced openly by men and now it is highly controversial.
I think it's just that back then, you were cool if you did gay stuff and everyone did it. Now it's not. But people are not different genetically now from what I understand.
So if we lived in a society where girls were encouraged to like these kinds of things, there would be more girl gamers. And that society sounds very unlikely but again, I think it's because it's not what we're used to or what we expect.
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On November 20 2010 05:04 LolnoobInsanity wrote:
You say that there's no inherent disadvantage "like chess" yet there are male and female chess leagues, and the top male chess player is always better than the top female chess player.
That statement can be backed up pretty heavily by most researches and statistics. By design, males are better are pattern-recognition and logical thinking; Add to that the globally demonstrated statistic that males have an average IQ 9 points higher than females and you get the picture.
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Wow, there's a lot of sexism in this thread.
I think the lack of female gamers is two fold: First, starcraft is generally a male-appealing game. It has a bigger draw from that audience. When you figure the actual LAN tourny fairing "pros" are something like the 0.0001% of the community, your odds are much slimmer of having a female there.
Secondly, as a girl, I'll say something many people don't seem to understand; The internet is gross. I've been a gamer my whole life, and 85%+ of the time, I'd rather pretend I was a guy online, just to avoid the constant drabble and drooling on that you get by disclosing that. I'm sure there's a lot of girls that have been in Starcraft tournaments over battle.net for starcraft 2, but since it's not an LAN, and no one cares about gender, people just assume it's another guy.
I don't think there's any inherent difficulty in being a female gamer at a pro level (except maybe getting hit on constantly at an LAN o.<) so it has nothing really to do with gender, just that the game appeals to males more, and thus a wider audience.
I'd love to be a top level player--I think most of the people here would too--so there's no real discouragement because of gender.
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As the illustrious Day[9] says: "Girls don't play video games"
However, I know a lot of girls who play starcraft, most of em think its really fun, they just don't really care about winning that much. Males are much more competitive creatures.
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On November 20 2010 05:22 fush wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2010 04:36 Zyphen wrote:On November 20 2010 03:59 fush wrote:On November 20 2010 02:23 mcc wrote: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. Lol. Some reading comprehension please? My entire post was about how I don't CARE whether it's nature or nurture that's the culprit for any behavorial differences. The facts are that they exist. And you're asking me for proof? Really? It's already accepted fact that women are under-represented in starcraft 2 and just about every other competitive event listed in this thread. I think your position is the one that's more indefensible. The burden should lie with you. How about this. Find me a single instance of a direct competitive game/sport where women are equally represented at the top tier as men (i.e. they don't form their own separate league, actually play with and BEAT the boys, you look at a tournament bracket - half are women, half the time they even win it, etc.). It'll take me longer to list all the things men dominate than for you to squeeze out that one exception (which, honestly, I'm dying to know). Lol. Some reading comprehension please? My entire post was about how you simply stated that women were less competitive, not about whether other biological differences exist. If you bothered to read on, it also mentioned that WHILE these biological differences exist, they haven’t been shown to have anything to do with better performance in a game like SC2. Why don’t you look in gender differences in attention, visual/spatial cognition, motor control and see if you can come up with an answer to that. But I can save you some time now and tell you that there is no evidence that would point one way or another. Asking for proof was to the poster I quoted above, he has given me a draft of a paper and I’ll read it when I’m off work. As for your obsession in male superiority over women in competitive sport – which in our society seems to be inherently correlated with physical ability, then of course males outperform females. Why don’t you look less in sport and more in a wider scope of activities? Can you honestly tell me that males are outperforming females in academia?
And I've posted twice stating that I don't really give a rat's ass as to the explanation of why females are less competitive. Would it be less offensive to your sensiblities if I instead stated that males are more competitive?
How is academia a direct competition? I don't really care about your other arguments with other posters. Stay on point. And I specifically said ANY directly competitive event (as in there's a winner and a loser) with tournaments. Forget sports.
The facts are, women are under-represented relative to their population size in virtually all directly competitive events. Sorry the truth offended you. I simply stated it. And then I said the explanation is an entirely separate argument. That might have gotten through your thick head if you didn't jump at my posts like a rabid wolverine.
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I think female gamers tend to be more interested in casual games than male gamers. They are less likely to put "work" into a game and just see them as a fun way to pass the time or meet friends.
My wife, for example, will happily play MMOs with me but she will never "grind" things in them like I will. In Starcraft getting to a minimum level of competency is a kind of grind so its a hurtle few women are interested in overcoming. (note I say interested in, not capable of  )
This leads to a small pool of female gamers which is why there aren't many amazing ones. If the same # of women played SC2 as men the numbers would probably be much closer to even.
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This may sound extremely ignorant, and it is, but.... Women simply do not need to win a major tourney like GSL to get the same amount of attention as a male.
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+ Show Spoiler +On November 20 2010 04:21 Peanutsc wrote:Here are my thoughts, as a gamer, female, member of the StarCraft community, gaming industry professional, and as someone who has studied cognitive neuroscience and evolution of human behavior in college: Observation: Generally speaking, I think men and women have different goals when they play games - they are satisfied by different outcomes, respectively. Men are focused on winning, while women are focused on increasing general happiness and enriching social bonds. Both tendencies obviously have great value in the maintenance of modern human civilization. Causes: Biology and environment/society interact to make men feel more personally validated by some objective or subjective measure of dominance ("I scored x points" or "I'm better than you in x") than by social approval. If a typical guy had a choice between winning a basketball match against his sibling/friend/co-worker and losing on purpose so that the other party wouldn't lose face and/or get his/her feelings hurt, I think most Western men would take the former. On the other hand, biology and environment/society interact to make women feel more personally validated by behaving in ways that support social stability and overall well being than by achieving dominance. Given the same hypothetical situation, your average woman would probably opt for losing on purpose or would say "it would depend on who I was playing against." Women are generally taught (and are generally biologically predisposed) to consider their role in the context of a group (couple, family, clique, etc.) and as dependent on or interdependent with the social whims of others. Women are - by and large - not islands. Women judge themselves by how they are perceived by others - it's a relational standard for self-approval or disapproval. Effects: As a result, there is a huge disparity in female player preference/participation between games where you are rewarded for thinking contextually and enriching the relationships between different parties (The Sims) and games where you are, in essence, rewarded for making someone else feel bad (PvP-heavy games). Women who truly enjoy PvP-heavy games like StarCraft (multiplayer) are in the minority. It means we actually enjoy actions which have the side effect of making other people feel bad about themselves (via losing) and therefore decreasing greater social happiness, which is a big no-no. I believe that this tendency is correlated to other behavioral leanings, as well: refusing to agree just for the sake of agreeing, for example, or feeling bad when you just sit there and nod instead of saying what you really think. Part of the reason I wrote up my socially awkward experience was to gather more data about this hypothesis from other females who frequent this site (and presumably have an interest in playing StarCraft), and so far I think I'm on the right track. My prediction is that other women will never participate in the StarCraft scene in anything like the way they participate in WoW, Farmville, etc. unless they can see competitive StarCraft as a way to create and enrich social bonds and increase general happiness. This is why I support the SC2 Female Cups and why I don't think they should ever have a cash prize - it should appeal to women who want to bridge the gap between losing for the sake of saving someone else's face and cutting someone else down in the quest for personal dominance. In the Female Cup, you can win against someone else but still be friends with them (or even make a new friend)! Completely the best of both worlds. Recommendation: If there are people who sincerely want to see more women in StarCraft (including pro gamers), there are a few things you can keep in mind. Not all of them are feasible - I certainly can't see TL turning into a community where people prioritize social harmony over the pursuit of personal dominance, nor would I want it to be that way. My more practical (and somewhat self-interested) recommendation would be this: value and respect the females that are already here for their contributions to the community. Whether that contribution is amazing art, or high level zerg play, or blog posts, or running an entire league, or just being interesting people to talk to - if women sense that this is a community where it is possible to be openly female and be appreciated as a human being and for what they can contribute, they will come. I would not be here if I didn't know about lilsusie and mnm. Just food for thought.
Quoted because I agree with everything you said and dont want people to overlook it
Female SC2 player here:
I think ultimately, it comes to the same idea of why we dont have foreigners winning Korean Tournaments, there just isn't as many girls playing this game. Will we see that eventually? I think so. It will just take time. I think for the most part, everyone just needs to calm down about the topic of female progamers. I know you guys mean well for the most part, but it's not that big of a deal. If the overwhelming opinion was that a woman CANT be a progamers because guys are better for some reason, then yes, I would make a big deal out of it, but thankfully, I don't think that's the case right now. Yes, I've seen people make stupid comments, but for the most part, there is a large portion of the community that supports female SC2 players and would like to see them compete.
The reason I would like people to calm down about the topic of female SC2 players, despite myself being of them, is that it's been getting to a point where people are just too over dramatic about it and skews the image of female competitors. Pikachu, who won the second female ESL cup on EU was widely praised, but I could tell from the threads, most people had not watched the games and it was just 'ZOMG HOT GIRL PLAYS SC2!' and in some of the ESL female threads, people just immediately ask for pictures of the players, rather than ranks and results.
What has happened is that Pikachu's threads got pages and pages of post of people praising her in someway, simply because she was a female SC2 who is amazingly pretty because she's model, but her level play isn't high at all and basic RTS mistakes were all over those games. Now let's take a look at the ESL NA Female cup, in which we dont have pictures of the female competitors and the interviews are focused on what happened in the actual matches:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=170047
Only 4 pages of comments because Navi, the winner of the NA female cup, doesn't have pictures plastered anywhere her on TL or the ESL sight. All you have to see of her is her games and I love that because she is a good player. Her games were actually interesting to watch and so was Awesome's games. These were players, who knew what they were doing, but go very little attention.
Now I'm not saying that it's bad that the NA female cup winner only got 4 pages of responses. It honestly isn't. What is bad is when you compare that to Pikachu's thread, when Navi is the 100x better player.
As for me, for the most part, school and work are preventing me from entering the female cups. I have accounts on both the EU and NA server. I almost did sign up for the recent EU cup, but I wasn't allowed to sign up because I didn't have a photo uploaded for my profile picture. Now, this wouldn't be a big deal if the ESL didn't require that the picture you upload be a photo of yourself. I initially had a cute icon of a cartoon character, but it got taken down and I was asked to upload a real picture of myself. Now, in the NA cups, we're not required to have a photo uploaded, but in the EU, we are. I can't stress how to me this is a problem. Flat out, I don't want to upload my photo to the internet. I don't want to upload my photo to a site in which 90% of the people that visit it are male and they would prefer to judge me by my looks instead of my gameplay. I don't want to be a Pikachu. I want to be a Navi. I would rather have 4 pages of quality posts on my games rather than 20+ pages of people just running around being 'ZOMG SC2 GIRL!!'
At this point, I don't even want to be a TossGirl. As a gamer, I want to be judged by my games.
That is why I ask of you guys to stop making a big deal about female SC2 players. If we're treated like regular players, we will become better players. Ultimately, we, women choose our role to play in the SC2 community. If any of us want to be top players, we will get there.
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On November 20 2010 05:22 fush wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2010 04:36 Zyphen wrote:On November 20 2010 03:59 fush wrote:On November 20 2010 02:23 mcc wrote: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. Lol. Some reading comprehension please? My entire post was about how I don't CARE whether it's nature or nurture that's the culprit for any behavorial differences. The facts are that they exist. And you're asking me for proof? Really? It's already accepted fact that women are under-represented in starcraft 2 and just about every other competitive event listed in this thread. I think your position is the one that's more indefensible. The burden should lie with you. How about this. Find me a single instance of a direct competitive game/sport where women are equally represented at the top tier as men (i.e. they don't form their own separate league, actually play with and BEAT the boys, you look at a tournament bracket - half are women, half the time they even win it, etc.). It'll take me longer to list all the things men dominate than for you to squeeze out that one exception (which, honestly, I'm dying to know). Lol. Some reading comprehension please? My entire post was about how you simply stated that women were less competitive, not about whether other biological differences exist. If you bothered to read on, it also mentioned that WHILE these biological differences exist, they haven’t been shown to have anything to do with better performance in a game like SC2. Why don’t you look in gender differences in attention, visual/spatial cognition, motor control and see if you can come up with an answer to that. But I can save you some time now and tell you that there is no evidence that would point one way or another. Asking for proof was to the poster I quoted above, he has given me a draft of a paper and I’ll read it when I’m off work. As for your obsession in male superiority over women in competitive sport – which in our society seems to be inherently correlated with physical ability, then of course males outperform females. Why don’t you look less in sport and more in a wider scope of activities? Can you honestly tell me that males are outperforming females in academia?
while females college graduation rates are far higher than males and females are now a majority of law degree recipients and women have made big strides in equality over the last 20 years, men still dominate the top of almost every field. especially when you look at the more 'nerdy' professions that involve a lot of analysis etc... you'll see that's true. males are the overwhelming recipients of tech degrees and anything related to math & science. females perform better on average, but males have a much wider range and perform on average better in the top %.
most games (competitive ones anyways) involve fast reaction time/thinking etc... (mostly war type games), which men are naturally better at.
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On November 20 2010 05:29 Alay wrote:
Wow, there's a lot of sexism in this thread.
Secondly, as a girl, I'll say something many people don't seem to understand; The internet is gross. I've been a gamer my whole life, and 85%+ of the time, I'd rather pretend I was a guy online, just to avoid the constant drabble and drooling on that you get by disclosing that.
Yeah, seriously guys I started this topic because I find this topic interesting. If you have a real argument then great I'd like to hear it as many of the posters have done. But if the point you're trying to make is 'men are just better than females' at least try to back it up with an argument. I'm the last person to sit around and cry 'sexist!!!' But, really, it is sexist if you don't have any argument along with it.
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On November 20 2010 05:28 Shinkugami wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2010 05:04 LolnoobInsanity wrote:
You say that there's no inherent disadvantage "like chess" yet there are male and female chess leagues, and the top male chess player is always better than the top female chess player.
That statement can be backed up pretty heavily by most researches and statistics. By design, males are better are pattern-recognition and logical thinking; Add to that the globally demonstrated statistic that males have an average IQ 9 points higher than females and you get the picture.
Good point except the example is irrelevant because it relies on the assumption that being good at Starcraft requires higher intelligence/cognition. It doesn't.
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EPT
