About some troubles (SlayerS_Jessica) - Page 21

On July 22 2011 06:51 protheros wrote:
Ok, I love you Jessica but I have to write this.

The exact moment you signed Eve into Starcraft 2 team this sort of reaction should be expected.
It is a male predominant e-sport, no one was surprised to hear the things that were said, except you. The moment you start trying to fight it, is the moment it starts getting out of hand. And you did just that.

It could have been a reasonably calm arrival of Eve into the Slayers team, and hopefully, a calm, steady entering of the other sex into the pro scene. Instead, it turned into something like this, I am quite disappointed in the way it was handled.

On July 22 2011 06:28 Torpedo.Vegas wrote:


The problem with gender started way before this though. Female gamers get obscene amounts of crap every time they place a game. Socially ostracized and verbally abused because they are different from the "norm". Every single game is like this, so it is understandable that the talent pool for female gamers is not a profound and that of male gamers. The segregation happened a long time ago. Unless someone steps up and takes a chance, the cycle will continue and male gamers will be overwhelmingly if not the only professional gamers around.

Bringing on Eve is hopefully the first of many and is (as I see it) a kind of olive branch to other females to become more involved in eSports. Provide a tangible goal through the abuse and taunts that IS disproportionately thrown at them and perhaps steadily make females less and less "closet gamers".

Her gender is indeed (sadly) a central focus here, you are right, but instead of taking it as giving massive group of people a chance to shine, many cynically see it in a shallow sexual manner. Normally we rarely see or give a game about the gender divide in gaming, Jessica brought it to the forefront and it willing to do something about it instead of letting it remain the status quo.

Hopefully there will be enough ambitious women playing SC2 and other games that they can have the luxury of selecting them purely on merit and skill, but right now that is only a small facet of the issue here. The larger issue is finding a girl willing to stand up publicly and call herself and aspiring pro-gamer without being target and disproportionately abused by the general public. Eve is once such female and instead of backing down Jessica and SlayerS is helping her forward in the face of this prejudice. (Which looking through a lot of the posts, there definitely is in the community).

Even if Eve showed up as the super hyper Gosu bonjwa of bonjwa's, the community at large would STILL have given her abuse and taunts for being a girl in gaming. Perhaps Jessica could have handled things slightly differently with regards to the GSTL, everything is better in hind-sight, but the public's reaction while semi-expected is still unacceptable. Which is why overall I support her decision to not back down to the trolls on this one.

On July 22 2011 06:45 Loodah wrote:
I really appreciate you coming here and posting this. I'm a huge fan of SlayerS, and I always support you guys.

However, I must respectfully disagree with the decision. I am not here to disrespect Eve or SlayerS- but I will say that I have a fundamental problem if she is being paid a salary - The reason this is fundamentally wrong is because there are males who are working probably twice as hard as her and not getting money out of it. As far as research shows, there are not disabilities for girls in terms of Starcraft 2 ability as there are in many physical sports - so they should be expected to compete at the highest level against males.