The Other Gaming Gender (Armchair Athleticism) - Page 4

On January 04 2013 00:53 Empirimancer wrote:
The OP is laughable; that most people posting in this thread don't realize this is just depressing.

On November 20 2012 04:41 Mothra wrote:
I'm sitting in Sociology 101 all over again.

On January 04 2013 02:56 ZasZ. wrote:
I think the larger issue here is the community itself, not the infrastructure being able, or willing, to support female gamers. Consider this hypothetical scenario:

So you have a young woman who likes to play Starcraft 2, and is capable of doing so at the Master/Grandmaster level. She decides she's interested by the prospect of going pro, and knows that the first step would be to start streaming and promoting herself so that people can recognize her by name. It's hard for her to attract viewers at first, because no one knows about her, and when people do join her channel they insist she uses a webcam and talks on stream because she's a girl. She does those things, and her viewership rises because lets face it, most gamers are female-deprived. Most of us are aware of the cesspool of Twitch.tv chat, but it gets 10x worse when a female is on stream, with derogatory comments whether she is attractive or not. As her viewership rises, she needs a diligent mod squad to keep the chat under control so that she can interact with her viewers, another requirement for having a successful stream. But even with good mods, she gets frequent tastes of how terrible the online community is, and their behavior towards women when they have the anonymity of a computer screen between them.

This is before she manages to get a team, get sponsored, and participate in LAN tournaments, in which case she has to put herself out into this community, which is much nicer in person but still intimidating to anyone of either gender. She is probably on a team of men, managed by men, and cheered on by a community made up almost entirely of men. Consider how out of place you would feel in that situation.

With all that said, I think it is this combination of factors that results in so few women being interested in Starcraft 2 eSports. People don't get into professional SC2 because they think they will make a lot of money (or if they do, they're an idiot), they do it because they are drawn to the scene and love playing the game. Would you be drawn to the scene if you were a woman?

Right now, females suffer from 2 prejudices:
“Females gamers are being signed for being a female rather than any real remarkable achievements”
“Female gamers who are not achieving, don’t deserve to be on a team”
(It’s a vicious circle: Female gets on a team without any achievements, female remains on the team but never sent to any events or actively used in team leagues. Never exposed, she never achieves anything or is a part of any team achievements).

promote themselves through their gender. While several solutions (...)

On January 04 2013 03:39 ThomasjServo wrote:
Comme d'habitude Tort, I was pondering writing a blog on the matter myself. I think that in general there is a bit too much of "Chat Mentality," when it comes to streamers like Spyte, Flo, and Livinpink (unsure if Maddelisk streams but that is my short list of relatively well known female streamers). That is to say berating via chat, and generally discouraging or misogynistic jabs, this is followed by the lapdog who not so coyly, attempts to sway the female streamer's favor (I wish David Attenborough would read that aloud for me).


I like the idea of female leagues if only for the fact that it allows them to come out of the white noise and get some proper time on stream. Part of the problem with females on proteams is just that they are overshadowed by the ostensibly more popular male talent. If, when Quantic was around, I wanted to watch a Terran and I had to choose between Flo and theStC, I was going to choose StC 99.9% of the time. This is mostly a function of the fact that I will not likely be able to say, "did you see that Flo game last night."

A female league is a great first step in developing a framework where in female players can get even better as players, a network where they can work together, and showcasing the proverbial better half of the SC2 community. I think that the first tournament organization to grab onto this and do cash tournaments well, will be uniquely positioned for some sponsorship opportunities.

On November 20 2012 05:20 dddoushio wrote:



I don't understand how this is prejudice

On November 20 2012 04:34 Grumbels wrote:
This is ridiculous, one problem society does not have is males being discriminated against. Just look at this community, where maybe some female players get preferential treatment in some ways, but mostly they have to put up with incredible amounts of hostility from the community for their gender. They can't ever achieve anything without constant discussion about it, Scarlett for instance still has to put up with a multitude of trolls on reddit making disgusting comments every time she's mentioned - although her case is slightly different of course.

On January 04 2013 03:55 Alryk wrote:


LG-IM Fenix and LG-IM Horror haven't really achieved anything notable, yet those people aren't even mentioned (nobody even cares about who they are anymore really).

Prior to disbanding, name the "achievements" TSL Cyrano and TSL Ragnarok had. (Answer: A single Code A Ro48 season for Ragnarok, and GSL Ro64 in 2010 for Cyrano). Not exactly notable, or anything achieved, but nobody complains.

Likewise, Startale Pet, Son, and Tiger haven't even been in the GSL. Nobody even really knows who they are, or cares about what their results are.

Girls are singled out though, it's happened before. If they don't achieve (anybody who isn't scarlett), people have claimed they are just models/advertising.

On January 04 2013 04:12 Torte de Lini wrote:


I think when it comes to public jobs such as presenter and such, is it really that unexpected to see an attractive female presenting? If she does her job right, the employers are satisfied, naturally we'll see more of her for all the reasons, not just her looks.

Before Lauren, NASL hired someone else (I don't even remember her name lol), she didn't know StarCraft, wasn't too comfortable and overall, everyone didn't take her seriously.

Then they got Lauren and although she is hired primarily for her looks, she showed a willingness to improve as well as respect the profession.

On January 04 2013 03:14 Ender985 wrote:Also to add something to the discussion, I think female-only leagues are a good thing and should continue to get more exposure. Imagine if a female-specific GSL was held; we would probably see far better fermale players develop just to try and beat Scarlett for the price money.