I don't want this to be a video game blog, but as someone who plays video games both extensively and obsessively, there's not much else for me to talk about unless something weird happens to me in the office or during my commute that triggers a nostalgic reverie to the days of my adolescence where, sometimes, I would round corners at school with my hand to my chest in the vague hope that I might bump into a girl, and my hand would then brush against one of her breasts.
Since it never actually happened, I am not a sex offender, and this makes it perfectly safe to leave me in the company of your children.
Anyway, sometimes I will post about video-game related issues. I will try to make this as interesting and insightful as my earlier posts, which in retrospect seem to mostly involve silently judging people.
Fuck. I really am a terrible person.
I am married. I am fortunate, extremely fortunate, that my wife enjoys video games. The only downside is that I have to share them with her, which divides up potential video gaming time. This is not really a downside, because the potential pool of video gaming time is much larger. Even if I only get to game half the time, this is better than having no time at all, which is what most 28 year old married men have to be content with.
I know it seems unfair, but see how much more videogaming time can happen if you share this hobby with the woman you
Thankfully, the hobby is becoming mainstream and attracting more participants of both genders, so blahblahblah I could go on about this and that is VERY BORING AND DETRACTS FROM THE POINT.
The point is many many girls play games, but so do many many boys, and those boys are TERRIBLE PEOPLE.
What is almost equally terrible is the belief by these very same people that everyone is treated equally terrible and that this belief gets perpetuated makes me want to... to... I don't know yet. There isn't a word for it. The media will have to derive a Romanised onomatopoeia from witness accounts and use it enough to have it added to the dictionary before I can adequately express myself.
Whenever a girl complains about mistreatment online, the response about 90% of the time (on forums, message boards, etc.) is that they should just suck it up and deal with it.
The mentality is this: girls want to be treated equal with guys. They play games with us guys, they should be able to deal with the same amount of trashtalk, right? Actually, I believe in and fully endorse this kind of equality. I am totally behind this train of thought. You want to be treated the same, you bear the crosses that go with it.
Here's the problem with that: in reality, girls get treated way, way worse while playing online multiplayer games. If you are reading this and disagree, you are wrong. You are either someone who has never played online multiplayer games, or you are male and completely ignorant. People hide behind a facade of "equality" and use it as an excuse to treat women way, way worse.
I have met with arguments against this and they're always completely subjective, from people (guys) who will act defensively. "Oh but I treat girls the same." and yeah, that's probably true... for you. But not everyone does. Unless you are a girl or play with a girl on a regular basis, you have no idea what you are talking about.
Shut up.
Here is a sampling of things I have been called or had said to me while playing Halo and Call of Duty over XBox Live:
-faggot
-noob
-stupid American (?)
-nigger (!?)
For the record, I'm a Caucasian, straight, Australian male, and only ever get called a 'noob' when I am winning. Insults don't need to be accurate, just loud, especially on the internet.
Here is a sampling of things that my wife has been called or had said to her, or sent in private messages over Xbox Live while playing Halo and Call of Duty:
-bitch
-slut
-cunt
-whore
-fat bitch
-fat slut
-get back in the kitchen
-"why are you playing games instead of lying on your back and making me some money?"
-"Gimme a birthday blowjob" (the guy spent the rest of the game going on about wanting his "BBJ").
-make me a sandwich (hilariously, on most occasions we flatten the team of guys who were loudly demanding "sammiches" and my wife occasionally takes the opportunity to demand a sammich of her very own, because to the victors go the spoils. They left without a word, and I like to think that they now wear pretty dresses and eat mountains of chocolate while watching soap operas.)
There are more I don't specifically remember, but you can see that the list rapidly outweighed the first list.
This doesn't even factor in the pictures of penises she's seen, along with pictures of guys who sent pictures of themselves doing "cool" poses, because I guess that would convince her to go and have sex with them?
This doesn't factor in the in-game ganging up harassment and teamkilling, and the fact that some of the above comments have been added to vandalise the tags for the images and videos of her Halo accomplishments on her Bungie.net fileshare.
After several thousand games of Halo 3/Reach, and several thousand more of Modern Warfare 2, I can say with confidence you have it worse it you are a female. My methods aren't scientific, but my results are nevertheless conclusive.
This is why sites like Fat, Ugly or Slutty are created - in a desperate effort to prove this to the world. Go there and check their hate mail sometime. It's full of guys who persist in claiming that girls don't have it worse than guys, and that girls just complain more.
Some male gamers even claim that female gamers are just as bad when trash-talking at guys! That actually blew my mind. While I don't deny there are girls out there who are capable of being as abusive to the level that my wife or her friends have experienced, I highly doubt that it happens nearly as frequently, else wouldn't I have come across this alleged phenomena sooner? After all, it seems to happen to my wife every time she plays - where's my verbal abuse? I'll believe it when I see it.
Maybe we're going through a period of adjustment, and guys are still going through a period where girls are unfamiliar in their environment. Maybe the majority of male gamers are still so socially inept that they don't know how to behave around girls.
I know there is a strong belief (still!) that any girl playing games is only doing it to get attention from guys, and that therefore don't deserve our respect - that they are simply vapid attention whores and make a big deal out of being "gamer girls" instead of just... girls who happen to play games. I acknowledge these girls probably exist, though the girls I have played against have either been talented players or (assuming they're bad at the game) genuinely having a fun time with friends.
It's distressing though that this stereotype so quickly became prevalent that it's almost inescapable.
Are males so insecure that they can't share their digital playground with females? I know that cyberbullying has become a big thing in recent years, and that people are more likely to act harsh when protected by the far reaches of the internet and a mask on anonymity. This is why children are being traumatised by their peers saying mean things on Facebook when in my day we just beat each other up in person. Is this just an extension of that? Or are there people who actually have the audacity to act like this in real life as well?
Either way, it's small men lashing out at the enigma that is women. And I believe that to these men, women are an enigma. I think these pseudo-macho tirades are solely to mask some pretty complex inadequacies. I don't even think these guys are just frustrated virgins. I think these are men who may even be in relationships, who are just really bad at understanding women.
These are tomorrow's abusive husbands and deadbeat fathers.
This is why I need to have the power of life and death, so that I can freely krngglspnhzzrdns them. Krngglspnhzzrdns them to death, goddamn it.
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