How do you know you haven't encountered a female tank? Do all the tanks in randoms/LFR/pugs state their gender to you? I know that when I'm tanking (as often on male toons as female toons), I tend to just focus on what I'm doing and not comment on personal things, except in my small guild.

Oh, I'm not talking about pugs, I have no clue about that. I'm talking about guild tanks ofcourse. I've been in a lot of guilds of the years, and I've seen a lot of tanks come and pass, that's why.

"better at supportive roles"? Oh Sweetie, brace yourself. "it" is coming and will smack you squre on the head. (And by "it" I mean girl nerd rage and it hath fury like nothing you have ever seen).
I love my Enh Shamman, and I love my Holy Pally. I love to punch things in the back of the head and I love the satisfaction knowing that I am keeping these PuGs alive. Dividing my game time between the two gives me two completely different perspectives.
And for the record, the best tank/raid leader Ive ever raided with, bar none, was a woman who had a voice much like the female munchkins in Wizard of Oz. When she said "^%$^%$ move!" by golly you MOVED!

Best guild tank I ever met was female. She single handedly got us through many a heroic encounter in Ulduar back in the day.

I'm a female gamer, and I play a healer.. does that make me a cliche? Maybe. I've tanked and dps'd before too. I just simply found I enjoyed the game more as a healer. I have a multi-tasking mindset, as many mothers/woman I know naturally do, and that does naturally lend itself towards the way woman think about things (imo). I mean when I think about my mom, I think about her kicking ass at her job as a lawyer, coming home to her "second shift" and managing to coral, and manage us kids doing our homework, and our millions of demands, several loads of laundry, the dishes, putting dinner on the table, etc. She did all of that seemingly without breaking a sweat when I was younger. Now that I am older, I can see exactly HOW much work my mom did, but at the time I never noticed.

Healing for me in game is much the same way. If I am doing my job well, people wont notice me break a sweat, the dungeon will progress without the dps or tank worrying about dying, and we all collect loot at the end. For me, I can't imagine how anyone finds healing boring, there is always so much to do! In mind, healing is not just retroactive, it's proactive, and being aware of whatever boogie men are around ever bend and being prepared to handle it. I have never seen healing as taking a back seat, or not being in the middle of the action, because without me, there could be no action, at least not for very long.

Does that mean I'm in a supportive role? Sure. But I think people see "support" as if it's weaker, without realizing that support is often the strongest. After all, a house is SUPPORTED by it's foundation, it is what everything else is built upon. When people come over though, they don't say wow, what a nice foundation so good and supportive, they say "wow, what a nice house". I think that is often true of the dungeons I'm in. DPS can brag about their dps, tanks get a lot of credit for what they do.. healers are often the silent, but rock solid force.

I don't think what thal said was at all offensive. I think it's a) just his opinion and b) not totally off the mark, as I've known quite a few woman who occupy supportive rolls to their families. They may not get the guts/glory credit, but without them their households would cease to run.

I've been a tank since the moment I started playing, and still I've never met a female tank. It might be me. Ergo, I'm only typing my observations. I didn't mean to upset any women out there.
Besides, pretty much every healer in my guild is female, and they all excell at it. They are honestly amazing. But as they said to me a couple times, they would never ever tank, not even for a guildrun. I'm not saying this is the same for every other player out there, it's just the way I know it.

"So few female leaders"

Is it REALLY the reason why there are so few female leaders??? Sigh.

We've been force-fed this junk for so many centuries it's no wonder women are hesitant to lead in games. I for one am a 44 year old mom who tanks pve and ganks pvp with five 85s. Healing just isn't my thing unless I'm on my shammy and I'm helping out the main heals. In BGs I take on the teabaggers on the opposing side and top the charts over the "let's rape face" guys. This sort of lazy sexism and worse is rife in wow, and yet women persist. Ladies, there still are tons of male players who don't think like this but don't let anyone tell you that's just the way it is and always has been.

"better at supportive roles" - actually, studies find again and again that women have more of the qualities desirable in a leader than men, and this is reflected in the trend that more and more women are getting leadership positions all over the place.

That's inside of WoW and out.

So how many of the tens of thousands of guilds that exist have you been a member of? Five? Ten? Fifty? Do you seriously think that's a representative enough number?

The main tank in my guild is a woman, and out of our six healers four are male. Now, that's not representative either. I also think that there are *more* male tanks and *more* female healers altogether. That's because many people, like you, still have sexist stereotyping from the 1950s in their heads, and act accordingly.

To draw conclusions as to skill from that, is dangerous and perpetuates the stereotyping.

Haha. It wasn't at all meant offensive, just my OWN observations, NOT meant generally.

*note to self: never post anything that can be slightly seen as offensive and upset an angry mob during study breaks*

"No offence to the ladies out there, but, imo, women are better at supportive roles and males are (sometimes) better at leading the troops and charging to victory."

Well if this was your "own observations" then you shouldn't be surprised if you get opposition. By the way, nobody was flaming or name-calling, just making their case, so who are you calling an "angry mob"?

Let's not forget you can also lead while in a "supporting" role, too. It's much easier to see what's going on when you're not staring at boss crotch all the time, for example.

... Or what Lipstick just said (just scrolled up again).

Frankly, I like to push buttons and keep "doing something," if that makes any sense. And think of it this way: do you see Rambo or Ah-nohld running circles around their enemies while hacking at them in close melee? No, they're usually running in there with guns blazing, strafing while riddling the bad guys with bullets. Those are some iconic "manly man" figures, right?

Now, imagine me, as a girl, doing the same thing as my hunter.

Or, I can just reference this comic: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/media/comics/?keywords=&view#/comic-2007-05-eldonious-winner

"No offence to the ladies out there, but, imo, women are better at supportive roles and males are (sometimes) better at leading the troops and charging to victory."

"Haha. It wasn't at all meant offensive, just my OWN observations, NOT meant generally."

Since you've apparently forgotten, these are 2 of the statements you've made above. If you'll notice, they aren't consistent. You can't say you didn't mean to be offensive or that you didn't mean your statements to be general when that first statement is most definitely both offensive and general. "woman are better at supportive roles" is just the type of statement that has been used for generations to keep women at home tending the kitchen and the children. Which is fine if that is what they choose to do, but there are plenty of women out there who would like to "lead the troops and charge to victory".

Guess what? I'm a woman. I served 4 years in the United States Army. Then I worked in a library for years. Now I stay at home with my 3 year old daughter. At night, I'm a raid leader and main tank for my 10man raid team. I have 3 tanks (pally, DK and druid) and I've been leveling a warrior when I'm in the mood. Not all women fit your preconceived notions. And most likely, if you're typing this stuff while breaking from studying, you're too young to be making these kind of general statements anyway. Get out into the world a little before you create such narrow opinions of women and people in general.

I've played WoW since 2005. I've never met a single female tank in game either; not even one. That goes for every single level of play- random pugging, casual guilds, RP guilds, and 25-hour-a-week 'hardcore' guilds.

But then again, I've never met a sex that talked about its genetalia as freely or often as men do.

@Lipstick

As a male healer myself (my main and by far favorite toon is a holy paladin) I agree and think that healers often go unnoticed in the background.

In fact, we are only really noticed when we screw up. I think it takes a lot to become and play a healer cosistently because of the fact that most of the attention you get is criticism.

Healers are almost always the first ones to get blamed for a wipe and it can be very discouraging. There's.a lot of pressure being a healer especially when trying to progress into heroic raids.

Now I have played with female tanks, dps, and healers and from what I have gathered, It's about the perso, not the gender. I've met women who love dpsing and refuse to heal or tank. I've met women who don't do anything but tank. We each have our own preferences that cannot be accurately described in a stereotype.

I may be wrong, but I remember reading somewhere that 42% of games are female. To say that "all females are healers" is ridiculous as it would mean that just under half of the playerbase is comprised of healers. Since we all know that that's not true, it only makes sense that neither is the stereotype.

I've been playing WoW now for 6 years. I'm 29 years old, and a woman. I've always played dps classes, with small forays into tanking and healing.

To those saying they've never met one... have all your tanks and raid leaders always spoken out over vent or mumble? I joined a guild once, got on their vent to introduce myself... and was immediately greeted with "Omg a girl! show us your tits!"... /gquit. And then there is that idea of "oh, girls can't tank"... what woman would want to tank in a guild that says that?

So maybe the reason, guys, that you haven't seen female tanks is not that they aren't out there in sufficient numbers... but that they've been driven away from most guilds by the stupidity therein.

I'm a female gamer and I've been playing WoW for 7 years - since the release. I've played all roles but I have to say, my tankadin is the best character I have and I love her. I've been praised as a tank and it's actually the role I'm best at overall. I used to be in the top-raiding guild on my realm when I played on my mage and our tank was a girl. She was one of the greatest tanks I'd ever met. Took us through to the realm first of Icecrown Citadel and Ulduar, both on heroic.

My current guild's main tank is a women, as is the MT in the guild I'm transferring to in the new year (boo for not being able to make raid times now!).

I have 8 level 85s and have never healed on a single one of them. I like to smash some face with my 3 DKs. (I'm also a women, fyi). Was never interested in tanking myself, but I'd probably pick that over healing. Healing just seems boring as heck to me. Watching nothing but little boxes in Grid seems like a total snooze fest. And maybe its not, I've just had no interest in trying to find out otherwise.

I just dug through the 15 Minutes of Fame column and finally found the article I was looking for: http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/12/22/15-minutes-of-fame-researcher-nick-yee-digs-into-the-numbers-p/. At the end, there's a link to a little quiz: http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/12/22/the-wow-factor-how-much-do-you-know-about-the-players-behind-th/. The last question on the quiz was:

10. People often assume that women prefer to play healers. Do you think there's any truth behind this claim?

a. Men are much more likely to play healers.
b. No difference
c. Women are much more likely to play healers.

The answer was:

10. People often assume that women prefer to play healers. Do you think there's any truth behind this claim?

Correct answer: b – no difference

We categorized character roles by their class and spec. Men are more likely to be tanks and melee DPS. Women are more likely to be ranged DPS. But there is no difference when it came to playing a healer in the United States.

Though these two articles came out over a year ago (about two weeks after Cataclysm was released), I believe that the statistics still hold some grain of truth to them. So I guess we can all say that males are more likely to be tanks but females are not more likely to be healers.

"I've been a tank since the moment I started playing, and still I've never met a female tank."

Well. There's your problem. In a heroic, if you're the tank... you're the only tank. In a raid, if you're a tank, you've taken half the available tank slots. Even if you only raided, that means a minimum of 50% of the time a tank is going to be male. And if your particular guild has a second male tank and you always run with your guild...

Well, let me just say your 5 years of experience doesn't mean you've experience a variety of tanks and your statistics shot you in the foot.

Besides, even if you pugged a second raid tank, not everyone talks on vent and not everyone play their same-gendered toon. Hell, some of your "supportive women" healers were probably dudes.