Posts with tag Harrasment

Perhaps one of the biggest challenges of being a gamer girl is learning to deal with rampant sexism, without becoming defensive. Just like racism, sexism should not be tolerated, but how do you address it without making the problem worse? Smurphy from Burning Blade brought this up in the forums. Nethaera's response was to shut the thread down before a dialog could really begin on the subject.

Although the majority of WoW players are men, there are a number or women who do enjoy the game. Women are often important contributing members of guilds and raids. Perhaps a little known fact about gamer girls is many of us don't like to be hit on or given special favors like spots in raids. Nor do we like to be called honey, baby, or sweetie by complete strangers. We would very much like the same treatment given to our male counterparts. Women do truly enjoy the game, and should be able to feel safe and comfortable in the online environment.

My wife, as I've stated several times, is an excellent player, one of the best hunters I've ever run with and has created in me a healthy respect for women who game. When we were both raiding, the biggest problem we had was that if she ever spoke in a raid, there was always someone who would hit on her until it was explained that she was engaged to and then married to the tank, and he would have no compunction about letting the mob come over and eat said person until such time as the supposedly funny come-ons stopped.

Fast forward a year to this post on wow_ladies and poster amalana asks if the new voice chat feature is giving other women who play the same kinds of experiences she mentions: running a PuG and the other players hitting on her as soon as they realize she's a woman. To be honest, I expected this. In my experience, WoW has the same ratio of jerks to decent folks as regular life, but something like John Gabriel's Theory always seems to come into effect and there's always someone in a PuG who feels comfortable making racist jokes or blindly hitting on someone based just on ten seconds of voice chat.

Have your experiences with the new voice chat feature been positive, or are you being subjected to crude commentary and unwelcome advances?