A blog I liked to read posted an interesting take on sexism in games and over the internet. It’s well worth a read, and I pretty much agree with so head over to Lashing of Liam and read The Abuse of Internet Anonymity – Part One – Treatment of the Opposite Sex.
It’s true, whilst I have complained about guys treating me badly because I’m a girl, I do tend to forget the other side of things, with girls treating guys badly. Neither is acceptable IMO. I remember an article written by someone who had seen how far they could push things by being a girl in WoW and using that fact to get what they wanted off male gamers. It was back in vanilla and it was quite scary. I can’t recall what it was called or if it was an actual girl who did it, but they used ‘I’m a girl’ to get thousands of golds worth of stuff, back when that was a shed load of gold. After the experiment they returned everything to the people they had tricked and explained about the experiment. Damn, what was it called. (Don’t type something like ‘Girls scamming guys in WoW’ or anything like that into Google, it brings up some horribly offensive crap).
Personally, I have experienced sexism from guys alot more than the girls using their gender to get what they want, but it did remind me of the one time I remember it happening, and it was a doozy.
It was back in Vanilla, in the days of 40 man raids, the guild recruited a new paladin, appropriately named Princess. Maybe that should have been a warning. The guild had a female GM, and as well as myself 2 or 3 other female members, and there was never any issues. Then Princess hit. She started off by developing a ‘thing’ for one of the officers, who was happily married but had a very flirty nature, oh and his wife was in the guid too. Princess took his flirty nature to mean he adored her, and made it known that she was his ‘favourite’, despite this officer being very polite and telling her she was just another recruit. Princess was really only out for what she could get. She wouldn’t run dungeons unless there was something she wanted, at which point she would beg and wheedle in gchat until people agreed to go just to shut her up (this being the days before randoms and LFG). And she would not talk to anyone she knew was female, she’d just straight up ignore any whispers or anything in guild chat. She’d randomly whisper male guildies inane stuff and play the helpless female card ALOT, which annoyed the hell out of the other girls in the guild as we worked to get what we needed. At the time my ex was a member of the guild and I witnessed first hand the crap she’d pull when she tried /w him. It was all coming to a head, and the officers had had enough of her, and then she did the worst thing. She utterly messed with one of the sweetest guys in the guilds head, convincing him she was in love with him, and she would move across europe to be with him. He was only 18, kind of naive and fell for it hook line and sinker. Only to be called by her irate boyfriend one day and told to back off. When confronted in guild about it, she thought it was hilarious and couldn’t understand why people were upset, after all it was the guys fault for falling for it wasn’t it? And so what if she was using her gender to get stuff, girls who didn’t were obviously too stupid to realise the advantages. Needless to say she didn’t pass trial. But the damage was done and one of my best friends in the game ended up quitting as he was so upset.
So what’s the big deal some might ask? Because one girl acts like that and all of a sudden people think ALL girls are like that. Never mind that 99% of us do it all on our own and play just as well as guys well all MUST act like that. After all, how else do we get our shinies.
Arsenic and Old Mooncloth 
There are still a few rather old fashioned guys that will give things to a girl just because she is what she is. I don’t really see this as sexism, it’s just something nice. These are the guys that tend to give help to anyone anyways. They just tack a “miss” or “ma’am” on the end when dealing with a woman.
There are the desperate ones that give a “girl” what they want in game because they are hoping for some return token of appreciation or at least acknowledgement. Again, don’t really see it as sexism. This is an exchange of goods/services. It’s probably not a very healthy one, but if no one is being untruthful and all he really wants is to be able to chat once in a while (zomg guys i talked to a gurl!!!1!!), no harm and no foul.
But as soon as one of those conniving bitches shows up and flashes her e-tits there goes any sense of sanity in the world.
The first guy gives out of the goodness of his heart without being asked because he’s a genuinely nice guy. Then cyber bitch goes and starts asking and wheedling and pestering. He agrees because he’s a nice guy. But then she treats him like crap. Suddenly, he realizes that being nice can turn out to be a right pain in the ass. Start the downward spiral.
The second guy gets led on and is destroyed when she turns out to have been playing him. Again, lesson learned that hoping someone likes you is a cruel joke and bitterness ensues.
I don’t really remember where I was going here. Bitches ruin the fun for the rest of us by portraying us in a very negative light. It’s funny, I can’t really recall this specifically happening to me or any friends, but it still pisses me off. I’ll stop rambling now.
Sadly, sometimes even when you’re watching it (the public part of it), it can be difficulty to control; too. You get one of these people in your guild, half the folks of the opposite gender swoon, and in general the guild is fairly open to them at first because they want to make a good impression on the new recruit. Then a line gets crossed for someone. Hopefully that happens early enough that they’re still a recruit.
If an officer of the same gender does the g-kicking, then that officer is jealous that the newbie is getting all the stolen attention. If an officer of the opposite gender does the g-kicking, then they’re either jealous they weren’t getting the goods (as it were); or if they were the target, then they were coerced by someone in the background to kick the offender out.
The offender has thus justified their own actions, put everyone who didn’t think it was okay in a bad light in their own head, and refuses to learn from the lesson. The problem is, this is true about a lot of things other than sexism in the game. any kind of -ism on the end of a behaviour causes rifts.