Moobs Don't Count

The buzz around the Hellcats recruitment post is both highly amusing and alarming. The thread's been up for 5 days, and responses are everywhere from amused to supportive to cynical (can't tell if the guy accusing us of misandrogy is trying to be inflammatory or if he just needs to brush up his reading comprehension; big words look impressive, but if you don't know how to use them, it's counterproductive).

It does rather raise the question of what consitutes gender equality and discrimination in a game environment. My own take on this situation is that it isn't so much the constituency of the corp that defines misandrogy or misogyny; it's the constituency of the targets. Hellcats is rather a perpetual Girls' Night Out (when we say we're gonna paint the system red, it will be red!), and our targets may be male or female 'toons, and male or female players. If we were to deliberately go in search of only male targets, we could be accused of discrimination; that 95% of our targets will be guys in RL is just a result of the game conditions.

Let me say this: I have met true misogynists. I mean the sort whose own mothers have restraining orders against them, the ones who refer to their mates' girlfriends as 'bits of fluff' and who will go flying into the face of the nearest random woman after a few drinks in the pub, loudly proclaiming women to be the cause of all the world's ills (one particular individual claimed it was because the wives of the great mass murderers of the world simply didn't put out enough). The sort whose family jewels I have come within a handsbreadth of rearranging with the aid of my boots in exchange for all of the aforementioned offenses.

How can any group in a game environment such as Eve be accused of misogyny or misandrogy, compared to that?

And even outside the forums, the general reaction from guys is, 'What if I get a voice-altering program and run my Vent through that?' The amount of guys stating intent to infiltrate the corp is embarrassing. What if a bunch of guys suddenly said, 'We're going to create a corp for guys only! No girls!'? There may be a couple complaints of discrimination, true, but on the whole the women of Eve would be far more likely to respond, 'Well, if that's your attitude, we'd rather not be in a corp with you to begin with!' Kinda reminds me of that old Calvin and Hobbes cartoon:


Would a guy really want to be along for a Girls' Night? Not that it would hurt much - the preconceptions some guys seem to have are outrageous and would benefit from a little education, but those particular individuals are also the sort that most women wouldn't want to have along simply for their sheer disruptive potential (there's one in every corp, and no, there are no exceptions for us ladies, either - we're all human, and quite capable of annoying the piss out of everyone else around us). But why the implied eagerness to infiltrate the corp? Unless he actually enjoys hearing about how a woman's PMT is particularly painful this month, or listening in on hours-long rants against current fashion disasters, I can't see why a guy would want to be along for that particular ride.