Sunday 7 September 2008

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.

5 comments:

Helicity Boson said...

Well, at least not all guys are heartless uneducated, uncultured bastards.

Just as I still try to believe for myself that not all women are users who exploit me for their benefit and then toss me away.

There's bad apples everywhere, I hope not too many pollute your hellcats experience, which I happen to think is a fun and clever idea.

:)

Ivanneth Maethor said...

All the bad experiences aside, I loved flying with Atrocitas - they were 'my boys', and most of them I still think of that way ^_^

Most guys I know are lovely and fun to hang out with; same for the ladies. It's just that minimal percentage of idiots who stand out and spoil the reputation of the whole >_<

Anonymous said...

Honestly the corp is for women only, as I said to Mynxee if they cannot get past THAT part I'm not sure how much, if any benefit they will be to you. Who cares if your only allowing women? I think it is fantastic! Tell those who call you large names as they sound good to use in an argument to piss off. Good hunting and take names so you can hunt them down

Ivanneth Maethor said...

Hehe cheers, mate :) I only wish some of those names would dare to venture into lowsec...

Anonymous said...

I'm sure there are some weird guys who would love all that PMT stuff and silly girl talk, just as there are some weird girls who insist they want to belong to men only clubs smoking cigars, talking about male sports and so forth. The interesting question is whether a society wants to allow exclusivity based on gender, not whether the minority gender in a particular group will have a good time.

In many countries, laws have been introduced to protect women against discrimination and has forced open many exclusively male clubs, and I'm guessing most women appreciate this. However, in an online society such as that of New Eden, no such laws exist, at least not formally. Why is this so, and should it remain that way?

CCP will still have to comply to its own rules and the laws countries it operates in. It would be an interesting legal experiment to see how this would play out if a petition would be made against the Hellcats membership requirements concerning a TOS violation of rule 3, stating "You may not organize nor be a member of any corporation or group within EVE Online that is based on or advocates any anti-ethnic, anti-gay, anti-religious, racist, sexist or other hate-mongering philosophies." (source: http://www.eve-online.com/pnp/terms.asp) When he petition would not be acted upon, legal action could most likely be taken against CCP to not only be biased in applying their own TOS but also for enabling gender discrimination.

I'm not taking a position in this discussion, because personally I would most likely not enjoy being in Hellcats, but I think that the issue of gender discrimination is being sweeped off the table a bit too much by focusing on a definition of misogynists and whether a guy would enjoy being part of PMT discussions.

BTW, I think the definition of 'sexist' in the Webster dictionary (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sexist) shows how on-sided the discussion about gender equality usually is, unfortunately.

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