Thursday, March 08, 2007

 

Women in Wow



Today its International Women’s Day. In 1910, the 8th of March was selected as the date where women should stand together and fight for equal rights. At that time it was about getting the right to vote and though a lot has changed now almost 100 years later, women still come together the 8th of March every year, trying to kill myths and old-fashioned believes about the two genders, in order to reach equality.

Now there are a lot of subjects to start with, if you want to work on women’s (and men’s) rights, so a subject like computergames may not seem as a very important place to start. But on the other hand, computergames are a big market, that almost completely ignores half of the people in this world, in their advertisement. When did you last time see an advertisement for a game in a women’s magazine? And when they do remember the women in their advertisement, its always some pink girly game, usually for kids, as if women wouldn’t like the same games as men?

So how does it feel to be a girl in a mansworld like wow? Well, we probably all have our own experiences on the subject, but here’s my version.

I’m grateful to have a brother, since this means that I’ve been introduced to stuff as a child, that I maybe wouldn’t have been introduced to without him -simply cause I’m a girl. Cause even though we know that woman find computergames as fun as men do, and that they are equally capable of playing them, computergames are still considered to be a guy thing. As if it wasn’t sad enough that society categorises activities into “girls” and “boys”, it seems to me that guys gets all the fun stuff :p

Anyway, thanks to my brother, I grew up with computergames and don’t feel I’m on someone else’s territory when I play wow, in the sense that playing games isn’t new to me. And hey, if you don’t ask, you don’t know what gender is behind the chars. But it is no secret that there are a lot more guys playing this game than girls. So what does this mean to me?

Well, I have never heard anything negative (or positive) about my gender when playing wow. I do know a woman that plays wow, which has experienced people not believing her when she claims she is a woman, and that says something about peoples views on what types they believe are playing wow.

However, I have gotten remarks about playing wow as a girl irl. Once someone said to me, that I wasn’t higher lvl yet, because I was a girl. Though it was meant as a harmless joke, the fact that it was even thought and expressed, did make me feel like I wasn’t equal in this World of Warcraft. Personally I didn’t find that very witty and its stuff like that, that makes me think “if I make a mistake, some people will say its because of my gender – so never let them see any flaws”.

And ofcourse I get the occasionally “You play wow? But you are a girl?” This statement shows that computergames is considered a mansworld and you can’t blame people, when the gamedevelopers don’t consider women their audience.

Now, I didn’t make this post so we could discuss politics around equality– but I thought that on this particular day, it was only appropriate to state, that women play wow too and we do it just as good as the rest of you ;)

With that said, I have never felt mistreated by anyone in Tiger and hopefully one day, computergames will be something we can all enjoy, without risking our gender.

Happy International Womens Day girls…and Yarr to the rest of you ;)

- Mijo


Comments:
What would WoW be withou womans?
well for once the guildchatt would be
so.. hmm.. well let's say i don't think that the subjects that are discussed in guildhcatt would be so random as they are today.
so let's salute you women for playing with us men :D
 
Well what can I say, it's 11 pm, so it still counts. Happy Women's Day to all our Tigresses, the guild certanly wouldn't be nearly as fun without you.

For what it counts, the positive thing about online games, is that you are not limited by your gender. No one knows your gender if you don't specify it yourself, they can only assume, and god knows I was wrong on gender before (Illonia for the old crew). So the people you are in contact with, get to know you, before they get to know your gender, which is kind of a reverse from RL.
 
Very true Perun.

I’m very happy to get these nice responses from you GUYS. Means a lot that you didn’t just see this post as an outburst from an angry feminist ^^

It's nice that there's room for post like this, that only directly concerns a small amount of people in the guild (though I believe it concerns everybody)

So ty for receiving this well :)

- Mijo
 
You go girl :)
 
What can one girl say about this beautifull text except : /ROAR !!!!!!!!!

and... and... /flex :D

Go girl power!!! :D


Nice job Mijo ;)
 
Well Mijo I'm happy to have you along... And dont say that blizzard neglects you girls, remember the sweet purple cloak they put in the game just for you?? :D (btw my macho-
orc-warrior-brain-basher is wearing it too :p)

And the reason that you're not higher level is that you spend a lot of time chatting, hanging around with lowbies, generally goofing off or playing with alts...
there's no bad in that, even though some of those might be induced by that double x-chromosome.
You seem to focus on having fun whereas others might sometimes focus on getting that great epic to brag about or to grind endlesly for some reputation with some people who only seem to like you if you kill for them (shady business I know).

/gurell
 
Go go go girl!
Today we play wow, just wonder what we could do tomorrow:)
Congratz to al us wonderful girls out there. We make this guild a more funny place to be.
 
Post a Comment



<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?