Sex Symbols
Rob Wright: Hey, Aaron, I have a couple questions. Why do male gamers even care about this? Is it really an issue? I'm confused. But for the sake of intelligent discourse, let's start at the top.
I found the blog entry you cited to be extremely tasteless; full of spite and misogyny. Unfortunately, what it lacked was a lot of thought, though I don't blame you for citing it. I don't think too many people would argue that, overall, female gamers are up to the level of male gamers; there may be a number of reasons for this, the biggest of which is that the vast majority of games are created by young males for young males.
I'll concede the point that there are a whole lot more top-shelf professional gamers on the men's side than the women's. But I believe that gaming is coming more into the mainstream, and more females are taking part in it; we shouldn't ridicule them for that. I saw a significant number of women at the GDC a couple weeks ago, and none of them were decked out in skimpy clothing and high heels.
Yes, there are a few female gaming teams that are using their looks and sexuality to their advantage by marketing themselves as sex symbols. So what? Are male gamers like Rom jealous of them getting more attention than better male gamers? If so, get over it, because here's the real hypocrisy: we want our women in video games to be sexed-up in scanty outfits like Lara Croft or BloodRayne, but we don't want the women that are actually playing those games to do the same.
If you really want to expose - for lack of a better term - purported female gamers that are nothing more than posers (quite literally, in fact), then challenge them to a duel and beat them. Belittling them with sexist opinions and offensive language like Rom did just makes us male gamers look like knuckle-dragging, elitist Neanderthals that want to keep women out of our country club. And I want no part of that.
