speaking of women in gaming

http://community.livejournal.com/wow_ladies/4954297.html

it’s all been done.
it’s all been done.
it’s all been done before.

thinking about it more, i lose interest in all of this because it just makes me angry, and i stop reading to avoid feeling angry and helpless. both sides make me angry, really. if i REALLY wanted to make the study of this into my life, i would go and do more research on these multitudes of feminist gaming blogs. what i’m feeling right now is that i probably don’t have anything new to contribute to the discussion.

i’ve only barely skimmed the comments. i don’t really care about the skimpy armor. i do care about harassment, though, about being a girl at all, and about the assumption that you don’t have any skill. example of what i’m talking about, lifted from the comments:

Xplayer whispers: omg a dwarf woman
Xplayer whispers: EWWWWWWWWWWW

Yplayer whispers: holy crap, you’re fat
Yplayer whispers: r u that fat in real life? lol
Yplayer whispers: no wonder u play WOW all the time

Zplayer whispers: ur so ugly
Zplayer whispers: omg I can’t believe it
Zplayer whispers: how’d you level to 70 when ur so ugly?

i’ve been on the receiving end of that too while on a female dwarf. i’m sure even alan has. yes, you deal with a lot of annoying teenagers, but we’re not talking about isolated cases that are easy to shrug off here. we’re talking about real insidious sexism that never goes away.