I gotta say, I'm surprised at a lot of the comments here. As a woman who's been a gamer and dealing with sexual harassment and let's say "gender issues" since I was 4 and being made to play Princess Peach every effing time we played Mario on the playground (the sand was lava, goombas nerf balls), I've had a life time of Taking the Shit in Stride.
I can handle a lot more than most women in regards to comments regarding my anatomy, sexual appeal, lack thereof, implied rape, threatened rape, assumed ignorance, assumed harlotry....the list goes on, and I've developed a tried-and-true repertoire of coping. (and I am well aware that some people will probably take this as some sort of dare to say the nastiest things they can come up with)
What I guess I don't understand about a lot of the comments, and to a lesser degree the article, and what shocks me is the sort of assumption that people are making that almost any amount of shit-giving goes as long as the community internally agrees on the rules.
Admittedly, I've been in guilds and clans and teams, and I know how this works in theory, and in practice. There are times you give as good as you get, which is how we pretty much had to do it way back when being a gamer or a nerd was the same as being a leper, and there are times when you just ignore it, walk away, or let it drop. There are guys who are lechers with hearts of gold, where you know the over-the-top comments are just to get a laugh and know one thinks the guy's remotely serious. There are guys who you just sort of pity because they probably think breasts feel like bags of sand.
And then there's The Line; and it's different for every woman and sometimes different every day. It's that point that You Don't Cross. The joke that is Never Funny. Most girls who game, since we're still in a teensy minorty, sort of have reached an equilibrium with the men in their groups/clans/guilds/teams/whatever. They all know the line and they don't cross it. Just like they don't joke about Cancer anymore while Carl is mourning his sister's death from leukemia until he cracks the first joke.
Sometimes an outsider will go there, and said outsider is usually reviled by the inner circle, (in my experience often Laid the Smackdown upon by the dirtiest, nastiest old man of the group) and expunged. Life them moves on. Sometimes someone gets drunk and is just an ass. Sometimes the girl in question had an awful day at work, had her ass grabbed 3 times by lechers at the diner, and just wants to be HERSELF among the guys and just----"just not tonight guys, please?"
And sometimes it's an endemic system that somehow abuse is the norm? We're supposed to prove ourselves "gamer enough" because---why? I've heard several answers to this;
-That the upswing of fake terrible gamer marketing (Ie "gamergrub" and "gamer branded gilette razors") allows for wanna-bes and fakers into a tight knit community of what used to be outcasts.
-That one time Tim was dating This One Girl and she had sex with him and then he stopped playing on the Team.
-That there really aren't any good girl players so they just found one that was not "so bad" to fill out some imaginary affirmative action quota.
I'm not even going to say that I disagree with all of these points, cause well, some of them might be valid to some people, and honestly some parts of some are valid to me. There's gotta be that Line though, and that Line has to be respected, and agreed upon by all parties and enforced by someone who has respect. In this case that SHOULD have been Capcom and IGN, in my opinion. And in a case of a televised event that is gonna be used to market the game, the community, and get more people involved, I'm not convinced that Living Room Rules should apply. Somewhere, a 12 year old girl was watching this because she loves Tekken and knows how to use google and thinks Jin is cute and why are they saying all of those things about that pretty girl?
Tangent: Here's one reason why it's hard for some girls. There is usually one of us. Sometimes two! Wheee! So when the guys all want to talk about boobs, It's like the Hammer of Dawn has been focused on our mammaries. When the guys all want to talk about their wangs, well, look, there are 15 of you. It's spread out.
The point is, yeah, I think it is okay to have a community that jokes about T&A, and in a lot of ways I really love the particular brand of humor you only find in the fires of competitive gaming. But there is a point for that to stop- a point to say "Hey we are grown ups here". There has to be a point of entry for the public, and for other people who want in, and there has to be a way for the women on the inside to say "No means No."
If we saw this sort of behavior from....any other public figure- a football player, a basketball player, a hockey player, a news anchor, (and I would argue that we have), they apologize, they are suspended, sanctioned, disciplined, and the news calls it just. Other players are disgusted. I am certain that in practice these teams are as lewd and self-effacingly mutually abusive as any gaming clan/team/whatever. The difference is that they aren't under the misconception that they get that way whenever they want.
I've become "one of the guys" and I don't regret it. I'll joke about your parts if you are gonna give me a hard time about mine, and I will laugh while I do it. At home-at my arcade- my friend's backyard, in my space. Maybe not in public, where the Next Generation of Gamers will be looking at the screen and saying "Hey, I want to be like her---wait why is everyone mean to her?". I get that the gaming zone, with other gamers is a rare and luxurious place of comfort and succor where you can be a bit crass and a bit of competitive jerk-itude is almost requisite. But if I have to give that up some of the time, and it means at a bus-stop I can see a 8 year old girl, some gamer's daughter, with a Blanka lunch box and a smile on her face...I call it worth it.
