It wasn’t until I was in a guild that had a female as an officer where certain things weren’t acceptable (people casually using the r-word) that I really felt comfortable being a female player.

I’ve since been an officer in just about every guild I’ve been in since then and have always advocated against overly sexist behaviour. I’m the current guild master of my guild. The biggest thing for us is that players show each other respect. That means that we don’t see/hear “make me a sammich” jokes, it means that we don’t allow anything bashing minorities of any kind (ethnic, racial, religious, LGBT, etc). I’ve tried hard to cultivate a culture where people think before they speak or type. I like to think it’s helped.

We current have 8 women on our raiding roster, but had more than that (closer to 12, I think) when we started raiding in Cataclysm and I think we’re all treated as part of the team rather than as “that girl”.

I’d hope that, eventually, more men will understand the difference in cultures between guilds typically run by men and run by women, but it just doesn’t seem to naturally be something they think too much about, in my experience. Maybe more female GMs will help that out a bit.

Excellent post. Thanks for writing it!

It would probably be more accurate if I added in level of intelligence, because that is a huge contributing factor too. Yes there are very intelligent people that don’t raid at a high level, and yes there are teenagers who aren’t immature, and adults who are immature.

But the point of my comment is that I don’t think there is a major problem with sexism in wow, I just think there are a lot of immature or stupid people in it, and if you are in a guild where it is mandatory to be mature and not stupid, then you minimise your contact with such people.

I was in a pug raid a while ago where it was a woman on vent who was being abusive. I confronted her at one point, said it wasn’t cool and was basically told to shut up. So I dropped group and hearthed. That kind of behavior is unacceptable full stop. From the whispers afterwards, my leaving was somehow unexpected by more than a few people. huh.

The only hostile guild I’ve been in had several female players and a female GM and all of these facts did not make it all perfect. There is a chance that females in lead with power can have an effect, but a lot of female players (see comments above) seem to think that this is something that we should learn to avoid, rather than fight.

Some female players even think it’s harmless and “grow thicker skin”, or “a pair of balls” (ironically) – that this is the current state of online gaming or that *shrug*, it’s the internet in general, learn to live with it. Some even attempt to get a “one of the boys” status by engaging in it themselves.

Of course my case could be one deviation from the norm, but I am skeptical that females can solve this themselves. I think the overall culture needs to change to be less misogynist, and that involves -everyone- getting that acting like the examples you gave from your own experiences, is just not okay.

The teenager fallacy is a myth and I wish people would stop blaming teenagers, they can be decent players too, I have personally met a lot of them. I have -never- seen any evidence suggesting that this is the -sole- reason, but everyone keeps saying it, I guess it makes the world seem simpler and more manageable, than it really is.

Because what if it isn’t just teens who are immature, who will grow out of it, what if there actually is a serious problem here, and that it’s far more complicated than “It’s teens, and you should stop playing with teens – There, I fixed your problem for you”.

Implicitly blaming the author of being treated this way because she is “running with teens” would have insulted me, if this was my personal story.

Also, you make it sound like females can only really expect respect in high end guilds, and for us to solve the problem, we should just raid heroic, because no teens do that? Or what was the point of that last statement?

The guild I’m in raids at a high level and are all over 20 years old, which means by and large they’re all mature enough to just enjoy the game and the “social” aspect, and they value their position in a good guild so they’re not going to screw it up by acting like an idiot. The guild has rules around conduct, and they do enforce them. I find the higher up you get in progression raiding guilds, the less crap there is and the more organised the guild is. In social guilds, there are generally a lot of immature teenagers and so a lot of nonsense like mentioned above.