EVE General Discussion

This thread serves to highlight exactly why so few women play EvE.

The minute any of us open our mouths to comment on social interraction and our experiences as women in game, we get talked over by 40 guys who have girl avatars with massive ****. Then the topic descents into rambling about terrible, strident feminists and social justice warriors and other horrendous verbal loops until we wander off in disgust.



This is pretty much spot on. I'm not advocating any gameplay changes to encourage more women to join; I'd be embarassed to invite female gamers to play in this environment given the barage of abuse they'll be subjected to. My RL friends are bunny boilers who'll hunt you down IRL and chop your man parts off if you mouth off at them - really I'm doing the rest of you a favour here. If anything, you should be grateful there are so few women here considering what the consequences might be. We're not all delicate little flowers afraid to answer back, but if you have a spine and have to deal with being persistently spoken down to and treated with contempt IRL, there's no sense of escapism in a game where it's magnified to a ludicrous degree.


Also a good point. To answer Malcy's question (who - despite being a spacefriend - calls me a 'silly girl' and a 'daft bint' occasionally, and is high on my 'kick in the nuts if you get the chance' list) the feedback I've had from Guilds in SWTOR and WoW (from both men and women) suggests that other themepark MMO players consider EvE players scum. The 4chan scabs of the internet, the lowest of the low etc, nasty griefing doxers... honestly, it makes you cringe. Detective Teg touched on this to a degree, and whilst I don't agree with his conclusions as to how to proceed, it is a bit worrying to step into other games and hear people talking about my game with such obvious contempt. It's also really difficult to argue against with so much bad press floating about - some of it from former players talking about their experiences on broader MMO sites.


This was my final thought on why women in game struggle. It is fair to say we enjoy chatting with each other. The support networks we have aren't strong enough. I've been in WGOE and Hellcats public in the past and tbh I left in disgust because there were blokes in there slobbering and female players vamping it up and RPing cybersluts, and I couldn't be arsed with it. I've set up internal channels for women then really struggled keeping it cool when they start reposting comments and sending chatlogs and mails where they are being systematically bullied just for being women. I don't have an answer to this, other than to say cheers to the players out there who are not like that, and more to the point, those who stick up for people who are being hassled.

I found that if a woman comes onto coms, and the group treats them any different than a male member, that female pilot is not long for the group.

You'd be pretty hard pressed to find a "universally" concept of most things. Universal implies that everybody is in agreement, every man woman and child on the planet, and that is more than a little unreasonable of a constraint to put on something. Thankfully everyone agreeing or disagreeing on a particular idea is pretty useless. There was a time when it was widely accepted that the body was composed of humors and imbalance in them caused disease. And these were "doctors". Idiocy can hide extremely well behind polysyllabic words, impeccable grammar, and enough people believing it.

I will say that people can universally agree that there are in fact appropriate and inappropriate ways to behave with one another. Let's work inductively: anyone reading this, are there behaviors that you feel inappropriate when directed at you? Appropriate? I'm guessing if you're in a non-vegetative state (and if so you are how are you reading this?) the answer to both is yes. Do that, oh 7 billion more times, and we have can safely conclude there is appropriate and inappropriate behavior even if the particular actions are highly subjective. SO naturally we just compile every possible act that could be construed as being inappropriate and say "don't do those things"? Right? Well no, that would be silly. Someone may enjoy being urinated upon, while others not so much. Okay let's get the stuff the most people find inappropriate behavior. "Don't kill me." "Don't take my stuff." "Let me have like a handful of rights just for being a fellow human being on this planet." Let's figure this out so we can co-exist and not murder everyone who is not ourselves because we are naked hairless apes that will totally die if we try to go it alone.

And so society is born. Fast forward a few thousand years and we get CCP who comes up with this TOS thing that is a pretty dang good guideline for player interaction. I mean we've been fumbling around with this civilization in the real world a while now and sometimes doing okay and sometimes failing miserably; but you'd think getting the stuff ironed out in the context of videogame interactions is a wee bit less complicated. I'm hard pressed to find anything in the TOS that doesn't make the play experience better for the people it protects, or oppressive to anyone other than douchebags; but who cares about them. They're douchebags. The problem, well maybe not for them, is that the TOS only goes so far and in this world of many freedoms you are free to me an intolerant caustic unpleasant individual. There was a time when we could have just ignored and left them for the saber toothed honeybadgers, but someone invented the internet and now you can't get away from them. They are free to be jerks just not in game, but teh reach of the authority of the game only goes so far and just as much EVE interaction takes place out of what CCP actually controls as within.



I don't think that there is anything already prohibited that if allowed would make EVE "better". It's more than a good talk, it is an action taken to better make sure that other players are respected. I never read one rule saying I had to like, be nice to anyone, or think any particular way. I've read ones that say I can't harass or use hate speech against any groups though. And I fail to see why my "right" to say these things trumps their right to pay for and play a game free of listening to my rendition of mein kampf. Rules that are instituted to protect players within the game from other players playing that same game do in fact make it better



Sorry that it bugs you so much because you are told to treat the black males "a little more special". I mean I've been hearing maybe don't discriminate against them or shooting them 40 times if you can help it, but I can see that as being a bit much to people blissfully unaware in the first place. Why only the black males though, where you given other instructions for teh females in your government reprogramming?

As far as this thread goes, why don't more women play eve? This thread.

I do.
F12 -> File Support Ticket

shhh don't say that, they dont like to think that they aren't the centre of attention and everything isn't bent tol there will

I demand that people start putting "trigger warning: corpses" before they pod people.

You are totally right as long as the owner agrees with your view. You just need to pray for CCP to never care too much about the subs ratios.

Those insidious little slapdowns might work IRL or on comms where you can sneak them through, but not on a forum where it's highly visible. Were we being a bit to strident for you? As far as I can tell, there's less than 10 women posting here about a topic which directly relates to their experiences. Few of whom appear to be the top posters. Whilst the rest of the contributions are helpful, maybe you could confine yourselves to commenting once, rather than rambling on?


I asked a lecturer last week why feminist academia is so frequently accompanied by derogatory commentary, to which he replied, "Disregard the commentary and judge the arguments on their own merit. I consider myself a feminist."


The people I spoke to were explicitly referencing out of game interraction. I'm not all that interested in listening to someone whinge about how they were driven out because their frigate was popped and they were smacked in local and then they ragequit. The feedback on the community dialogue is relevant, and quite damning. Anyone can verify this by joining a different game then putting out feelers within that community as to how EvE is perceived. You'd have to be blind not to spot the tone. They seem to think we are all Goons, which doesn't help.


Yup. Just as all men aren't all imbeciles, women aren't all slags. But there are a surprising number of women who play online games purely to exercise their 'wiles' in some sort of fantasy setting. Which does indeed make it harder for the rest of us, who actually don't want to engage in a convo with leg-humping-puppy-942 about why they can't get a girlfriend, which will inevitably result in.... 'so what are you wearing/can I have a pic' at some point. It's a bit embarassing when you point out you're old enough to be their mother and they start babbling on (and sound even more excited). I must admit, alcohol helps a lot during these conversations and I've probably shame-trolled a few boys out of game to level up the playing field for my ingame female friends who are harassed out.

Marsha Mallow, thanks for addressing one of the harder questions to nail down. As one person said earlier, when a woman is treated differently on comms - whether it be good or bad - she does not stick around long in the corporation. I can draw connections between his experience of the game and your criticisms of the culture, along with those of Gwen Ikiryo, who says intelligent society moves on from unhealthy attitudes rather than attempting to change them.

BTW, this is not a conversation about how to change Eve. We are just freely exchanging ideas here, people.

You missed the point. WoW had a much bigger issue with this a few years ago. Their girls population was lower and at the scale they are dealing with and with the kind of game they are willing to sell/offer. it was a big deal for them. Things got cleaner with more moderation and somehow, you can hardly find a guild where the female presence is no longer the token raider's GF who play just because her BF does.

I don't think EVE should go that way but it will if the owners start thinking it's the way to grow.