The Darkmoon Faire, and An Encounter With a Sexist Pig

Last night in WoW I went to the Darkmoon Faire.

WoW has these great little holiday celebrations. SWG used to do holidays too but not as many, and without nearly as much imagintion – usually it would just involve handing out special holiday themed swag such as paintings.

But WoW has versions of Valentine’s Day and Easter (with egg hunting) and probably lots more that I haven’t seen yet, and the Darkmoon Faire is a litle carnival with NPCs giving swag in exchange for various crafted and looted things, and special refreshments.

Best of all, there was a cannon you could have yourself shot out of. There was a target over water to aim for but if you missed it you’d crash to the ground and die. I was perversely fascinated with this feature and spent a while with my SWG buddies being shot out of the cannon, racing with Kenshu to see who could hit the target first until my evil cat, Tallulah (who gets me killed at least once a night) jumped in front of the monitor, hastening my demise just as Kenshu was victorious.

(Here is a picture of the evil fiend in question, waiting to attack anyone who dares reach for the PS2)


I liked the faire, it took me away from mindless grinding for a while, although I did get talked into another silly instance run.

Right now I am avoiding instances because usually they are led by extremely goal-driven people who have their mind set on some particular loot drop and think everybody else is merely there to help them rush through the map and attain it.

And from what I figured out about WoW now that I’m level 70, getting your panties in a bunch over some piece of equipment is stupid because another quest will give you an even better one in five or ten levels, and if you are having trouble surviving that long without your extra +5 or whatever, you need an easier game. PARTICULARLY if it’s something from the pre-expansion world, because the Outlands stuff blows all of it away.

Instances can be just fine though in some situations, like if you’re there for the ambience and to spend a couple of hours doing some teamwork, or if everyone needs experience and completed quests. Then they’re very enjoyable.

Anyway, as it turns out, I’m skeptical about these instances (and many other things) because we women evolved that way.

Which is sort of an example of the evolutionary psychology type stuff I’ve been babbling about, and how this blog is (in addition to being my writer’s equivalent of a Nautilus machine) an attempt to solidify my worldview leaning more that way than towards “Bill fell in love with Susie because the TV shows he watched as a teen programmed him to want women like Susie.”

So the next time you run into a skeptical woman, think of all the centuries of selection that went into her sternly folded arms and her “no, I don’t think so.”

And speaking of men with crossed signals, last night the guild ran into a real live genuine sexist pig!!

He started out complaining after he got a “watch the language, please” comment from one of the officers. He let us all know that he was used to hanging around with twenty-something guys and not a bunch of girls and babies.

Well, I’m used to hanging around with 50-ish lawyers, but that doesn’t mean I have an uncontrollable urge to say things like “a fortiori!” and “notwithstanding!” whenever I’m hanging around with different people.

Rose gave him the standard explanation, we have chosen to be in a guild where people don’t talk like sailors on crack, blah blah blah, then he says something snide about whether she’s a “real” woman. So she replied that she is, and he said something about “uh oh, women in power!” before chilling for a moment.

Next he referred to me with male pronouns and got corrected, and made another gender-related stupid remark, at which point ANOTHER woman in the guild piped up and schooled him some more. Meanwhile, in our secret officer chat, we were sort of comparing notes on how well he recovered, points for style, etc.

Finally he started on this blitherly stupid tangent about women are different because blah blah blah, and cute women are this way, and so on. So I informed him that we won’t be conducting gender wars in guildchat, that our guild’s only officially-sanctioned hate target is the murlocs (a horrible race of amphibious fish people that babble like savages and wave pointed sticks at WoW players), and I found his conversation offensive, and Rose came in and seconded it, and . . . he chilled.

He tried stirring up some strange drama a little later but didn’t get anywhere, and meanwhile he found and enjoyed the fair, and we gave him some directions to things, and he started acting just like a normal person.

So! I have no idea whether he is a sexist pig 24/7 IRL, or whether he is only a sexist pig in certain situations, or whether he was hoping other sexist pigs in guildchat would get his back as he went for a game of “fight the power via conversationally topping bossy guild officer women.” I do know that after no less than three women made their presence known and communicated to him that his generalizations about women were annoying and offensive, he turned into almost a regular person. We told him that if gaming with women made him feel uncomfortable he could go join one of the all-male guilds but no, he wanted to stick with ours (still the biggest horde guild on the server).

I saw something similar happen in an internet forum recently, one that was being plagued by overly dramatic female trolls who turned every topic into being about them and their issues and their absolute statements about how everyone should act and feel.

At first we went by the “don’t feed the trolls” doctrine and ignored them, but that didn’t work at all, they took over the place until they were the only ones posting, then when people passive-aggressively notified management a couple of them were erased from existence, including their posting history.

Then we tried confronting them. Every time they tried to take over and seize the discussion, other people stepped in to say “stop this, there are other people here and your behavior is out of line.”

And now you can actually have a conversation in that forum.

I’m not recommending a revolutionary new way for defeating sexist pigs which will work in any particular situation, but I think an effective way to counter anonymous internet troublemaking is to remind the troublemaker that there are several other people listening, and that this is not a theater with an empty stage just waiting for them to project their own thoughts.

Sometimes it takes a lot of warnings, but it most definitely can be done.