A sexist encounter
Last night I joined a group of non-guildies, led by some guy I met while leveling, to run around briefly in an instance. Another female toon also joined.
We get to the place and one of the dudes asks “so, are you females in real life?”
Sullen, hostile silence. Let’s just go through the options:
(a) why yes I am, please harass me and flirt with me!
(b) why no I am not, I am a guy playing a female, please share some of your favorite homophobic insults with me!
(c) Bite me, asshat.
Finally the other one answered “I don’t give out my a/s/l [age-sex-location] on the internet.”
I chimed in with “me neither, my mommy doesn’t like it.”
“So you’re both dudes,” he replies.
Look asshat, if it’ll keep you from sharing the sordid details of your carnal desires with me, I’m Chuck Norris. I’m Larry Craig tapping his foot in the stall next to you. I’m the Numa Numa guy. Envision the human you find least sexually appealing – that’s me.
There are a lot of gamers who are pretty sure I’m a guy playing a female toon. Some of them think I’m even a gay guy playing a female toon because I tend to say something when the homophobia starts flying.
Early on in my gamer career I had this compulsion to come back with “nuh uh! I’m FEMALE! See, I’m female and I’m competently playing this game just like you are! So stop being sexist at once!”
But that just doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to.
So these days I actually sort of encourage them to think I’m a guy rather than revealing I’m really a woman playing a guy playing a female toon.
Anyway, let’s see, game stuff: I got my epic purple robe for my priest, I fiddled with the talent templates some, my warrior’s up to 33, and I spent a lot of time gaming over Labor Day weekend without really being focused on it for various weird reasons.
Media stuff. 300. Loved it. Watched it immediately again afterwards with the commentary on. Still haven’t sent it back to Netflix yet in case I want to watch it again. Loved the direction, the look of it, the sepia-ness, the triple camera fight scenes.
Health stuff: been headachey and slightly miserable, and when I’m that way I tend to clam up and do some repetitious grinding with or without frequent visits to the AFK. Sometimes I get worried that people will think I’m snubbing them when I’m low energy, but they usually seem to hang around long enough for me to bounce back. In case you thought that, I’m not.
Disneyland: my best friend decided that what I really need was a therapeutic visit to Disneyland to view the Johnny Depp robot. So next month we’re going to go do that. I figure a journey to the outside world won’t be too horrible if there are audioanimatronics and special effects. It’s not like I have to go to the mall or something.
And blog stuff: due to the brainfog and health stuff, I’ve written a few epic rants that I deleted because they went around in circles. So I’m exercising brevity until I can come up with some better rants. Because you guys deserve only the finest ranting :)
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2 comments:
I've been playing in online RPGs since 1991. Throughout the years, I've developed an aversion to treating a character like the person behind it.
For example, Star from SWG. I know that the player was a guy, but I still addressed the character in femine terms because the character was female. It is just easier that way.
I also usually don't ask for a/s/l, either. In my opinion, that is just a bit rude.
Btw, I sent some material to the troll priestess this morning along with a note. Don't expect to see me again until the weekend, as the US Open matches are getting very entertaining as the championship starts winding down.
The trolless thanks you :)
And yes, I try to deal with the avatar and not the person, because the person behind the avatar is choosing to represent themselves that way rather than by being one of those boring folks that always makes toons that look just like them and have their same RL name.
And asking A/S/L in a MMO is downright bad taste IMHO, or noobish at the very least. It makes me automatically assume they're prowling for underage girls and boys or something equally unwholesome. A lot of them are just noobs who have a hard time relating to an avatar if they can't hang a few stereotypes on it, but it's still rude.
I ran into the asshat again last night and he made a big show of doing /flirt and /dance with me while sending me "how's it going, dude!" whispers. Not only do I NOT want this guy to know my RL gender, I don't want him to know what state I live in. Maybe I'll start babbling in an invented foreign language the next time I encounter him.
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