Using A Sexy Video Game Avatar Makes Women Objectify Themselves

reply to post by WhiteAlice


I guess I have really learned to tune it out. I think it bugs my man more than it bugs me. Though I have seen some guys, knowing that we are a couple who plays together, go out of their way to make comments just to irritate him. Fortunately for him, he rarely reads game chat and misses a lot of it.

reply to post by Nyiah


Speaking as a woman gamer for many years....I tend to call bullcrap on this!

I have used avatars of female video game characters over the years.....this is probably because I have a great love for video games so this is a natural thing for me to do when I wish to remain anonymous.
My current avatar pic is of the character Tifa off the game Final Fantasy VII....the title kinda gives it away, it's fantasy not real life! I'm pretty confident that most women gamers can make the distinction between the two.

So they would have us disassociate ourselves from "sexy" video game characters for fear it will upset our moral compass?? Actually when I have used a genuine picture of myself I have been accused of along the lines of trying to objectify myself ....I guess a gal can never win!

studies and research from people who have never played video games, the same people who beleive gta will turn your 12 yr old into car jacking gangbanger.
its stupid.
these people should be shot at dawn with a plasma rifle.

reply to post by Nyiah


I think genre really plays a huge difference in regards to treatment along with game size, team structure, server ownership, and overall community/rules. When I played WoW, I was sexually harassed once. Most people were great. FFXI--nobody ever harassed me. MMORPG, RTS, MOBA--not treated differently than any other player. Quake--never was sexually harassed but that could've been due to the champion at the time being a female. MMOFPS or MMO "shooter"--hit and miss. Warframe--nope, never. Planetside 2--nope, never. Global Agenda (competitive element)--I had problems only in the competitive bracket that would occasionally spill onto the public games. It was quickly and publicly smashed after it was brought to the attention of the developers and by the developers. Kudos to them.

Games like Counterstrike, Call of Duty, Team Fortress Classic, Team Fortress 2--bad. These are all high testosterone inducing games that are predominantly male. The servers tend to be community based or individually run. The server sizes tend to be smaller allowing attention to gravitate to a single player more readily. I play with my fiance a lot and most of the time, if we're on the same team for one of these games, they'll say that the reason why I'm doing well is because he's on my team. That goes out the window when we are separated. If there is a specific game genre, it's FPS games where the servers are privately operated and an individual player can stand out.

I'll U2U you a short example clip so you can hear what it can be like. It's not pretty.

Char-Lee
reply to post by schuyler

 

Women who look "good," i.e.: are sexually attractive, are more likely to be able to have and nurture healthy children.

HA! Really? healthy nurtured children come from women men deem physically attractive bull pocky! The best looking to men would be prostitutes more times than not.

Yes well the woman do seem to chose to do whatever stupid pitiful thing it takes to make a guy think she is "beautiful"! From stupid high heel shoes to ridiculous fake eyelashes and a ton of crap.

Ironic when I look at your avatar, what "message" or reflection are you trying to give out with the make up, eyelashes etc..?

"the best looking to men would be prostitutes more times then not" ?

That is a very unclassy thing to say.. Stereotyping is not cool, and the reason people try to portray an image rather be themselves naturally. I prefer no makeup, hair down.. As a man, the best look for a woman, is the "just woke up".

I really dont understand your reply.. Maybe I missed something? I apologize if so, but stereotyping the counter-part always bothers me..

As for the topic on hand - wouldnt it be great if peoples avatars were pictures of themselves? Judgement and stereotyping prevent people from opening up and doing such things. It makes people behave or portray something they actually are not, so others will accept them.

Its simple psychology...

calstorm
reply to post by WhiteAlice

 

I guess I have really learned to tune it out. I think it bugs my man more than it bugs me. Though I have seen some guys, knowing that we are a couple who plays together, go out of their way to make comments just to irritate him. Fortunately for him, he rarely reads game chat and misses a lot of it.

Yep, my fiance ignores chat, too. Unfortunately, I read the chat as a habit due to being both a former server and league administrator. When you have to be paying attention to behavior on a server, it kind of creates a habit. Voice chat is next to impossible to ignore but can frequently be eliminated by muting. When faced with it, my fiance struggles more with it than I do but only because I'm used to it. One can react emotionally to something, which only makes the perpetrator happy, one can ignore it, which may or may not have any effect, or one can be diplomatic about it and attempt to talk to the perpetrator as one person to another.

Does it bother me when guys behave this way in game? Me personally, no, but it bothers the hell out of me that there are a lot of teenaged girls who do play these games that do get the same sort of treatment. I've seen it. My daughter is a gamer and is probably going to play the same kind of games that I do. That's been something on my mind ever since she was born and breaking perceptions of female gamers is precisely why I even entered that tournament. I did it for her.

reply to post by covertpanther



And what does make up, eyelashes and whatnot mean to you? Or we could look at your avatar to try to discern what you're attempting to embody--virility, smoothly savage? Very masculine, is it not?

I use a real picture of me for gaming. It nips "fat and ugly" comments in the bud and blows that particular noxious and oft-repeated stereotype out of the water. However, doing that, I get accused of "advertising" or '"attention seeking" (yes, Logos23, we cannot win)--which is kind of silly because, if the person already was motivated enough to look at my profile, then I got their attention for my skill and not my looks. And mind you, it's just a photo of me wearing a long sleeve sweater, smiling and looking like the lady that lives next door.

For everywhere else? Pass. It would invite discrimination. That's been my experience at the least. To make perfectly clear, what matters here is what is going on in our noggins, not what we look like.

reply to post by WhiteAlice


Indeed...I do feel quite strongly that women cannot win where that is concerned in online gaming and indeed a lot of internet sites in general!
If a woman uses a picture of herself as an avatar or in a profile and it's not very easy on the eye then there are men who will use this fact to have little "digs" at her ( sometimes not so little!)

If a woman uses a picture of herself and she is remotely pretty then there are men who use this fact to accuse her presence as not valid because she is only there for attention.

If a woman uses an avatar pic that depicts a fictional character they are often accused of trying to be something they are not or having something to hide!!

And actually I am not aiming this exclusively at men because women can be just as critical of other women in certain circles online.

You cant please everyone no matter how you wish to represent yourself online!

covertpanther

Char-Lee
reply to post by schuyler

 

Women who look "good," i.e.: are sexually attractive, are more likely to be able to have and nurture healthy children.

HA! Really? healthy nurtured children come from women men deem physically attractive bull pocky! The best looking to men would be prostitutes more times than not.

Yes well the woman do seem to chose to do whatever stupid pitiful thing it takes to make a guy think she is "beautiful"! From stupid high heel shoes to ridiculous fake eyelashes and a ton of crap.

Ironic when I look at your avatar, what "message" or reflection are you trying to give out with the make up, eyelashes etc..?

"the best looking to men would be prostitutes more times then not" ?

That is a very unclassy thing to say.. Stereotyping is not cool, and the reason people try to portray an image rather be themselves naturally. I prefer no makeup, hair down.. As a man, the best look for a woman, is the "just woke up".

I really dont understand your reply.. Maybe I missed something? I apologize if so, but stereotyping the counter-part always bothers me..

As for the topic on hand - wouldnt it be great if peoples avatars were pictures of themselves? Judgement and stereotyping prevent people from opening up and doing such things. It makes people behave or portray something they actually are not, so others will accept them.

Its simple psychology...

Maybe you did not read all of what I responded to. I don't wear makeup, I have auburn hair to my ankles, I told the avatar makers thread my basic personage, i am modest and auburn headed, green eyed and love nature and gardening,,,they made this and the person who created it made a beautiful avatar though avatars mean nothing to me I am glad to use it and grateful to the creator of it.

Maybe what i said was a put down to men but men do seem to go for the most made-up and false woman in a room 9 times out of 10 in my experience...that they feel is beauty. Thankfully my husband feels i am beautiful naturally.

You DO knowable the female avatar sin most MMOs are actually GUYS
I asked one gamer buddy why he uses a female avatar and he replied:
It's better then having to look at a guys butt all day
Lol

Wait, so a bunch of ugly women with low self-esteem and confidence -- COMPLAINED about a video game?

...Will this have an impact on my Taco Bell order I'm waiting for right now?

Kali74
I think it's more the other way around. I'm female, I'm proud of my sexuality and my sensuality, I'm a gamer, I'm a strong woman... my avatar reflects ME, I don't reflect my avatar. If I ran around naked in a game, it wouldn't ever make me think that women asks to be raped or mistreated because of how she dresses. However there are a lot of very insecure, uneducated women out there, they would be so whether they played video games or not.

And this is why I am now completely in love with you.

Lady gamer here, and I call b.s. on this study, too. A big part of the joy I get from MMORPGs is the storytelling and character development aspect. So my avatars are always a reflection of the character I want to develop as I go along. Very rarely have I ever played an overtly sexy female character, but when I have, it's been great fun, and an outlet for expressing a part myself I would never explore in real life. Gaming is play, entertainment, and storytelling for me. Never have left a session of gaming with a sexy avatar suddenly believing that women who show skin are asking to be raped. This study, as some very astute posters have pointed out, is deeply flawed and doesn't make any sense.

I've experienced some mild harassment here and there as a female avatar, but nothing like what some women experience in gaming. That's mostly because I'm too busy to play enough to get to the more challenging instances or progress my characters with an active guild. I suspect that it would be a lot worse if I were more competitive. Right now, I'm playing "The Secret World", and it seems to appeal to a much more mature group of gamers, both in age and mindset. I've found it a very "safe" place to be as a female gamer.

reply to post by Nyiah


Haha what BS! More like sad & deranged male gamers choose hot female avatars and then act like the whores they think they'd like to see online, but which don't actually exist in real life. Women don't objectify themselves any more than men objectify themselves. Men objectify women, and (occasionally) vice versa. But it always begins with the other side of the yang/yin; not within the gender itself.

But who cares? The internet is the real 'land of opportunity'. Anyone can be anyone. That's the best (and worst) thing about the internet. And if you think deeply enough about it, even life itself is really just a troll. So what do we expect from each other? Why would humans behave any less bizarre than the universe that birthed them in the first place? Indeed, there are certainly stranger things in the cosmos than men behaving like women on the internet just to get free items in some computer game. That's business as usual on a planet as backwards as Earth lol.

Whatever. Peace!


PS. Most of the female responses to this thread only serve to highlight the essence of my point... Which is that female objectification of internet personas is a male-driven cultural phenomenon; not an expression of modern femininity's supposed decline. This article does not fairly represent the attitude of modern women (in my desperately uneducated opinion).

White Alice, the clip you PMed me almost strikes me as a what a griefer would do in other games (except your example was much more extreme) while everyone's rolling their eyes hitting "ignore". This is commonplace verbal abuse in FPS games? Color me disinterested in playing them if it's supported ego-stroking at the cost of welcoming environment.

Oh, and to the poster who suggested we have an ATS group in a game? Fabulous idea, someone should start a thread for prelim recruiting I wonder which game would be the top pick?

reply to post by Rhoswen


I love The Secret World, too! And I utterly agree about that particular gaming community. I think that the game's difficulty level probably has something to do with that as to do a whole subset of the quests requires everything from cryptography to knowledge of art history and more. Awesome game.

reply to post by Nyiah


This kind of behavior only happens after I regular somewhere. I played the same game as the clip last night on non-community servers (developer run) and had no issues at all. If I keep playing even on one of those with any sort of regularity, things like that clip may happen or they may just try to ban me from playing on that server. Luckily, the votes rarely pass. It's not all bad but like Serdgiam said, there is a very, very dark element that plays FPS. Whether or not the rest of the server joins in (if you read the chat in that clip, the rest of the server supported the harasser in that event) or not depends entirely on the other players. It always restores my faith in the FPS community when those others move to vote the individual off the server. Doing so has nothing to do with being a "white knight". It's being a decent human being that will stand up for others and would make that FPS community a heck of a lot more welcoming and more unwelcoming for that "dark element".

Steam actually has the option to make a "Steam group". Somebody could make one that people could join but we'd probably need to use caution with the name so we don't step on ATS' toes.

Nyiah
OK, I'm going to say that as a gamer myself, this reeks of bovine excrement. No video game theme and no video game character ever has, or ever will, alter my beliefs on the spot like this study supposedly shows. I am not that pliable as a human being. I'm also smart enough to fully understand & damn well know that a video game is a created environment for entertainment, not reality, and not an accurate reflection of reality. I know that there are people who get sucked into those game worlds and become obsessive and/or try to have life mirror that world, but I'm looking at this from the general player standpoint, not that extreme far-end of the spectrum.

Thank you! THANK YOU!!!

Thank you for refusing to take on the mantle of being a "victim". This is complete BS that modern society is foistering onto our civilization, not to mention my six year old daughter.

My daughter has asked me questions about things like this. I always painstakingly point out to her that the ONLY "thing" that defines her is HER. She is a unique being. She is not defined as a "girl", or a "sex object" or anything else. Life is ENTIRELY too complex for anything so ridiculous.

If you refuse the mantle of being a "victim", you are Victorious, IMHO. The only final declaration on who is or is not a victim, is YOU.

I would have to agree with the majority of opinions here that the premise of this study is pure and utter BS. I play Skyrim and am a long time WoW gamer and a guild master (in WoW as Skyrim is single player) and in my guild I not only had women in it but I would say that half of the guild (80 or so members) were women. The age spread of members were between 14 (very few as I am big on people acting in a mature manner) and 50+. I think the one reason I had such an even spread is I treated everyone equally to the best of my ability and always tried to be fair with everyone. I would go as far as to say that many of the women gamers were better than a lot of the men in the guild (take that for what you will). My point is that none of these are factors when discussing how competent someone is or can be.

As for the avatar issue, I never looked into it too much as simply there is no reason to do so. People tend to all be different and have their own reasons for choosing the avatars they do. Trying to find common links and commonalities into the reasons why is an exercise in futility because there are none. I am a man and my characters were mostly female (one being a dwarf female) and I only had one male toon (my dk). Just because I have most of my toons female does not mean that I harbor secret desires to be female, that is far from the truth. I have had people ask me why and I do tell them looking at a female butt for long periods of time is better than a male one, but hardly the only reason I choose mostly female toons. I find the idea of a woman (usually with red hair) who is not only capable but very kick ass to be alluring (I blame Willow and Red Sonja for this). I've had people assume me to be a woman, thankfully that has been few and far between though. The mature gamers tend to not have any preconceived notions about who a person is in relation to what their avatar looks like. I have not played much WoW lately (mainly because I think MoP is just plain awful), but will go out on a limb and say I do not think things have changed that drastically from when I last played.

On the idea of a ATS forum for gamers I think that would be kinda cool actually and would give some of us more to talk about with each other lol

How much does it say about me if i want to look like a shadowy stranger ... with a bow strapped to my back and a shortsword on my hip with leather straps and pouches elsewhere. Obviously, in RL I am not like that at all, but something inside me likes a dangerous yet reserved man. A man dressed dark and sharp, like with black pants and tight leather jacket with a skull on the back and a switchblade in his back pocket.

In RL, I'm a wimp, but in VR I want to look sharp and mostly bad***. I have this admiration of men who handle themselves and don't need help. They're not criminals, but they're dangerous, if pushed to that point where their nature is exposed. Last thing I want to look like is a yes man or a coward. I want to look like a man who can do business and and be friendly, but all the same, he has claws and isn't afraid of the scary side of town. He's no pushover! Mostly, he's NOT me, get it?

In RL I'm too afraid of guns and knives and things like that. I'll never never look like some men do because nature made me something else. Obviously, men can look tough but the next moment they're as soft as teddy bears. I'm still a little kid.

If somebody doesn't understand the what I'm saying, it's ok. Maybe I just have to rephrase it somehow. In VR, I want to be a dark sharp strong man, whatever that means in whatever context. Again, the last thing I want to look like is a kid or a teddy bear or a fat man that lives on the couch. Those things are too friendly to me. They're too cuddly. In VR, I'm not interested in cuddling. VR is like an escape. You can go there and get away from your boring self and from boring things around you and adventure. It's about doing the things you can't do in RL, for whatever reason.

One last thing... just because I'm a male doesn't mean I think female video game characters need to be half naked or heavy up top. I think it's dumb. They do that for (very) young males. It's possible that some young female players wish they looked or acted like Lara Croft simply because they want to be attractive and want to be assertive and so they want to see characters who're both beautiful and heroic. It's kind of like how the male characters tend to be strong willed, muscular and/or handsome. I think many guys wish they were as big and assertive and handsome or maybe they just think heroic men should be that way. Obviously, in RL, heroic men come in all shapes and sizes. I guess it's kind of like how most men or woman in hollywood movies and in fashion magazines are better looking than average. Why? Maybe because some men and woman wish they were that way or they think that's the way they should look. Generally, when something is in short(er) supply it has more value, so good looking people have some extra value, since it's less common.

Read here:
en.wikipedia.org - Physical attractiveness stereotype...

reply to post by jonnywhite


Awesomely said. I wish I could give you about a hundred more stars for that post because it's really so true in many ways. I was just running around in Saints Row IV the other day looking like a character straight out of the Matrix and I totally meant it. It seemed so perfect because I was running around, capable of doing amazing things in a simulated world (the world in the game is simulated in the game--gameception!) and having a blast in my "I'm in the Matrix!!" day dream. I don't even mind playing male characters when they aren't available because, again, it's a chance to be something I'm not in a game. I can be "just one of the guys" and I love that.

Awesome post and from hereon out, I'll visualize you as Mr. Bad***--tough, sharp but deeply contemplative. Pure win.