[MUD-Dev] Gender and Mud Development

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad <olag@ifi.uio.no>]

"Jon A. Lambert" wrote:
> Just as the solution to poverty is not to steal and redistribute the
> wealth of the rich,

... the wanna-be-rich wrote and felt better about himself.  This is of
course plain wrong, empirically.  I don't see any hungry people in this
socialist country I live in, except for addicts that prefer drugs over
food.  What about yours?  And you even have taxes?  Ideas about nations,
property, theft and such are largely arbitrary cultural constructs working
within cultural frameworks though.  Not that I like it, or think it is
justifiable, when the government expropriates our land in order to build a
bigger road.  Which they recently did.  What I like or want is, however, a
different issue.  It is a very efficient solution if one happens to think
that big empty roads are a good idea. (I don't.)  There are many ways to
"steal" and "redistribute" "wealth", some less noticeable than others.

> the solution to sexism and chauvinism is not to
> make man or woman sexless.

Of course it is.  Invest in genetic research, get an all female society, and
you will have less aggression and no sexism.  Why do you think so many women
study biology and chemistry?

If I was sexless then I wouldn't have had to waste a year of my life in the
army.  I also wouldn't have wasted so much creative energy being horny or
mourning over women. Gee, what's the point? I am in favour of some heavy
genetic experiments that can take away this bug without side effects.  It is
a very unhealthy addiction.  It would have been banned, or at least under
heavy regulation, if it had been introduced today.

What's the point with love and passion anyway?  Just rip out the code that
make you think that passion is exciting and assign that to coding and you
will be perfectly ok.  I am convinced that if we were born sexless then we
would be happy.  There are androgen bisexuals that are perfectly happy.

The worst thing is, this arbitrary love scam makes people give up assigning
meaning to their life. They get kids instead and put the burden upon future
generations, pretending they are animals.  How selfish!  Breeding humans in
factories is much better.  Much more human.

> The problem particularly lies with men (and
> many women) who hate, fear and despise women, not with those who adore
> them.

Hitler adored humans, a particular subset with particular beliefs.

> There are those who are working right now trying to create a
> sexless society a turn back 6000 years of evolution.

Not to my knowledge, except for those women that study biogeneticstuff.  I
don't think it would be a turnback though.  Do you have any evidence of
this?

> Yes.  80% of muds are Hack-n-Slash, Shoot-em up, kill things and run
> around with blood, sweat, bugs, and guts pouring out.

Those are easier to make.  I think most boys with brains have other
interests, or so I like to believe.  Then again, maybe less than 20% of boys
use their brains, but I think that holds for girls as well.

> Consider briefly the recent threads on Achaea and Ultimate Universe.  Are
> these games that appeal to significant numbers women?

I don't think these games appeal to significant numbers of men either, on
the list or off the list.  If significant means 95% of the overall
population. However, given the size of the Internet I think these games
could get a decent number (not ratio) of female players if you could get
them started.  The trouble could be that they wouldn't think of looking for
them on their own.  Who knows what would happen if we could get Marian's
friends over the threshold?  Meridian59 was pure hack'n'slash, in the beta I
saw more women there than I had expected.  Midwives even!  Looking for 3D
medieval setting with some monster bashing! It is, of course, possible to do
better.

> It is not suprising than an excess of clubs on the MUD-DEV list have
> driven most of the hearts!

Really?  The real question is whether they were here in the first place? 
Where is this list recruiting from?  It isn't obvious to me that the list
itself is the bottleneck.  I didn't realize that Holly was female until now,
so I like to believe that the difference in actual content isn't that
extreme, at least not in our way too small sample.  We should expect
variance in the female list population just like we know that there is
variance in the male...

Of course, only the listowner can tell us whether we loose more women than
men or not, or if there is a higher lurker ratio among the female population
(which I would expect for cultural reasons)
--
Ola



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