[MUD-Dev] The Price of Being Male

[Tom]

From: Sanvean [mailto:sanvean at ginka.armageddon.org]
> On Tue, 1 Jul 2003, Tom wrote:
>> From: Sanvean

> Are you saying that it's full of lesbian couples? One presumes
> that there's at least a few males participating there - which
> would mean that they're also there for the social
> interaction. Just as maybe some of the female players are there
> for the advancement.

No, apologies if I implied that. Males are of course by no means the
"victims", and possibly more instigators than females. I don't even
agree that GS is primarily a meat market. I was just using some of
the comments I've heard as an example that it's possible that there
may be at least as much female initiative as male.

> But I'm also not clear on how this disproves my
> observations. Could you expand on that a little? I'm also not
> saying that sexuality is a blanket plague to women-kind. There's a
> big difference between that and some of the phenomenon I listed.

I agree with your observation, I thought it was misleading because
it left out the fact that females often do want this kind of
interaction. I took your original post on the harsh side of males
being the abusers and females being the victims who don't want this
kind of attention at all. When you mentioned getting political I may
have read too much into it. Years ago I had done the "knight in
shining armor" thing and set out to make a MUD I was helping out on
a "safer" place for women. I thought it might help to bring more
females into the MUD if males were policed against not only abusive
behavior but trying to make sure male players treated female players
no differently than their male counterparts. This was due to the
complaints we got from a very few female players. My eyes were
opened when I got "more" complaints from females about the tighter
policy.

This along with the fact that the thread had started leaning toward
discrimination and devaluing females made me think that your post
had brought to a head the thinking that males are the evil, abusive
gender and that females are the victims. While this is undeniably
true in some cases, I didn't think it applied to the thread and
thought it unfair and to many great people of both sexes who treat
relationships, romance and sexuality as a healthy and fun part of
online gaming. My mistake is also in thinking roleplay focused MUDs
should be compared to other types of games where the problem of
discrimination and other aspects brought up in this thread probably
is much worse. Since I've obviously not lurked long enough on the
list, succeeded in putting my foot in my mouth and am guilty of
getting too far off topic, I'll just sit here and play a mute
overpriced ogre ;)

I would like to see a discussion sometime though on promoting
healthy cross gendering and amorous environments though, something I
think very few games do effectively that have adult player bases.

T.M.
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