For the Ladies - Experience as a Woman Playing ESO

Brunoad

I generally shy away from online gaming, for various reasons. Elder Scrolls is my favorite set of games, and thus played ESO since beta was introduced. This series does seem to attract more mature and intelligent audiences and I am pleasantly surprised just how many women enjoy these wonderful works of art. I am a man and have noticed that female gamers tend to be above average in intelligence and maturity. It makes me happy we have this pass-time in common, and sad that so many immature boys have so little respect for other human beings, particularly when hidden behind an avatar. They appear to be little more than selfish cowards - strong words, but that is simply how i see them.

Words can be VERY painful, especially if you already have emotional scars, and my guess is that only very few of us don't. They can communicate rejection, and who enjoys that??

Ghanima_Atreides

I'm a woman who plays both female and male characters (although more female than male) and I'm a bit baffled by posts from people claiming they received either abuse or free loot *solely* because someone saw their female character, not knowing anything about the player behind them. That never happened to me, the closest I got was someone asking me if I was "a real girl" once and inviting me to their guild.

Granted, I don't do voice chat with strangers and otherwise keep my gender to myself, because I figure it's irrelevant in a game like this anyway.

adriant1978

Guy here, but I have more female characters than male. Only time I can remember one of them being hit upon was when someone whispered "kill 'em, hot thang!" to my dual-wielding NB in the mine on Stros M'kai while fighting goblins. This was back when we had the old style Redguard light armor, so maybe that was a factor.

That's the only incident I can recall though and I've played since launch on both (PC) megaservers. My girls are mostly decent looking, and one or two could even be described as a bit "cheesecake", but my experience tells me that nobody really cares.

NovaMarx

I have luckily not experienced any sexism in the game, and I've been playing since closed PC beta. But that doesn't mean I haven't encountered the odd rude player, but their comments have been more "general" than sexist.

More females play this game than some people realise - I really don't understand why some are still baffled at women playing games - and some even think women don't know how to play games. And often you will find that those behind the rude comments are probably people/men who think like this - if anything, that attitude is more negative/sexist than rude comments IMO, as it is self-reinforcing. We need to keep letting the community know just how large the female gaming community is, and how fast it's growing.

May Mara bless you all!

SilentRaven1972

I've not had any issues, so far. I've corrected a few people that assumed I was male, but the standard reply is "cool", then no more about it. I'm more interested in learning/playing the game than if you are this gender or that. Though I'm fairly quiet in zone chat, I do like to read some of the funny things that go on (PC/NA).

Gargath

I'm a male but when I mentioned one time in general chat on some low lvl area that I'm not a man, I immediately started to receive friend invites . Didn't accept any and soon later conversation ended up with trolling, immature behaviours and insults and one got reported for insulting a girl . I feel that some younger people just cannot restrain from being rude, when they got a chance to express oneself in public...

RDMyers65b14_ESO

qrichou wrote: »

My char is female , i prefer looking at female charrs , i myself. am a male . thusfar. i encountered some , female players saying "anything" to get male attention . When in pve area , i simply mute and block them same goes for the males or kids that repleyed to her with some sexuel suggestions ( wich she loved by given better 1s ) . When in pvp ( diff females) , i mail them telling them they ruin the battle by talking like that. because whole male zergs will fill the campaigne doin nutin but drewl . My choice of words in that mail , is drasticly diiff then here . So overall , there are annoying players , male ,female, kids , but i choose to mute and block them . It would be a waist of time to argue with a fool .

I have no idea what campaign you are on but, not only does this 50 year old woman PVP, I *LEAD* raids. I have never the entire time of PVPing ever seen a campaign that was just male. I am not alone in being a female PVPer as my guild has several other women who run around in Cyrodil on a daily basis. There was this one time when we were just getting started that the entire small group consisted of the guild leader (who happens to be male) and three of us female PVPing women. I even made a comment about him being 'Charlie' before calling dibs on being 'Sabrina'.

dtm_samuraib16_ESO

ArchMikem wrote: »

I like how the topic of the thread changed completely cause of what Samurai said.

Sorry about that, I tend to do that, indeed.
But, it's not far from the OP's topic...

As for me not 'playing women', I guess, I am the Neanderthal, "uber male", someone called me once.
I have absolutely no feminine side.
Then again, being autistic, I am an emotional flat-liner, so could be that.
And I charge in into everything head first.
When in a starting fight, I whack, and then care of who/what/where.
Far too much testosterone, probably.
Or too much Adrenaline.

baratron

I really do wonder how many of the female players who get grief for being female play on console rather than PC. To what extent does having voice chat as the only option make a difference?

I am nearly 40, but I have a stupid high-pitched voice. If a person didn't know me and hadn't already seen me speak in text chat, they might well mistake me for being late teens or early 20s. And then they might make various assumptions, based on my perceived age as well as gender.

When you meet people in text and primarily play in text, someone's gender is important only in terms of knowing what pronoun to refer to them as. There are people I have known for months who probably still don't know that I'm female in real life, because it hasn't come up. I offer free traits for research in one of my guilds, and plenty of the regulars still think I'm a "he"... I don't usually bother to correct them because my crafting character is male.

I think it helps to be in supportive guilds. Guilds with female Officers, or friendly Officers of any gender who are committed to equality. The kind of guilds who couldn't care less what your race, gender, sexuality, religion or real-life politics are, they just care about helping you have fun and progress as a player.

Ignoring zone chat which can be racist, sexist, or generally discriminatory towards just about anyone, I feel that I've experienced very few incidents of sexism on PC NA. I can think of precisely one that I remember, and even then it turned out to be imprecise wording rather than genuine sexism. A guy said something along the lines of how he always makes himself gold armor with gold glyphs, but "only" uses green or blue for the equipment he makes for his wife's and sister's characters. It sounded extremely sexist! When I expressed this sentiment, he explained that what he meant was that he played ESO every day, whereas his wife and sister only played about once a week. So he had a high level vet whereas they were casual gamers who haven't progressed very far. And they should be grateful to be getting free crafted set items from him rather than having to rely on drops! "If they want better armor, they're grown-ass women and can go and earn it themselves." A totally different sentiment from the way it came across - I agree, why waste high quality tempers on lowbies who don't play much? But the way he'd originally phrased it made it sound like women players don't deserve better, rather than it being lowbies getting free stuff who don't.

PriorityBalle

Hihihihi I totally like playing this game as a female, the boys just give me free stuff all the time hihihihih

*giggles* hihihihih *giggles* I'm totally female hihihi *giggles* hihihihi *giggles*

Jade1986

Bein a trans woman, I have had nothing but positive reactions and a positive experience on PC.

Now, if I was on console, I guarantee I would have some problems.

Kaibeth

+1

Justice31st

It's sad that men and women are treated differently in a freakin video game. When I used to go into guild voice chat I typically heard guys being "extra" friendly to women on there, or they would white knight and go to their defense if any other males had a different opinion than the women that was talking on voice chat. Then a guild (I decided to leave ) created a girls night only group. Certain people trying to divide a player base; based on gender, rather than pixels is quite sad to see.

MidnightBlue

The only thing that bothers me is when people think I sound like a 12 year old because the mic distorts my voice. Then I get treated even worse lol. My experience people treat preteen kids worse than women in video games.

dtm_samuraib16_ESO

baratron wrote: »

I really do wonder how many of the female players who get grief for being female play on console rather than PC. To what extent does having voice chat as the only option make a difference?

I am nearly 40, but I have a stupid high-pitched voice. If a person didn't know me and hadn't already seen me speak in text chat, they might well mistake me for being late teens or early 20s. And then they might make various assumptions, based on my perceived age as well as gender.

When you meet people in text and primarily play in text, someone's gender is important only in terms of knowing what pronoun to refer to them as. There are people I have known for months who probably still don't know that I'm female in real life, because it hasn't come up. I offer free traits for research in one of my guilds, and plenty of the regulars still think I'm a "he"... I don't usually bother to correct them because my crafting character is male.

I think it helps to be in supportive guilds. Guilds with female Officers, or friendly Officers of any gender who are committed to equality. The kind of guilds who couldn't care less what your race, gender, sexuality, religion or real-life politics are, they just care about helping you have fun and progress as a player.

Ignoring zone chat which can be racist, sexist, or generally discriminatory towards just about anyone, I feel that I've experienced very few incidents of sexism on PC NA. I can think of precisely one that I remember, and even then it turned out to be imprecise wording rather than genuine sexism. A guy said something along the lines of how he always makes himself gold armor with gold glyphs, but "only" uses green or blue for the equipment he makes for his wife's and sister's characters. It sounded extremely sexist! When I expressed this sentiment, he explained that what he meant was that he played ESO every day, whereas his wife and sister only played about once a week. So he had a high level vet whereas they were casual gamers who haven't progressed very far. And they should be grateful to be getting free crafted set items from him rather than having to rely on drops! "If they want better armor, they're grown-ass women and can go and earn it themselves." A totally different sentiment from the way it came across - I agree, why waste high quality tempers on lowbies who don't play much? But the way he'd originally phrased it made it sound like women players don't deserve better, rather than it being lowbies getting free stuff who don't.

I believe that "kids" tend to consoles, where more mature, more "serious" players would go to PC.
But that's merely a theory.
I do not know how many play either, so.
However, in other multi platform games I hear the same recurring thing.
Console Elite Dangerous is said to have a ton of griefers more than the PC version, and this is just ONE example.
But it does make me think, I am not that far off.
Adult, or mature players, do not need to grief, we're FAR past the stage where we find griefing others simply is silly, pointless, useless...

Magdalina

o.O Does it actually matter if you're a girl or a guy? I mean I'm fairly sure female gamers aren't exactly a revelation anymore. Sure some people can probably be jerks but some people are jerks overall, to man or woman alike(not to mention you really can't tell the gender online unless the person tells you, female char means nothing).
I honestly don't think I've ever seen a girl get harassed in ESO(not to say it doesn't happen, but definitely doesn't happen often). Sure I've seen some pretty...hm...you could inappropriate jokes, but I've seen them directed at guys as well. I don't think that should be taken seriously.

I've seen plenty of people try to be nicer to people they thought were females(including me), that's kinda amusing actually lol. But most don't really seem to care one way or the other.

leighdelo

I avoid area chat like the plague in specific areas in busy towns, mainly because that's where the sexist remarks come from. That doesn't stop me from dancing like a fool, though. I also play in an all-female guild, so I can avoid those 15 year old trolls. When I have run or randomly grouped with men during questing or pvp, all have been cool and considerate. Thanks, guys!