Are Men Bullying Female Gamers?

[bjj hero]

Do you want to be in a club with people who call your girlfriend a *****? Id fight over that stuff.

If you dont feel you should walk then to "rescue" the club you need a social contract or ground rules agreeing what is and is not acceptable behaviour. Along with sanctions up to and including banning members.

Are you in the UK? Is the club officially linked to the college? If so you may well get support from the students union or facaulty. They will not be happy with blatant sexism and name calling.

do men abuse women in gaming? Yes. But there are plenty of men who dont. Maybe this isnt the group for you. They sound like dicks.

 

[Rahkshi500]

I'm sorry about what happened to your girlfriend. Since this is a club, the best I offer is to lay down some ground rules for people to listen and adhere to; mainly no bullying others based on whatever characteristics they have. If they break the rules, give them a warning(As much I detest bullying, I do think that people can change if you give them the chance), but if they keep on bullying her afterwards, kick them out of the club and tell them that they aren't welcomed there. And if they still treat her horribly outside the club, all I can say is report them to whoever is in charge at your school.

 

[Inglorious891]

That's a pretty shitty situation to be in. As I see it, you have one option:

Leave that club and never go back to it. If it's really as anarchic as you're describing it, then there's really no helping it. Maybe try to start up a club at a later time and befriend some gamers who aren't such cockheads to create the new club with. That way, if things start to go sour there are some senior members who could help enforce some rules.

Odds are if you leave that club everyone left in it will disperse pretty quickly, as they'll probably start hating on eachother versus you and your girlfriend and get so fed up with eachother they'll just stop meeting up.

As for the question in the thread title: from what I've seen, no. I haven't spoken with many female gamers, but the one I hang out with regularly hasn't experienced much hate/harassment. Maybe it's because she only plays coop games versus competitive games, but when she's spoken in game chat she's never received any harassment that I've seen. So from my perspective, men aren't bullying female gamers on a large basis. Then again, I have no figures to show how many male gamers bully female gamers, so I can't say for sure.

 

[Risingblade]

Ok I think those guys might just be assholes, leave the club make another one. Set down some ground rules about everyone treating each other with respect. If they can't do that, kick them out.

 

[visiblenoise]

Sounds like a shitty club. No fault of yours, of course - you just happened to get stuck with weirdos. I'd leave the club, maybe start a private one.

 

[OldNewNewOld]

Yes, men are bullying female gamer.
Also women are bullying male gamer.
Thought it's important to note that it's some men and some women. Assholes will bully people for whatever reason. If you show them that they insulted you with X, they will keep doing it exactly because it insulted you. If X is your gender, then it will gender insults. If it's your sexuality, they will insult your sexuality. If it's your bad taste in video games, then you dese- wait no, ignore that. They will bully for your taste.

People are assholes, learn to deal with it. Seriously, the best thing you can do on the internet is learn to ignore people, don't trust everything you read and grow a thicker skin. I'm fighting an impossible battle with my mother who reads comments on youtube and then gets mad and depressed because "Why are people so mean?!?". She just doesn't want to understand that people write that shit just to get someone worked up, coupled with anonymity, frustration and what not, people are assholes. They can even be nice people actually, but have a bad day and write a single bad comment. When you add up the number of all people suing the internet and everyone having a bad day every now and then, there will be tons of "mean" comments.

But then again, maybe we shouldn't even be using the word bully. It's quite a stupid term when they can't actually do that. They can write bullshit, but you can ignore it. It's not even remotely similar to the oldfasioned bullying you could see back in the days in school where you would get physically and mentally assaulted and you couldn't do anything about ti because the idiotic adults would just say "eh, it's just kids being kids".
You have the mute button in games, ignore button on forums, delete them from friends on facebook (why the fuck did you even add those people in the first place?).

Also you need to talk with your GF if she's that much scared of the internet. That's some seriously deep issue and it's certainly not just bad experience from some random asshole doing asshole things on the internet.

EDIT:
Well that's the way to completely miss the topic. Good job me, nice going!

Okay, now that I read your post a 3rd time and actually realized that it's not internet bullying, yeah, your GF is getting bullied. I can't really help you with IRL bullying. One way would be reporting them to the college. The other one would be, if you can, get them out of the club. You started it so you can throw people out I assume. There is a real difference between being an asshole IRL and on the internet and calling someone a ***** for no fucking reason other than not wanting her in your club is beyond pathetic.

 

[psijac]

Hello. I recently posted a question about advice for my Girlfriend and I got a lot of responses from you all. She was really excited that these people gave her this advice. I recently started a "Video Game Club" at my College and some people started saying that my girlfriend shouldn't be allowed because she's a girl.
I talked to them about their behavior and it got better for a while... but then it just got worse. They started calling her a B**ch and other names. My girlfriend called me and asked if I could post this topic on the forums. She wanted me to do it because she was scared to post anything at all.
She was afraid she might be cyber-bullied.
So I need your help; What should we do? What should SHE do? What can I do to help her?
My Girlfriend wanted to include her own words; "So many people think that girl gamers either horrible, lazy, or sluts. Why do they think that way? And I'm not unskilled either! I won a Super Smash Bros. Melee tournament event at our friend's house. Kirby was who I chose, and people made fun of me for it." She really is a gem. Anyways, I want your opinions.

I would not want to be in any club where one member had a unmerited influence of the founder/leader of the group. Would you kick someone out of your group if your girlfriend told you he made a pass at her? You can't prove what happened either way. Would you bump someone from a group activity to fit your GF in?

After Blackwing Lair this is how Warcraft guilds died.

I see a fraternization problem here. If you stepped down I would okay with her staying in the group.

 

[Story]

Honestly, I would just flat out kick out those members of the group. Not for bullying your girlfriend, but for abusing and harassing club members. Though I guess that first reason might be implied. Maybe invite other girls to join and see how they treat them? If its the same kick their asses out.

 

[The Almighty Aardvark]

It's a problem I've noticed fairly often in male oriented hobbies. Of course it's not everyone, most people I actively hang out with are fine, but you see it crop a fair bit.

My girlfriend and I went to a Magic the Gathering pre-release a little while ago and we noticed it with several of the guys there. One guy in particularly was perfectly decent and friendly when he played against me, but in one of his later games the second he saw he was going against a girl he started getting really cocky, offering to take it easy on her. When she ended up beating him 2 - 0 (Got to love extort) he was fuming, slammed his cards down on the table and stormed off.

The rest of the people were varying levels of "This will be an easy win" to perfectly decent. It's hardly a universal issue around gamers, and it's definitely not just gamers, but it's a problem that's very much present in most communities I've seen.

Since you're the president of the club (I assume, given that you started it) I'd suggest laying some ground rules of what's an acceptable way to treat other members. It's sad when you have to create rules to make adults play nice, but it sounds like the way these guys have acted warrants it.

Another thing that might help is getting more girls in the club. Just so that she isn't the only girl, they can weather the abuse together.

If none of this works, you should probably just give the club the ax. It's supposed to be fun, and if you and your girlfriend constantly need to deal with this then it doesn't sound like it'll be something positive for either of you.

 

[Fox12]

Thanks. The unfortunate part is that I started the club.

If I may ask, what sort of gaming club is it? Is it just a casual group of friends, or is it more like a competitive League of Legends group? I wonder if that would affect the culture. Competitive gamers may be more toxic. I'm sorry to hear this, I've never seen this at my college, and there are tons of women gamers here.

You may need to create a general list of etiquette for everyone to follow, and find ways to enforce it. If it's competitive, like at my school, then you can bench members who don't behave. Alternatively, if its casual, then you need to find other ways to penalize members. I assume you have school funding, so maybe you can plan special events. Negative members can't attend. You'll lose toxic individuals, but honestly, that's fine. If you can come up with some good publicity, you may be able to find more stable members willing to join your group. See if any of her friends want to join, and their male friends and boyfriends. Basically, just try to get some none toxic blood in there. A lot of time a calm, rational minority can diffuse a situation. If you penalize someone, don't get angry, just inform them of their punishment and move on, like its business as usual. I hope things work out for both of you!

 

[Itdoesthatsometimes]

Fuck those assholes. Get your group sponsor to dismantle the discriminating club.

 

[NiPah]

Easy, demand a $20 club fee, the next week shut down the club and give the money to your GF and say you're using it to fund inroads to better understanding between the sexes in video games.

I kid I kid

Buy a cheap stereo and blar the worst music you can think of from a few rooms over, something like that Monday Monday song.

Jokes aside tell the jack offs that you won't deal with a mindset that was old before Hitler came to power.

 

[Rebel_Raven]

I'd be hard pressed to call them "men" but it happens.

Start another club, and let the mean folks keep what ever you leave them, and leave it at that. From the ashes let the club rise again, stronger, and more aware of jackasses, and be mindful about letting them in.

Captcha: Have fun!

Fitting. Please do.

 

[Robert Marrs]

I have personally seen it happen and I don't know a single woman who hasn't experienced it if they play openly as a woman. That said I really don't think its some sort of epidemic in scope. I have an rather large group of internet friends, non of which you would put in the politically correct crowd yet all of them are capable of treating everyone with some modicum of respect and not acting like a 12 year old every time a woman is playing with us. In real life though? Literally never seen it. It always seems to be exclusive to people being anonymous on the internet. So unless this entire post is complete bs (and I ain't doubting that honestly) I would say you just happened to have a bunch of losers that you should just remove from the group.

 

[CaitSeith]

Start a new club. This time make sure to establish clear rules and consequences about respect between the members, and don't repeat the mistakes you did in the old one.

 

[White Lightning]

Why'd that one guy get a warning? Seems kinda unfair.

As for OP, just kick them out of the club or try and talk to them again.

As for your girlfriends question, a lot of gamer guys don't like girls in general. A lot of them were likely bullied by girls for liking games. Before someone says anything, I'm not saying ALL gamer guys were bullied, or that ALL girls bullied people, just that SOME people were bullied for liking games. This can apply to BOTH genders, so no one start saying "ERMAGERD I WASN'T/DIDN'T BULLY UR WRONG". I personally don't trust women in general either due to this. Seriously, I was just talking with friends and they'd come over and start shit. Girls are mean yo. (inb4 banned)

 

[Tsun Tzu]

Not that I've really noticed.

I think assholes online will be assholes online.

If you sound fat, they'll insult you on it.

If you sound gay, they'll insult you on it.

If you sound like a girl, they'll insult you on it.

If you sound old, they'll insult you on it.

If you sound white, they'll insult you on it.

If you sound Arabic, they'll insult you on it.

If you sound black, they'll insult you on it.

If you sound posh, they'll insult you on it.

To put it down to just targeting women is untrue and really gives more merit to the random insults than is deserved. People who do this kind of thing are generally young, so, yeah. Blaming everyone for the actions some angsty teens is a bit silly.

This.

Completely this.

In the particular example given?

They just sound like a dicky group. Find different folks to hang out with...and age most likely plays a role here. The younger they are, the less likely they are to have proper perspective when dealing with others.

Empathy is natural, but honed over time. *shrug*

 

[thewatergamer]

Short Answer: Leave the club

Long Answer: As mentioned before are you leaving something out of this? Since the one being bullied is your girlfriend I'm concerned that we aren't really getting the whole story here, some more context might be nice

Now assuming that everything you said is exactly as it went down, well people can be real assholes gamer's and non-gamer's alike, I would say most gamer's are normal people but its that "a few drops of poison ruin the drink" thing, and honestly I can't say I'm surprised as stated many times before until about 8 years or so ago (at least in my experience) gaming was considered "un-cool" or "nerdy" and as such alot of gamer's these days have some resentment against non-gamers, that doesn't excuse this type of behavior but I can at least come up with why they might be acting in such a way

 

[Neverhoodian]

I recently started a "Video Game Club" at my College

At the risk of stereotyping, I'd say that's your problem right there. I tend to be unimpressed with college-age kids, particularly the males. Too much "tough guy" posturing for my taste.[footnote]To all you college-age Escapists out there, please don't take this the wrong way. I'm sure you're cool.[/footnote] Perhaps try to find some folks with a more mature mindset?

Granted this is coming from a guy who's introverted, pushing 30 and increasingly out of touch with today's youth, so you should probably take what I say with a grain of salt. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go sit on my rocking chair and yell at kids to get off my lawn.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Trolls 101, they are everywhere.
And if you find them in your club then it's clobbering time, at all times it needs to be clear their ass is out the moment they berate other people. I'm sorry you need to deal with them but this will always come up when you are in charge of a group of people, some just do not ever play nice.