Number five on Gizmodo.com’s “10 Things You Need to Know About PlayStation Home” says “There are lots of dudes. Lots of them.” And it includes this screenshot of a male avatar saying “nice rack” to the only female avatar in the shot, who says, “thanks.”
This post would be an essay if I started analyzing that screen shot alone, so I’ll just say I think it really odd that a random guy is going to comment on a woman’s virtual breasts (that are not real – they are virtual!) and by doing so reduces even an avatar to (fake) body parts.
Also on Gizmodo, I watched two youtube video clips filmed by males playing the recently released Sony “Home.” The site says, “In it, we see two female avatars being surrounded by male avatars doing little dances. Apparently this is happening all over the service. A lot.”
And indeed, in the video clips there are two or three female avatars surrounded by about five to seven male avatars. Some of the time the women in the first clip (i’m only going to talk about the first one for brevity’s sake) are dancing too and presumably they could leave if they were uncomfortable (I’ve never played this game) so I don’t want to say they are being victimized, especially given that this is a virtual world, but the whole situation is quite odd, as is the commentary from the videotaper. And it’s all the more disturbing/odd if it’s happening a lot.
What I think is especially striking about the dancing is how it is groups of men versus one or two women. Just like a lot of real world street harassment, the online dancing seems to be a form of male bonding or a way to prove one’s masculinity to one’s male peers. In fact, in one of the videos showing the male avatars dancing around the women, the male who was videotaping the incident at first voiced reservations about what he was seeing and passed by, but then he said, “I’m not gay,” and went back and joined the other male avatars in dancing around the female avatars.
If this is a common occurrence, how likely is it that people with female avatars will get tired of being surrounded by males and danced with and so either change into a male avatar or stop playing?
If you’re a gamer, have you ever witnessed this, done this, or been the target of it? If you answered yes to any of those questions, what happened, how did you feel, etc? What have been the experiences of people who use female avatars?
(thanks, mark for sharing these links with me:))
Maureen says
Now I am going to preface this by saying, this is all my perspective and opinion.
A large portion of the time, the female avatars are being played by males. I have been told several reasons why they pick a female avatar (most common seems to be that its more pleasing to look at for the hours they will spend in the video game). Many seem to encourage other males to give them that kind of attention. Playing WoW, I know that a majority of the female chars are played by males.
In my experience there are 2 types of women who play online rpgs. The first kind are looking for that kind of attention. They want the guys to oogle them, they want the guys to give them stuff. They flirt excessively and do everything one can possibly think of to get attention.
There is a second type. Those (who are like myself)are the ones not looking for any attention. They sometimes even chose to play male avatars so that no one will notice them. I just do my own thing. I don’t call attention to myself, and in return I hardly ever have had anyone make any comments about my avatar (or chars). Or the comments I get are the same ones that are made to male chars who wear the exact same gear.
Kat Smith says
This is simply my experience from playing Guild Wars, so analyze it as you wish. Several of the dances and emotes in the game are designed with groin thrusts and other amusing gestures that get out of hand and really old really fast. Frequently, when talking to other players in the game, I’ll find a spot to sit down. Sometimes, if I go AFK or minimize the game to look something up in a browser, I’ll come back to find several guys around my character doing the dances right in her face making comments like “suck it all up” or “you like that, don’t you?”
It happens a lot, and for the most part I simply try to ignore it but it gets excessive quickly and I lose my patience. As much as I like the game, i find myself going out of the way to find uninhabited city servers simply to avoid that kind of behavior.
Na D.S says
dis is freakin stupid shit!