World of Menzcraft

Ok, you know it's bad when I'm driven to blogging about it... Hi again folks!

I'm in a community on lj for female World of Warcraft players. I haven't seen any hard stats out there, but the general consensus is that the player base is 15-30% female. I have been lucky enough to mostly avoid harassment, but I vividly recall getting into audio chat with a group containing another woman and her incredible excitement that I was a woman. "Oh my god, another female voice! You have no idea how long it's been since I've heard one on WoW!" She pretty much summed it up -- some weeks, our ten-person raid group contains one other woman, sometimes I'm the only one. This is pretty representative.

Someone posted to the lj community that they were starting a guild for girls, and couldn't decided whether to let men in at all, and asked for advice from people in more high-profile all-female guilds. There's been some good discussion from those folks, but two times now, a male has chipped in with a dissenting viewpoint. First, there was "As guy [sic], I'm not to big on gender specific guilds, I understand that people want these type of guilds as it would be easier to identify with one another." Which shows some basic ignorance of where he is posting, a complete lack of understanding of how it might be different for women, and a big honking blind spot to his own privilege. About par for the course, and not actually rude.

But then we get, from someone not actually mentioning his gender (I checked his profile after reading the comment, strongly suspecting), "However, exclusion based on "just because you're a guy"...or even worse, admitting "some" guys and holding them to a different standard is pretty ridiculous. Guilds are meant to promote teamwork and unity and cooperation and community for all the members...not just the ones you like best.

I'd suggest if you want your own private club, go ahead and make it...that's your right...but consider what it is you're trying to accomplish with it before you decide to keep people out for no apparent reason other than "just because"."

Snotty tone, check. Complete blindness to irony, check. Sticking nose in where it doesn't belong, check. Three strikes, this guy is out.

And what is with men saying "yeah, men are obnoxious, women are better to play with" immediately before revealing their own prejudices? Do they think if they pretend to agree with us, we won't notice when they switch over to being jerks?

Arrrrgh. I'm trying to keep my responses low-key as well as civil, given that this is not supposed to be a feminism-oriented community, but this is driving me nuts!