Sexism in Video Games

[D-FENS]

Oops, I misread your question about MMORPG.

While I don't play MMO's I have played lot's of D&D, and I can tell you, without fear of reprisal, that MANY of those players had a really difficult time relating to the other sex. I don't know, or understand, the depth of the problem, but it has a great deal to do with social interactivity. Maybe, the whole "geek" and "nerd" labels prevented dates and casual conversation in school. (They sure did for me, but I was lucky enough to find a girl or two equally geeky.)

Part of the problem lies in girls not really playing many pen-and-paper RPG's to begin with, which, considering D&D's origins (ripped directly from Tolkien who was as comfortable with female characters as hobbit is with trolls) is not entirely surprising. I think D&D kind of excluded and objectified women early, girls saw that, decided not to participate, so there weren't enough girl geeks in circulation to pair up with the boy geeks, so boy geeks began considering girls as mysterious, sexually distant and unattainable creatures, their real-life fantasies went unfufilled, but guess what, they were playing the ultimate "fantasy" game, so they played out those fantasies in D&D, the objectification became WORSE (chainmail bikini anyone), and the cycle continued.

Now we have MMO players who think of female beauty as a bouncing-breasted, scantilly clad elf temptress. (You can also blame artists like Luis Royo and Boris Vallejo - sp- for that.)

And I'm really going out on a limb here, but you know how a large population of male rats will turn homosexual without any female rats, or how some amphibian creatures will change sex if the population becomes slanted too far towards one sex? Well, think of geeks like that, and how some geeks will take on femine roles because there aren't enough females to fill those roles. (Also think of Greek drama and many early theatre styles where ALL parts, male and female, were played by males.)

One last thing, try and find an MP3 "Dungeons and Dragons Part II" by "The Dead-Ale Wives". It will make everything I said here make PERFECT sense.